M.F.A - educator -researcher - choreographer - performer
Gabriel Mata Movement
pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah
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
" ...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."
-Justin Rustle
"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."
-Petula Dvorak, Washington Post
"...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."
"'Out of the Shadows': Must-see piece about a dancer who forgets his moves"
-Aries Jordan, StarTribune
"Gabriel Mata's award-winning choreography takes him around the country: Washington, D.C., Delaware, New York, Minnesota, California."
-Michael Phelan, BayDance.com
"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
"For Mexican American dance choreographer Gabriel Mata dance is a form of protest."
-Aries Jordan, DancersGroup
"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