Solo and SoloShow are two autonomous evening-long solos, conceived as a diptych relating to one another as two moments of shifting perspective, (a parallax). Each solo inhabits its own specific temporal and spatial setting as it opens itself to the other through mutual reflections. Together, the solos play between opposing orientations as the performer moves from a solitary contemplation to a devotion to ‘show-culture’: being inside and outside, fully immersed or at the edges, embodied while remaining subject to the language of images. Solo and SoloShow extend Hassabi’s exploration of how a multitude of familiar representations of the female body can be dissolved into the physicality of contemporary dance.

In Solo, (the first work of a diptych), Hassabi performs with a Persian area carpet, arranging her movement as an investigation of fluid sculptural process. The carpet –originally a kind of grounding frame for the dance—becomes, variously, a prop object, an outer skin, and an architecture. These shifts describe the negotiation of desire in a dancing figure as it approaches visibility within the space of a given frame and connects with the material of a defining sculptural ground. This desire manifests itself as a changing temporal process, as complex and interwoven as the many patterns in the carpet.

Directed & Performed by: Maria Hassabi
Sound Design: James Lo
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur, Maria Hassabi
Dramaturgy: Scott Lyall, Marcos Rosales
Set Design: Scott Lyall, Maria Hassabi
Production Manager: Meghan Finn

SHOWS

2016
– The Kitchen NYC, as part of From Minimalism into Algorithm (April 2)

2015
– Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal (September 19,20)

2013
– Nottdance Festival 2013, Nottingham, UK (March 10)
– Lavanderia a Vapore, Torino, Italy (March 7)

2011
– Beit Hair Center for Urban Culture, Tel Aviv, as part of threeASFOUR exhibit (November 27)
– Soumaya Museo, Mexico City (April 8)

2010
– BOUGE B Festival, deSingel Internationale Kunstcampus, Antwerpen, Belgium (April 23)

2009
– Premiere: Performance Space 122, NY / Co-presented with Crossing the Line the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) Fall Festival (Sept 29 – Oct 4)

2008
– COME IN MY HOUSE I WANT TO HURT YOU! (work in progress of SOLO)
DMAC: Duo Multicultural Arts Center, NY (October 8-9)

PRESS

“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.”
THE VILLAGE VOICE, Deborah Jowitt, October 2, 2009

CREDITS

Solo and SoloShow are co-produced and presented by Performance Space 122, the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) as part of their Crossing the Line Festival, the 2009 Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as part of their TBA Festival. Solo and SoloShow have received funding from the National Performance Network Creation Fund, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the LMCC and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. The works were created, in part, while in in-Residence at Herberger College of the Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, as well as a creative residency at Performing Arts Forum in St. Erme, France.