"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.

Over the past decade, Maria Hassabi has created seven evening-long works and seven short-form pieces. Hassabi has been presented in the US and internationally at venues such as PS122, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, DANSPACE Project, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Ballroom Marfa, in Texas, at Kaaitheater Brussels, deSingel Antwerp, ImpulsTanz Vienna, In- Presentable Festival Madrid, TSEH-Springdance/Dialogue Moscow, Musee Geo Charles in Grenoble, France, and European festivals in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal. Her works have also been included in the Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09 and Crossing the Line, the fall festival of the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF).

Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Maria Hassabi 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 relocated to New York City and continued her studies in various "release" techniques and The Alexander Technique. Throughout her career she has had ongoing collaborations with renowned artists from various disciplines. She was a member of Chamecki/Lerner Dance Company from 1998-2005 and performed with several contemporary choreographers in New York.

She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Arizona State University, at LEXDance Under the Radar Residency Program, DANSLAB, Den Haag, Netherlands and has had creative residencies at Performing Arts Forum in St. Erme, 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.