GLORIA is Composed through the layering of two individual solos, moving between one iconic posture and another. The dancers invoke a set of fleeting images within their abstract, mobile diagram. Each solo was developed separately and then conjoined. As a result, they inhabit a space of quiet stillness and isolation in which the body is viewed as sculpture simultaneously dead and alive.
Space becomes denser with emptiness as it unfolds. The two dancers are only connected in ways they themselves cannot imagine. The common setting is illuminated by stark continuous lighting, while each of the costumes suggests a graphic sense of the body. An original sound score drawn from everyday street noise includes melodic fragments of song as a respite from the work’s density, but just in passing.
Direction and Choreography Maria Hassabi
Performers Hristoula Harakas, Maria Hassabi
Set Design Scott Lyall
Sound Score Maria Hassabi
Sound Design/Engineer Jody Elff, George Helidonakis
Lighting Joe Levasseur with Maria Hassabi
Costumes ThreeAsFour
Dramaturgy Marcos Rosales
GLORIA was co-commissioned by PS122, Allison Sarofim and Ballroom Marfa. GLORIA was made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the generous support of Foundation 2021 and individuals Nicolas Petrou, Maggie Varadhan, Thea Westreich.
Shows:
2008
(Duet) In-Presentable 08, Madrid, Spain - June
2007
(Duet) Performance Space 122, NY - November
(Trio) BALLROOM MARFA, Texas - May
2006
(Solo) TSEH-Springdance/Dialogue, Moscow - July
Press:
By Roslyn Sulcas
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: November 10, 2007
In Maria Hassabi’s “Gloria,” Ms. Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas move expressionlessly and separately for nearly an hour through a series of isolated poses. The noise of traffic in downtown Athens resounds. Occasionally a little music seeps in, as if a radio were picking up a random frequency.
Ms. Hassabi’s piece, which opened on Wednesday night at Performance Space 122, is all her own. But it’s also the latest of a number of provocative, intelligent works that have recently emerged from contemporary dance in which the boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred. (Tere O’Connor’s “Rammed Earth” and Sam Kim’s “dumb dumb bunny” come to mind. And the Performa 07 festival, concerned with just such boundary blurring and with few commissions from choreographers, might want to take note.)
Like these other pieces, “Gloria,” seen on Thursday night, is more interested in the cumulative impact of movement than in the exploration of movement for its own sake. And like many other current works, it appropriates the vocabularies of popular culture — fashion, the club scene, exercise — along with the affectless, withdrawn mien that provides socially suitable accompaniment to those domains.
The choreographer, in bright pink leggings and top, is alone at first on the bare, brightly lighted stage, holding each position — sometimes slumped, sometimes stretched out in dancerly fashion — as if posing for the camera. Then Ms. Harakas enters, wearing black (the costumes, simple but stylishly cut, are by ThreeAsFour, and begins a sequence quite different in effect.
Ms. Hassabi appears mentally absent from her own body as it incarnates facsimiles of posture and attitude from everyday life: the fashion model pretending to do a yoga pose; the actress (or pornographic star) faking desire. But Ms. Harakas, an exceptionally fine dancer, is utterly present, both mysterious and compelling, as every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning.
The contrast is fascinating, and the effect of switching glances from one dancer to another as each inhabits a different side of the bare space is much like early photographic studies of movement sequences. Toward the end, both performers simply walk off, and the lights dim, as swelling music overtakes the traffic sounds. The quality of this darkening light (by Joe Levasseur) is as beautiful as a painting, but the effect — the music, the spatial emptiness — is pure theater.