M.F.A - educator -researcher - choreographer - performer
Gabriel Mata Movement
pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah
" ...his work explores how the labor of being a dancer is also the labor of being human, and how the lived experience of that labor can be danced."
"And then, they begin to understand what parts of the piece are about his nightmares and his shadows, about his life as a child who is completely American, just not on paper."
2023 Atlas Performing Arts Lab Inaugural Artist Fellow
2022 - 23 DC CAH-Dance Fellowship Grant.
2021 - 22 DC CAH Performance, Events, and Festivals.
2021 - 22 DC CAH - Dance Fellowship Grant.
2021 Kennedy Center REACH Residency (Office Hours)
2020-21 DC CAH- Fellowship Grant
2020 Board of Visitors Award for Summer Research 2020 - UMD
2019-20 Commission for the Arts and Humanities - Fellowship Grant
2019 College of the Arts and Humanities Graduate Travel Grant
2019-21 Fully-Funded Graduate Assistantship - UMD
2018-19 Dean’s Fellowship Graduate, UMD - MD
2018 Audience Pick Award MN Fringe Festival - MN
2018 Sadie Rose Artist Residency at Spector Dance - CA
2018 Best Arrival for D.C. Dance - Washington City Paper
2017 Twin Cities Arts Reader Best of Fringe 2017 - MN
2016 ChoreoFund 6 Audience Award - CA
2015 Estelle Sommers Scholarship - NC
2014 Mina Garman Award for Excellence in Choreography - CA
2013 Carol Ann Haws Award for Excellence in Performance - CA
"...el artista México-Americano GABRIEL MATA es mejor reconocido en los cículos artisticos, donde ha ganado fama por su coreógrafía dialogada y como virtuoso bailarin."
-Iride Aparacio, CulturalWorldBilingual
"Diving to the floor, fanning a leg into a cartwheel, dipping into a deep and generous lunge, he divvies up the space to trace his life’s trajectory."
-Lisa Traiger, DC Dance Journalism Project
"Mata is a powerful presence of regal grandeur, grace, determination, and strength."
-Ramona Harper, DC Metro Theater Arts
"The resistance of the tape matches his Latinx body, which refuses to adhere to a rigid line or any national border."
"Gabriel Mata's award-winning choreography takes him around the country: Washington, D.C., Delaware, New York, Minnesota, California."
-Michael Phelan, BayDance.com
"For Mexican American dance choreographer Gabriel Mata dance is a form of protest."
-Aries Jordan, DancersGroup
"'Out of the Shadows': Must-see piece about a dancer who forgets his moves"
-Aries Jordan, StarTribune
"Gabriel Mata is an extraordinary dancer whose Out of the Shadows combines spoken personal stories about his marginalization as a Mexican and as an artist."
-John Townsend, Lavender Magazine
"Gabriel Mata’s piece Hidden Layers evoked emotions in the audience as the dancers communicated through body movement the hidden layers in a person’s relationship with their own body."
-El Don