Dança Imaginal

“Dança Imaginal®  espaço de imaginaçao corpórea” is an artistic and choreographic research based in Lisbon. The idea of this project was born from the desire to build a space and time in which people can Imagine. Dance and movement, in this method, ease the imaginative work and the body becomes the place and simultaneously the instrument of access to that Beauty that, as the philosopher Heraclitus said, “loves to hide”.

 The lab proposes an original synthesis inspired by different methods of contemporary dance and practices of embodiment: Authentic Movement, Fux creative method and De Vera D’Aragona symbolic method. The research is mostly dedicated to improvisation following an explorative path of expressive potentialities. Various creative stimuli, objects, paint, images and sensory experiences, open the imagination of the individual and the collective body.

“I do not mean that dreaming is a bridge, but rather that there is an operation we call imagination, which makes the heroic ego a more subtle body and capable of becoming a free soul” James Hillman

Maddalena Ugolini, dancer, choreographer, art dance movement therapist, founder and teacher of Dança Imaginal®.  She was born in Florence in 1986. She started with ballet when she was three years old and later she met dance theatre and contemporary dance. After graduating in Clinical Psychology at the University of Florence, in 2010 she moved to the United States where she lived for two years, practicing dance and photography, with exhibitions in NYC and Los Angeles. In 2012, she enrolled in a four-year master’s degree at the Centro Toscano of Art and Dance-movement Therapy, where she specialised in the “Authentic Movement” method and mastered in 2017 with her thesis about Body Imagination.  In January 2013, she met Deborah Lamantia and she deepened her choreographic research, dancing in her company “Brick”. In 2017 she moved to Lisbon, where founded her project of “Dança Imaginal, espaço de imaginaçao corpórea”.  In September 2018 she was selected  for the Advanced Program of Creation in Performing Arts (PACAP) at Forum Dança curated by Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz. In March, 2018 she presented her project at Festival Cumplicidade,  International Contemporary Dance Festival of Lisboa. Her works “Corpo Azul” and “Take me somewhere nice” were presented last year at Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon. In December 2021 , InShadow Festival presented “Alba”, her new performance/living installation.

InShadow Festival 2021
Livreria Ler Devagar,  LX FactoryLisbon

Artistic Direction Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal

Videoinstallation and Light design : Peppe Coniglio and Fabio Baldo
Soundscape: Timoteo Grignani

Alba is a gesture that falls into the world. It is a story carved by hand with clay that is born and dies constantly with it. Alba is the instant before birth, the word on the tip of your tongue, the moment before the jump, the life that appears in the infinite space between two bodies. Alba is a spacious passion, a compassion that lets things unfold, cares for, lightens, glimpses the iridescence, the glow, the dawn.

ALBA Short Documentary

InShadow Festival 2021
Galeria Santa Catarina  Lisbon

Concept : Maddalena Ugolini
Filming /editing: Peppe Coniglio

ILIÁ  Short Documentary

InShadow Festival 2020
Galeria Santa Catarina  Lisbon

Concept : Maddalena Ugolini
Filming /editing: Peppe Coniglio

“Connaître est co-naître”To know is to be born with, born together with what I see, to have an experience of the beginning of things, their continuous surge. Ilià is a place, a home to return to, an amorous encounter with nature, a movement of wonder, a fruitful gaze, an appointment with the sky. Ilià is Being-in-the-world, paradox and consolation.

TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE   Performance/ videoinstallation

March 2020, Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon

Concept /performance: Maddalena Ugolini
Filming /editing: Maddalena Ugolini

Things being as they were, I decided, like Palomar, to limit myself to look, keeping me close to what I could see and to the immediate ideas that things suggested in me.
“The greater part of the soul is outside the body.” (Sendivogius)

CORPO AZUL  Interactive Performance/ installation

InShadow Festival 2019
Galeria OTOCO and Galeria Vera Cortez, Lisbon.

Concept /choreography: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal

“When myths say Gods have blue hair or blue bodies, they have. The Gods live in a blue place of metaphor” Corpo Azul is a living installation that invites the public to interact and play with a gesture that turns into a breathing matter, an organism that imagines.

INDIGENA Photo exhibition and Performance

April 2019   Galeria Arte Graça,  Lisbon

Concept /choreography/ photography: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal

“You understand that you have in yourself flocks of oxen, flocks of sheep, and flocks of goats. You understand that there are also birds of the sky in you. You understand that you are another world in small, and that in you there are the sun, the moon, and even the stars “Origen lii century AD

The creation “Indigena” is inspired by the creative material which has been collec­ted during the last year in a series of individual intensive sessions. The artist documented the deep imaginations of twenty participants by making portraits and pictures of their dance improvisations and recording their stories with audio ar­chives.

“havia muita água. e havia a possibilidade de ficar sempre dentro da água. dava para respirar”Filipa aula individual 12.11.18