Venezuelan-Canadian settler in T’Koronto. Poly-lingual choreographer, dance artist, director and activist with a background in expressive arts therapy. Mata’s career was first sculpted by pedagogic, self-directed training, which expanded to residencies and intensives under internationally renowned choreographers. Mata’s artistic work holds a sensibility to inclusion and border stories due to her eclectic upbringing across three continents before the age of fifteen. Mata holds a BFA in Urban Studies at University of Toronto, a MFA in Contemporary Choreography from York University and most recently Expressive Arts Training at The Create Institute. Since recently completing her second self-produced, full-length dance/theatre production “Cacao | A Venezuelan Lament,” Mata is working on a number of independent works with Toronto Choreographers Charles Smitt, Lucy Lupert, Roshanak Jaberi, Rosina Kazi and Irma Villafuerte. Community arts and the abolishment of violence against women is a fundamental core for Mata’s therapeutic and artistic expressions for ovcer two decades. After ten years experience working within the shelter system in Toronto and after graduating from, Mata is expanding her private practice in Expressive Arts with the ongoing focus on healing intergenerational trauma weaving the intersections of memory, class, spirituality, migration and racism.