Maria Hassabi presented an informal preview of her latest work this summer on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
October 4-8, $20, 8:00
Crossing the Line festival continues through November 3
212-255-5793 ext11
thekitchen.org
mariahassabi.com
This past June, Cyprus-born, New York City–based dancer and choreographer Maria Hassabi presented an informal preview on the High Line of a new work that she called Movement #2, another slow, deliberate, meditative piece that displayed the impressive strength and skill of her dancers — Simon Courchel, Molly Lieber, Hristoula Harakas, Oisín Monaghan — while furthering her ongoing investigation into the relationship between performer and audience. One at a time, the dancers inched toward a central space at the 30th St. Rail Yards section of the aboveground park, then came together in a kind of living sculpture as tourists and New Yorkers passed by, many wondering what was going on. Hassabi’s two previous works at the Kitchen, PREMIERE and SHOW, also experimented with the boundaries that generally separate dancer and viewer, a concept that was beautifully laid bare for her site-specific Plastic presentation at MoMA earlier this year. The High Line sneak peek is now making its way down to the Kitchen, expanded into STAGED, part of FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary Crossing the Line festival. Running October 4-8, the piece features Courchel, Harakas, Monaghan, and Jessie Gold, with music by Marina Rosenfeld. “With the decelerated velocity of my work, nuances that are usually dismissed become the center of the work,” Hassabi says about the piece. For more on the Crossing the Line festival, go here.