Kim Brooks Mata is a dance artist, screendance maker, and educator currently serving as Associate Professor and Head and Artistic Director of the Dance Program in the Department of Drama at the University of Virginia (UVA).
With an emphasis on somatic practices, Kim prioritizes embodied learning and collaborative creative processes to facilitate critical inquiry and enhance creativity. In her live choreography and screendance work, she is interested in the affect–the impact of, and response to, the embodied worlds we are building on stage, in natural and built environments, and on screen(s). Her creative work focuses on questions that investigate notions of agency, a sense of place, and what it means to live and move in relationship. In her screendance work, Kim is interested in what she as a choreographer and dancer brings to the medium of film–namely an embodied, movement-centric, choreographic approach to camera operation and editing. Her screendance works have been screened as official selections in festivals in Scotland, England, Sweden, Italy, Finland, and across the US.
During her time at UVA, Kim has received various grants and awards among them a 4VA Arts Project grant and a Jefferson Trust award with engineering colleague Amy LaViers. She has been named a Mead Faculty Fellow, an inaugural Arts Fellow, and was a recipient of the inaugural Arts Endowment along with colleagues Mona Kasra (Digital Media Designer) and Kristina Warren (Composer). In April 2019, her collaborative work [I]nquiry II was re-cast, re-imagined, and re-staged with colleagues Mona Kasra and Leah Reid (Composer) as a part of the ACCelerate Creativity and Innovation Festival performed in Flag Hall in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
As a Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME) and certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA) her creative work, teaching, and performance coaching all rely heavily on her background in somatics. At UVA, Kim teaches all levels of Modern/Contemporary movement practice, Improvisation, Composition, Screendance, and Somatic Practices & Research. She also serves as the Artistic Director for the biannual concerts.
Kim has taught in various capacities at the University of Utah, California State University East Bay, the University of San Francisco, the University of Chicago, and as guest faculty with the Integrated Movement Studies (IMS) certification program. She holds a BA in dance from the Rotterdam Dance Academy (now Codarts) in the Netherlands, and an MFA in Modern Dance Performance from the University of Utah.
image: Jesús Pino Photography