From Broadway stages to international arenas, Mattie Love’s dancing is electrifying. She has the uncanny ability to move fluidly through choreography, but with bright accents and a raw, earthy quality. While having such a distinctive movement style may have intimidated her at first, it has become her superpower that has landed her some of the most coveted gigs, including performing as Madonna’s double on her Celebration tour.
Current project: Madonna’s Holiday Tour:
Age: 30:00 hours
Hometown: Layton, Utah
Training: Dance Impressions (Farmington, UT), New York City Dance Alliance, Marymount Manhattan College
Congratulations. Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show, for: To Bob Fosse DANCING
Inspiring others: Andy Pellick vividly remembers noticing Love’s “special sauce” when she was about 12 years old, attending his NYCDA jazz class. In the years since, when he’s worked on the choreography, “it gives you what you didn’t know you wanted,” he says. “She inspires a choreographer, teacher or other dancer by making moves in a way you didn’t even know was possible. She can be a muse for many people, including me.”
Swing Success: Love was an ensemble dancer in the national tour of: Evil: before the pandemic shutdown and when the show returned, she joined as a swing. “The more songs I learned, it was actually easier to remember them all because I could tell where everyone was at any given moment,” she says. “Swinging feels almost like an out-of-body experience. I see things in slow motion.”
Dancing dreams. Love won a Chita Rivera Award for last year’s Broadway production of: To Bob Fosse DANCING. “This show is a dancer’s dream,” she says. “It’s so intuitive yet nuanced and captures the whole essence of who I want to be and portray.” She also loved her co-stars. “When you like everyone you work with and there’s a real camaraderie, it’s a game changer. This is the first show where I have to be completely myself. We all did.”
Exploring the world. When Love joined Madonna’s world tour — which currently runs through April, with 79 stops in Europe and North America — it took time to get used to the schedule, which sometimes included rehearsing until 2 or 3 in the morning. (Choreography is credited to a who’s who of creative minds, including (LA)HORDE, Valerie Young, Matt Cady, Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Meknoun Ghiasar, Megan Lawson and Nicholas Hutchardt.) Now that she’s keeping up with the times , she takes full advantage of immersing herself in new cultures while on tour. “I love going to gyms and I’ve taken classes in different languages,” she says. “I’m also very interested in body language, so it was fascinating to sit in the cafes and learn from the people in front of me.”
More than clothes. Love documents her funky, fun personal style on social media, and she finds solace in using fashion as another means of expression. She’s interested in eventually bringing some of that sensibility to costume design.
Growing and trusting. “Dance has saved me many times, got me through many broken hearts,” says Lyubov. “I’m finding my voice more now. I know that I have something to offer and I find that it is accepted. I believe that even though I don’t always feel like I fit in, I know that I belong.”