G/HOSTING

IMAGINATIVE CHOREOGRAPHIC CENTER

Imaginative Choreographic Center is an international. nomad and long-term project focused on processes of imaginative institutionalization in the fields of choreography and dance, led by artists, mediators, and curators Aleksandar Georgiev, Darío Barreto, Zhana Pencheva, and Ida Daniel, together with other national and international collaborators invited throughout the process.

Darío Barreto Damas is a Canarian dancer who develops his work between Tenerife, Sofia, and Skopje. His artistic practice explores dance as an autonomous form of knowledge and disidentification practices as mechanisms of mediation. He trained at Teatro Victoria (Tenerife), Institut del Teatre (Barcelona), DOCH – School of Dance and Circus (Stockholm), and JLU – University of Giessen (Germany). Throughout his career, he has collaborated as a dancer, co-creator, and performer with Cullberg, Aleksandar Georgiev, Deborah Hay, Cristina Caprioli, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Philip Berlin, and Poliana Lima, among others. He is a co-dreamer of ICC (Imaginative Choreographic Center) project-institution, co-founder artistic team STEAM ROOM, and a board member of the PiedeBase association (Canary Islands). Darío co-directs, together with Beatriz Bello, LAV-C (Laboratory of Live Arts and Citizenship of the Canary Islands).

Aleksandar Georgiev (Ace) is an artist working with and around choreography between a couple of places (Tenerife, Sofia, Skopje, and Stockholm). His practice revolves around choreography, whether narrowly or expansively understood, while actively engaging in curatorial formats and the creation of imaginative institutions, such as the Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC) and the queer cultural program PEC. Alongside his individual work, he is deeply committed to processes of collective authorship, especially through the artistic team STEAM ROOM, together with Darío Barreto Damas and Zhana Pencheva. His artistic interests include the politicization of the anus, “reading from behind,” “nostalgia as poetic archiving,” “radical tenderness,” “cheating as a social endeavor,” and “imaginative structures as support systems.” He holds an MA in Choreography from DOCH – School of Dance and Circus, Stockholm and a BA in Dance Theatre from New Bulgarian University, Sofia, complemented by a range of non-institutional programs and self-organized learning processes that continue to shape his artistic approach. His work is marked by a commitment to co-thinking, co-dreaming, and co-imagining possible and necessary futures and structures.

Ida Daniel is a writing choreographer and performing dramaturg working between Sofia and international contexts. Her artistic practice is grounded in an exploration of the dynamics of relational structures, constantly shifting form and format with each new work. Since 2022, she has been co-thinking, co-dreaming, and co-hosting with and at the Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC), an initiative exploring collective processes within the framework of an imaginative institution. In 2024, she joined the curatorial team of Implantieren Festival in Frankfurt, extending her practice into contexts of artistic hosting and institutional imagination.

Zhana Pencheva is a freelance dancer and choreographer working between Burgas, Sofia, Stockholm, and other international contexts. She holds BA and MA degrees in Dance and Choreography from New Bulgarian University and is currently completing the New Performative Practices MA program at Stockholm University of the Arts. Her choreographic work often explores themes of sensuality, erotics, and love, focusing on the kinetic, intimate, and affective spaces that emerge through dance and movement. Developed in close collaboration with sound, music, light, and other artists, her projects include Dance baby, dance, Six Love Songs, Glass of love, Garden, and her most recent solo I Love When You’re Watching Me. In 2018, together with Aleksandar Georgiev and Dario Barreto Damas, she co-founded the international artistic team STEAM ROOM, working through practices of collective authorship. Since 2020, she has also been a co-initiator of the Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC). As a performer, Zhana has collaborated widely across Bulgarian and international productions, including The Body as Reference for Revolution (United Cowboys), In C (Sasha Waltz & Guests), The Power of S (Aleksandar Georgiev), Hommage à Merce Cunningham (Paula Rosolen), and Impossible Actions (Yasen Vasilev), among others.