GLORIA is a performance by choreographer Maria Hassabi, created in collaboration with performers Hristoula Harakas and David Adamo, visual artist Scott Lyall, sound designer Jody Elff, and lighting designer Joe Levasseur. The three performers inhabit a space of stillness where the body is viewed as sculpture, dead and alive at the same time, moving from one iconic pose to the next in an un-organic way. Images and stories spring forth from each performer that reference images drawn from pop culture, art, films, and everyday life. With GLORIA, Hassabi creates a landscape that mirrors the miscommunication and isolation of contemporary life.

Named by Time Out New York as one of “25 Ace New Yorkers to Keep an Eye On” in 2006, Maria Hassabi is an independent choreographer living and working in New York City. Her works, including three evening-length and seven short pieces, have been presented in numerous New York City dance venues and art spaces including The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop (DTW), P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place, Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, Diana Von Furstenberg Theater, DTW’s Benefit Gala at the Joyce Theater, and The Kitchen’s Benefit Performance at the Chelsea Museum. Internationally, Hassabi’s work has been presented at ImpulsTanz in Vienna, Austria; TSEH-Springdance/Dialogue in Moscow, Russia; the European Dance Festival in Limassol, Cyprus; the Fringe Tomar International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Tomar, Portugal; the Biennale of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean in Sarajevo-Herzegovina; and in Athens, Greece. In 2004, she participated in LEXDance’s Under the Radar Residency Program at Lexington Center for the Arts in Greene County, New York. Hassabi was born in Cyprus and received a BFA in 1994 from the California Institute of the Arts.

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