LATIN PAPI

Gabriel Mata

Collaborating Artist
Gabriel Mata (pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah) is a Mexican American dance choreographer, educator, and performer based in Washington DC. Brown Baby is his project based performance company and he is the director of the Latinx Movement Festival in Washington DC. Growing up as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who assimilated to a white and Eurocentric notion of the US for a goal of citizenship, he has cultivated his own choreographic form and movement language as an act of de-centering his concert dance training. He has cultivated dance performance work under the name motion memoirs and teaching of contemporary sabor. Mata’s research is on jotería, Meximalismo, immigration, Latinidad / brownness, and community based movement forms. Mata's dance works have been performed in California, New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, New Jersey, Washington DC, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His work has been presented at Stanford University, San José State University, Georgian Court University, Howard Community College, Salisbury University, Howard Community College, Santa Ana College, and American University. His dances have been commissioned by David Herrera Performance Company, Jane Franklin Dance, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Dance Loft on 14, sjDANCEco, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers - SF, Moveius Contemporary Ballet, Dance Place, Silicon Valley Pride, the Hispanic National Bar Association, Latino/a/x Contemporary Dance Festival, and Corazón Folklórico DC. He is part of the Artists Advisory Council at Dance Place - Thresholds, the Latinx Hispanic Dancers United, and the Latinx Dance Educators Association. Mata is the inaugural Social Justice Commissioned Dance Artist at Dance Loft on 14th as well as the inaugural Arts Lab Fellow at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. He has received the S&R Evermay Washington Award and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Research Grant. Additionally, he has been a current recipient of DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities Grants for cultural production.

Armani Colon

Collaborating Artist