Gabriel Mata’s Journey From Immigrant to Dance Innovator
Gabriel Mata leads a queer Latinx dance movement through the Latinx Movement Festival and the new work "Amor, Dolor y Sabor."
“Dance serves many capacities, and one of them is cultural preservation,” says D.C.-based dance artist Gabriel Mata.
For Mata, who was born in Mexico, in the state of Guerrero, and immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was very young, dance also served as a stabilizing force as he grew up in Southern California. Although, it wasn’t until his junior year of public high school in Santa Ana that he took his first beginning dance class.
“At the same time, I was realizing I was gay,” Mata recalls. “And at the same time, I realized I was undocumented. So in the ways that I felt like I couldn’t move through spaces — I had to act masculine, I had to not reveal that I’m Mexican, for safety — dance gave me a sense of power over my body, and I decided how I wanted to move and what I wanted to create.”
Dance fueled Mata’s purpose as he graduated from San Jose University, then moved to San Francisco, where he met his partner, now husband. A new job, as they so often do, brought the couple to the DMV.
“I’ve been here for eight years, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he says. “I have a great sense of grounding and developing a community, because three of those years I spent [doing] my graduate degree at University of Maryland College Park.”
Now an independent artist and choreographer, Mata also teaches in the Adult Program at The Washington Ballet, is an adjunct instructor at American University, and is the founder and director of the annual Latinx Movement Festival, which had its inaugural edition last October at Dance Place in Brookland.
A platform for, in Mata’s words, “appreciating, uplifting, and highlighting” the predominantly Mexican and immigrant communities he grew up with, the Latinx Movement Festival will return for its second edition in October.
Boasting an expanded program, including film, multi-generational performances, community classes, artist talks, and new commissioned works, the festival is set to feature artists Armando Ibañez, Felipe Moltedo, Corazón Folklórico DC, Joel Mejia Smith, and emerging local choreographers Armani Colón and Angel Ramirez, among others.
Contemporary artists Colón and Ramirez, along with Mexican folklórico performer Manuel Cuellar, collaborate with Mata on his latest work, Amor, Dolor y Sabor, which premieres at Dance Loft on Friday, May 16.
“Amor, Dolor y Sabor is, y’know, Love, Pain, and Flavor,” Mata explains. “Initially, I thought I would give, like, ‘Armani, you take on the topic of Love, and Angel, you take on Dolor, and Manuel, you do Sabor.’ And in the end, all of the works ended up being a bit of everything. All the works have all of those themes within them, just to showcase the universality of it, how it is such a humanistic experience.”
Mata and his collaborators will explore identity, migration, and resilience in a performance comprised of five premiere works. “I’ll be performing in three of them, with each of them,” he says, noting that he’s also commissioned new solo works by Colón and Ramirez.
“Within the theme of Amor, Dolor y Sabor, maybe audiences will come in with a preconceived notion of what they may experience, but we wanna expand that definition,” teases Mata.
“We want to expand how it can look and be expressed and experienced. We want to give in to the notions, but we also want to sweep the rug out from underneath their feet and allow for them to collectively recognize, ‘Oh, it also looks like this. It also feels like that.’ Because the show is also very queer. And there’s no singular image of what queerness looks like. If anything, it’s an opportunity to explore the new.”
Amor, Dolor y Sabor is May 16 and 17 at Dance Loft on 14, 4618 14th St. NW. Tickets are $35, with discounts for students and children under 12. Use code DLAMOR20 to get 20% off. Visit www.danceloft14.org.
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