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...the dancers messed with our desire to know what this art was about, if not what it was worth.
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SHOW is a brilliant, often erotically charged evening-length piece performed by two dynamic, brave dancers unafraid to take risks, involving the audience in unique and, at times, demanding ways.
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SHOW was a tense, exhausting combination of immersive dance and installation.
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While her choreography is pretty out there, she definitely pushes the body into interesting and unexpected directions. She asks compelling questions about the meaning of the observed body and about the dynamic and expectations between audience and performer.
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Time Traveler
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The discipline, constraint and austerity and the ultimate resulting poetry of the work was staggering-with an utter minimum of movement and fiercely conceptual drive, Hassabi managed to transcend dance and approach an art-making that was far more steeped in durational performance/installation.
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Time to Put Choreography Back on Its Feet
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Hers is a dance that lives between object and movement, a dance that conjures a frame and dares you to resist.
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No matter the art form or the intersection of arts that is on focus, when an artist makes very clear and specific decisions something more extraordinary about the content of the work is revealed.
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Robert and Maria covers about 6 sq ft of ground - and lifetimes of feeling.
... If Eadweard Muybridge had photographed not a horse's gallop but feelings growing, shrinking and wavering across body, face and the space between two people, it might have looked like this.
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Hassabi and Steijn were adrift in their own concentration and in each other's gazes, with the viewers equally entranced.
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"Robert and Maria" is a dance by degrees, in which the inching closer of angled torsos or the slow joining of hands becomes an act of rich drama... It's rare to get such an unadorned window into the world of two strangers.
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Her cheeks flush, her nose reddens, her eyes almost spill over, her eyebrows quake. She is absolutely experiencing her experiment. It is beautiful.
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Maria Hassabi and Robert Steijn
Two choreographers meet onstage at Danspace Project
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Playing Connect the Dots, From Aphrodite to Lil' Kim
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The work lasts about an hour of clock time--quite a testament to Hassabi's vigor and determination--but you might find yourself completely losing track of time. |
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Hassabi makes her way around the platform with awe-inspiring skill and dexterity, her muscles and veins bulging as her body shakes, often held slightly above the platform by hands that leave disappearing sweat prints on the dark surface. |
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Staggering genius...like the British art duo Gilbert & George...Hassabi eliminated the distinction between artist and art. |
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...a great collision of grace, tension, grotesqueness, seduction and pain... |
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...smart and subversive Maria Hassabi... |
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Gazing at this exquisitely designed living sculpture, you also feel your own body straining with Hassabi, and in the slow friction between these two views, mysterious emotions ignite. |
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Ms. Hassabi's body is astounding... |
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SOLO...[is] really a very different kind of pas de deux ... it's a thrill watching what Hassabi the dancer is capable of. |
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In her GLORIA (2007) Ms. Hassabi, born in Cyprus, created a powerfully theatrical environment ... perhaps she will transport us again. |
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Maria Hassabi's "Come in my house I want to hurt you!" continued her exploration of the female body as moving sculpture, objectified yet powerful. |
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A piece of pure theater in which the cumulative effect of their disaffected, sculptural poses was as compelling as it was mysterious. |
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"The best of 2007...duet for two beauties who never touch..." |
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"The boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred... every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning." |
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Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas-two of the most exciting contemporary dance artists in New York-exist alone together in Gloria, Hassabi's latest work...Both dancers and viewers endure harsh exposure... |
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Split Screen Live: Maria Hassabi's Gloria. A double image of two intrepid dancers. The performers are arresting to watch... |
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Set to the sounds of cars honking and cell phones ringing, Gloria is a slow, haunting walk through a familiar city. |
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"...these captivating performers you want to watch at any given moment". |
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"Gloria days" |
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"In a Confluence of Style and Emotion, Finding the Art of Alienation in a world of detached sensuality" |
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"The dancers movement is eye-popping, pedestrian, and traffic stopping." |
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"25 Ace New Yorkers to keep an eye on" |
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, Claudia La Rocco, April 7, 2006
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"Hassabi works with an eye catching movement vocabulary" |
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"In excess - Maria Hassabi creates a world of grandeur in her latest piece, Still Smoking" |
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"What made "Dead is Dead" work so well... was its luck of pretension and its skillful staging and overall dramatic arc." |
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Hassabi subjects us to a bombardment of violent, gaudy, hypercharged images drawn from popular culture and fashion, carrying them to drastic extremes. |
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"La Vie Moderne" |
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"City grit - Maria Hassabi invades DTW with her action-packed romp Dead is Dead" |
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NEW YORK PRESS, STEVEN PSYLLOS, December 8-14, 2004
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"DANCER IN THE DARK" |
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...The stylish choreographer doesn't do anything halfway, and Dead is Dead might turn out to be the event of the season. |
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"The sound of a tree crashing down without witness. The falling shapes behind your eyelids. "Lights" is a stunning new dance piece..." |
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"Hassabi's "Late Night Future" begins marvelously... You feel skin scraping on skin. This goes on for a long time and is endlessly fascinating." |
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"Forest Near Chelsea"...there was an almost ritual quality to the movement. The women were very strong...I hadn't seen anything quite like it before..." |
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In an evening of convincing performers and hyper-aware dancers who demand you watch, Maria Hassabi stood out. In her piece, "sketch one,"... |