Matthias Sperling_Photo by Neil Wissink
Biography
Choreographer and performer Matthias Sperling is an Associate Artist with Dance4 and winner of a Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award.
His solo work Riff (2007) has been presented at international festivals including Nottdance (UK), Les Repérages (France) and Springdance (Netherlands). His commissions have included Diplomacy (2009) a collaboration with Senegal-based choreographer Andréya Ouamba for Dance Umbrella London, and Duet, Duet (2010) a Southbank Centre commission responding to composer George Benjamin’s Viola, Viola.
He has collaborated with Siobhan Davies Dance on Minutes (2009) presented at Victoria Miro, Ikon and Hayward galleries, and To hand (2011) at the Whitechapel Gallery. He has also collaborated with visual artists including Pablo Bronstein and Hetain Patel, composers including Scanner, and he has worked on films including Billy Elliot (as a performer) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (as Dance Assistant).
He has taught extensively, both in the UK and internationally, sharing his practice with a wide range of people spanning those participating in dance for the first time to students in higher education and professional dance artists.
His recent projects include This is it (2011), a solo commission for Candoco Dance Company’s Turning 20 Anniversary Season; Thought Dance (2011), an interactive installation using EEG technology to share an experience of thought as a physical movement; and Do Not Be Afraid (2011), a superhero lycra clad duet proposing that the dance performer’s superpower is the ability to make their mind visible for an audience, in and through their body.
Originally from Canada, he studied with the Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre in Toronto before coming to the UK to complete his studies with Transitions Dance Company at Laban and going on to perform with companies including Matthew Bourne's Adventures in Motion Pictures and Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance.
He currently lives and works in London.