A solo dancer performs on a museum style bench. She shuffles herself from one place of pause to the next, materializing uncomfortable and even contorted positions. Twists and turns occur on top, underneath and around the bench, finding an entangled body on a seemingly endless loop. A quest for rest, for a place to be, to become, to breathe.
Since the early 2000s, Maria Hassabi has carved a unique practice based on the relation of the live body to the still image and to the sculptural object. Concentrated on stillness, deceleration and aesthetic precision, her works – ranging in mediums of performance, installation, sculpture, photography, and video – reflect on concepts of time and the human figure as a physical entity. In most of her works, the performing body is the main subject, often embedded within imposing installations. Body and gravity, time and space are in constant negotiation, anchoring the awareness of both the dancers and the viewers to the present moment. The initial invitation of a spectacle exhausts itself, and a common corporeality and radical intimacy is exposed.
CREDITS
Concept, Choreography and Dance
Maria Hassabi
Sound
Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi
Costumes
Venia Polychronaki