dancer · choreographer · pedagogue
who I am
a deepening into the hollow, a path of expansion of the space I am when I am not.
Matilde (artistica name of Javier Ciria; Murcia, 1979) is a scenic creator, director, choreographer and performer.
When I ask myself how I got here, I see a journey driven by an infinite curiosity, the desire to understand, to go beyond the mechanics of the world and skills, to delve into the essence of the experience of being human.
My fascination with technology was not born from a desire to learn to code, but from the urge to decipher the patterns that govern my surroundings: a universe of beautiful logics, yet incomplete without the chaotic beauty of our human emotions.
From this perspective, my transition to the stage and to clown becomes natural. The red nose turns into a magnifying glass for examining human nature: vulnerable, full of failures and absurdities that, when shared on stage, allow moments of true connection to arise.
On this scenic journey, I found my greatest teachers in unexpected places: in hospitals, in care centers, in Chernobyl. Trauma and suffering stripped me of my naivety. In the face of that humiliating pain, the tools of clown proved insufficient. That period, though painful and hopeless, was possibly the most important. It taught me that the understanding I was seeking required immersing myself in a terrifying depth.
Finding butoh was like arriving at a home I didn’t know I had, a language I had always known but never spoken. I understood that the body holds a wisdom that neither reason nor emotion can reach on their own. From this perspective, every movement is a dialogue with existence and every performance an act of connection with life.
My work revolves around madness: the madness of being, of being human, of being me; the madness of loving and of living. A madness that has led me to transcend the borders of the stage, inner and outer. Performer and audience, art and life; dichotomies that blur in every project, every performance, every workshop.
My journey, from programmer to clown, from butoh dancer to whatever I am becoming, is not a series of career changes, but a deepening into the hollow, a path of expansion of the space I am when I am not. A truth that can only be seen when we look together.
In my practice, art and life dissolve into a single act of exploration, turning every creation into an opportunity to investigate the limits between the physical, the emotional and the conceptual. The stage is my laboratory, and the experiments consist of searching for ways to share the experience of being human.
Curiosity has been the counselor that has guided the great decisions of my life.
trajectory and milestones
Matilde J. Ciria (Murcia, 1979) is a scenic creator, director, choreographer and performer. His work is born from a sustained question about the human body as a territory of research, and unfolds at the intersection of butoh, physical theatre and clown.
As a director and choreographer he has worked at internationally renowned institutions: the National Theatre of Costa Rica, where he directed and choreographed Frankenstein, and the Hungarian National Theatre of Timișoara, where he premiered Tóték in 2026. His work PublicoXLorca was produced with the support of Iberescena.
As a performer he has built a career alongside the company Ten Pen Chii and in his own projects, as well as collaborating as a performer in productions by other creators and companies, exploring the limits between performance, dance and total scene.
His training was built alongside masters of international butoh — Yumiko Yoshioka, Masaki Iwana, Yukio Waguri, Atsushi Takenouchi, Minako Seki, Natsu Nakajima — and of physical theatre and clown, with Philippe Gaulier and Michelle Dellarie, as well as his work as a hospital clown in contexts of extreme vulnerability.
He has designed his own pedagogical methodologies — ni.butoh and scenautics — materialized in long-running training projects such as Aula Nostra. As a cultural agitator, in 2024 he was artistic director of BIG (Butoh International Gathering), an internationally renowned gathering. He has driven his own initiatives, among them ALMA NEGRA, an Iberian butoh festival with more than ten years of history, RipollEsDansa and Kojoteki. Between 2022 and 2023 he directed Ciclo Danza Cruda in Madrid, nine monthly editions combining a ni.butoh research workshop with a performance of his own creation. For more than five years he has co-directed A Butoh Pelao, a butoh dance and improvisation series in Madrid.
His work has been presented at international festivals across Europe and Latin America.