M.F.A - educator -researcher - choreographer - performer
Gabriel Mata Movement
pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah
Conditions of Undress:
dancing in lo sucio
This co-conceived project between Gabriel Mata and Amelia Rose Estrada explores queer Latinx dreaming and world building through movement. Comprised of both a live performance and an article to be published in the forthcoming anthology Queer Hopes and Futures, this project uses choreographic, performance art, and theatrical methods to research queer Latinx identity in the DC metropolitan area and in concert dance.
Gabriel Mata and Amelia Rose Estrada–intend to research and perform alongside one another as we parse and examine our processes of crafting queer-Latinx performance. Individually, we both craft work that aims to decentralize eurocentric ways of knowing through prioritizing ancestral praxis. Both Latinidad and queerness are messy and nuanced. While Amelia is a Dominican-Cuban-Jewish lesbian and Gabriel an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, the couple form offers us a productive model for finding overlaps, dissonance, and lo sucio. We use the term “lo sucio” to reference Deborah Varges’s use of the term as an analytic for examining brown queerness and sexuality (Ruminations on Lo Sucio, 716), and because of the way it speaks to the messy, sticky, and dirty realities of queer Latinx bodies in motion.