"The boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred...every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning...The quality of the darkening light is as beautiful as a painting, but the effect — the music, the spatial emptiness — is pure theater."
Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, November 10, 2007

Maria Hassabi is a director/choreographer/performer. Her works are filled with iconic images that put forth—then push beyond—their initial connotations. With aesthetic precision, extreme physicality and extended duration the works create live installations that push limits of live performance.

Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, she moved to the United States in 1990 to study at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where she received a BFA in Performance and Choreography. In 1994 she moved to New York City and continued her studies in various "release" techniques and The Alexander Technique. She has performed with many independent choreographers and was a member of Chamecki/Lerner Dance Company for 8 years.

Over the past decade, Maria Hassabi has created six evening-length works and seven short- form pieces. She has been presented in the US at venues such as PS122, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, The Joyce Theater, and Ballroom Marfa, in Texas. Internationally, she has been featured at festivals such as ImpulsTanz Vienna, In- Presentable Festival Madrid, TSEH-Springdance/Dialogue Moscow, Musée Géo Charles in Grenoble, France, The Biennale of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean in Sarajevo-Herzegovina and European festivals in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.

She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Arizona State University, at LEXDance Under the Radar Residency Program, and has had creative residencies at Performing Arts Forum in St. Ermes, France. Her work has received funding from the National Performance Network Creation Fund, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the LMCC and Foundation 2021. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2009 Grants to Artists Award.

Maria Hassabi lives and works in NYC.