MEET YOUR PARTY HOST MARIO MATIAS

Mario Matias

is a Queer, Filipino-Indigenous (Igorot), choreographer, movement artist, and dance educator based in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, Canada).  Mario trained in a wide variety of dance styles including Hip-Hop, Punking, Afro and Commercial Choreography beginning in 2008 with PraiseTEAM Studio (Surrey, BC), where, within a year, he co-founded Epiphany Dance Crew and Epiphany Workshops. In 2012, Mario and Epiphany joined Studio 604 (Burnaby) where it became a competitive dance company; Mario led the company in many competitions, including World of Dance Vancouver and The Canadian Hip-Hop Championships. Mario graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Leadership and a Minor in Communications from Trinity Western University, where he co-founded Agape; TWU’s first competitive dance team - the first western Canadian collegiate-based street dance team to compete in Ontario’s established university competition circuit. Leading the team in The Academy collegiate dance competition in Toronto, the university then hired Mario to lead the Spartans Dance Program.

He has studied dance from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Calgary to Auckland, New Zealand, where he trained with various street dance companies and studios and was mentored by Sunny Sun, a former member of The Royal Family Dance Crew, as well as with leading choreographer Gina Micheal in Melbourne Australia. In 2021, Mario joined AfrobeatVan, under Isaac (Izo) Gasangwa to train heavily in Afro dance styles, and then returned to New Zealand to continue studies with Auckland’s notable choreographers and instructors.  MascallDance invited him to participate as a resident choreographer in BLOOM 24 and the rest is history!  Along with with MascallDance October mini-residency, he is jumping into the mix as guest publicist, getting the word out for several upcoming MascallDance events.

Mario invites you to dance dance dance ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ with us at Left of Main on Friday night October 18th.

Doors open at 6pm - grab your tickets and see you there!

Photo: @tangvaldphotography

what’s up?

Something really exciting. My friends and I are launching a dance collective we call Q.D.A.C. Queer Dance Artist Collective.  We came up with this because we notice there’s a lot of work we need to do as a group of people within in our immediate dance community.  We launch on Instagram this week, so we can start amplifying LGBTQ voices in the community we're a part of.  As progressive as we think we are as a dance community, thinking that in the arts there's a lot of community, but nope, we still have a long way to go. 

There’s so much happening right now, and with the residency and the dance party, the discussion, QDAP, and so many more things coming up.  I am really looking forward.   

You’ve spent time in New Zealand and have mentioned plans to return there for more studies.  What is it about New Zealand?

The New Zealand dance community I entered was an incredible experience for me.  I just saw the freedom.  The choreography was the same, but the way they did it was so unique and so different - and it inspired me so much. There it was.  That is how I want to move.

And so it took a lot of unlearning. I was coming from specific training. “This is the way you have to do things. This is how it's done.”

It took so long to shed it. Almost nine years. This past year I finally feel like I'm close to that movement I saw.  It took a lot of time for my body to adapt to that exact movement. And I think that’s had a snowball effect in my life -  of me wanting to pursue this and make it my own artistry.

let’s talk TikTok!  

TikTok is fun. For me it's just another platform where people can showcase their art. TikTok is part of our life now. It brought a lot of light during the pandemic, and a lot of communities have been made and grown through Tik Tok. 

It's such short form content. Within the performing arts world we work so hard to make these amazing, immaculate dances - we have them showcased and professionally filmed. And here are these TikTok dancers making a short clip and it goes viral and everybody talks about it.

Tik Tok has a more global audience - random people all over the world. It won’t bring in people for local events. But in terms of dance, I think it's amazing.  Not everything has to be serious.  I think it’s just fun, playful, and that’s something I think is really missing in the world.  Not to mention that on Tik Tok I’ve seen a lot of cool recipes that I’d never have known about!  Of course, just like with anything, it can, be bad if you’re addicted.  Any kind of social media you’re on for five hours straight, maybe that’s not the healthiest thing.   But I don’t think dancers are at risk.  The way we live we get so many endorphins from moving so much.

what’s something you love on Tik Tok?

I really love “day in the life” content. I kind of stumbled into it. I wondered if I could get some pointers from how athletes on fuelling for extreme high performance days - and TikTok, social media was there. I watched a soccer player’s day in the life and felt “so that's what a professional athlete does! “

In each one you see a completely different worldview. From everywhere. Really relatable content, connecting us. Even in Palestine, there are a lot of content creators on the platform - sending Day in the Life in Gaza, really, really powerful stuff like that. There’s amazing power in that quick seeing of different kinds of lives I normally wouldn’t understand.

Tik Tok is an ideal medium for getting work out to the newer generation. Many music artists gain renewed popularity through Tik Tok – 10 year olds are discovering things I grew up with back in the 2000s on TikTok.  I find that really exciting.  It seems crazy to me that dance companies right here in our community aren’t known by younger people. But how would they know about them? They’re not on Facebook, they don’t use print media, some are on Instagram. The Tik Tok generation form the impression that these companies aren’t on Tik Tok because of snobbery. A friend of mine was inspired by a really fabulous dance company and looked for them on Instagram – they weren’t even there!  My friend was shocked, and figured “they’re too good for it.  They think, why would we be on that?!” 

When you think about it, contemporary dance grew as a rebellion against the rigidity of ballet, and now here are other more recent dance styles who see contemporary dance that way.  It's sad.   

Photo: @tulpstoy

Is that your experience too?

When I was younger, I took a dance class. The first thing the teacher, a contemporary ballet dancer, asked me was “are you a professional?”  I said “yes”, and she assumed I meant ballet and contemporary.  I said “no, I do street dance, I do hip hop.”  That teacher did not like me at all because I was hip hop dancer with no ballet training.  I was trying SO hard to be liked - or even just respected. Finally, I did my year end project, a solo performance, and I did everything that I do. And she was like “damn, this guy’s actually good. And this form he does is actually pretty good.” The way she spoke to me suddenly switched from black to white, just like that. After that, this teacher told me “Mario, you have to prove yourself.” I was thinking “Should you not respect me already, just as a human being, just as a dancer in general?”  One of our assignments was to visit Ballet BC,  watch them and then write a paper on it. It was really interesting. When I was there, I felt “oh, so this is the world. This is it. Hey, this is the world that you come from.”  I also thought it was very cool – their work, contemporary ballet, is really, really exciting to see.  

The trauma of feeling inferior from not having that background makes a lot of pent-up feeling. The culture of dance I was being exposed to is a very, very judgemental culture.  In it, the knowledge is passed on by imitation, everything is very right/wrong. Here's the method – this is how my teacher taught me, so this is how I am going to teach you. And it is often at the expense of parts of you - physical, psychological, or spiritual.   

What influences you most as a dancer?

The music really, really speaks to me. When I dance I love the music so much.

And when you ask that right away there’s this sense of gratitude that I have.  That really guides me and it’s something I notice every time.  I just literally look around me and I can’t believe I’m here.  Not so long ago, I thought dance was completely gone from my life, yet here I am. 

And so I just let that lead me, especially in a class when I get intimidated by the hard choreography or scared by how the other dancers are so amazing. I just have to be “OK just be grateful.”  And all of a sudden my mindset changes and I can dance.

A friend of mine passed away last year, and it completely shifted my worldview. I feel very fortunate that I even get to be dancing. They gave everyone rubber wrist bracelets with Justin’s name on them. When I dance, I wear it. When I need something to remind me, to get courage, I just look at it.   

If you ask for a word, it's gratitude. 

Photo: @alexander.n.sargent