Maria Hassabi
STAGING

February 8, 2017–February 14, 2017
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA

Merce Cunningham: Common Time is organized by the Walker Art Center, and copresented with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) (February 11–April 30, 2017), sharing a common time across two cities. In the context of the exhibition The Walker presents new commissions from leading figures in contemporary choreography and composition, including Charles Atlas/Rashaun Mitchell/Silas Riener, Beth Gill, Maria Hassabi, and John King, among others.

[Hassabi’s work] endlessly rewards attention, creating a sort of spectacle of intimacy both generous and radical. —Artforum

Occupying a space between live performance and visual art, artist/choreographer Maria Hassabi’s work explores stillness and sustained motion. Her sculptural movement installations examine the tension between the human form and the artistic object.

These magnetic performances of looped, long-form choreography will be performed by Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, Maria Hassabi, Kennis Hawkins, Niall Jones, Mickey Mahar, Oisín Monaghan, and Nancy Stamatopoulou. Visitors encounter STAGING (2017), which runs continuously during gallery hours, in the Walker’s Cargill Lounge and Common Time exhibition galleries throughout the day.

STAGING (2017) is a co-commission of Aarhus 2017 (Denmark); documenta 14 (Kassel, Germany); Evergreen/Don River Valley Park (Toronto, Canada); the Keir Foundation, with support from Dancehouse Melbourne (Australia); and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) with support provided by the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and was developed during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York).

STAGING includes a score by Marina Rosenfeld, clothing by Victoria Bartlett, and lighting supervision and assistant design by Zack Tinkelman.

World Premiere/Walker Commission