Xiomara Forbez

Multidisciplinary artist, USA

Xiomara Forbez is an idea-smith, dancer, scholar, and director. Born and raised in Miami, she has lived in Queens, Boston, Grenoble, and Riverside. California.

Trained in Critical Dance Studies (PhD, University of California, Riverside), Linguistics (BA, Boston University), and French Language and Literature (BA, Boston University), she is an interdisciplinary creator who combines popular culture, TV and film, social media, ethnography, autobiography, creative writing, and performance making.

"Bad" Dancing and the Exquisite corpse

From dancing offbeat to stealing moves, what we call “bad” dancing is variable and contextual which makes it a generative space for unpacking identity, hierarchies, and mechanisms of in/exclusion. Diaspora can also play a role, as dance scholar Jasmine Johnson writes, “the proof of diaspora is where the body fails, does differently, or does extra.” Forbez explores failures, differences, additions and other ways bad dancing materializes using exquisite corpse as methodology. It is a flexible bricolage method that both subverts and supports norms, opening space for contrariety and multiplicity.