Fabienne Formosa is an artist and practice-led doctoral researcher with the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her project sits at the intersections of mental health and dance, researching the ecological entanglements of distress through embodied storytelling. Fabienne’s practice emerged from weaving five years applied experience in crisis recovery mental health services, a background in psychology and an ongoing dance movement improvisation practice. Her work approaches the moving body as an art-making, healing and storytelling medium. She takes an experimental approach and develops the materials she uses both for her research and workshops from her own embodied practice drawing inspiration from postmodern, somatic and indigenous dance practices. These include contact improvisation, the ecstatic shaking of the Kalahari Bushmen within the shamanic tradition, and the Japanese Butoh dance founded by Hijikata Tatsumi using slow-somatic movement and guided imagery developed from the movements of non-human animals like serpents, spiders and the elements like water and fire. Her practice seeks to offer playful ways into embodied practice as a site for listening to the inner self by tracing sensations, moving from impulse and allowing the body to speak through movement and mark-making https://www.fabienneformosa.com/