Maria Hassabi
On Stage | Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris
October 22, 2025–October 24, 2025Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse
1, place du Trocadéro et du 11-Novembre, 75116 Paris
What happens when the process of an image is revealed? Artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi presents On Stage, shapeshifting quietly from pose to pose. Utilizing her signature style – defined by stillness, slowness and precision – she encourages the audience to rekindle their own references as a plethora of iconic or mundane images unfold.
Hailing from Cyprus, artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi divides her time between New York and Athens where over the last twenty years she has created singular work around images and representations in the form of videos, performance pieces, installations and dances. The latter can be tailored to galleries, art centers, public spaces or theater venues, such as the minimal and personal solo On Stage. Standing downstage, close to the audience, Maria Hassabi strikes a pose. Quietly, moving around slowly with utmost precision, she reenacts and freezes an image – evocative of an action, a character or an emotion – and moves on to the next. The movement lasts and defies the perception of the audience who gets to project their own references on this carousel of slow-motion images. The soundtrack codesigned by the choreographer and Greek composer Stavros Gasparatos evokes a familiar and hazy landscape, peppered with notes of piano, theater and daily life sounds. On Stage encapsulates 15 years of research on the representation of images through body engagement alone, using slowness and precisions as tools, in sharp contrast to an attention economy that regulates our day-to-day lives bombarded with information, signals and distractions.
Text by Vincent Théval
In the context of the Festival d’Automne.
