MARIA HASSABI: STAGING (2017) - UNDRESSED

An Aarhus 2017 Commission and Part of Coast to Coast

Internationally acclaimed artist Maria Hassabi creates perfomances for theatres, exhibition spaces, and public spaces that address the separation between the spectacular and the everyday, between subject and object, between performer and audience. 

Her extended-length choreographies often require dancers to move slowly, and sustain positions, and hold poses while performing in a variety of contexts. 

This special commission for Aarhus 2017 will occupy time and space in the iconic Aarhus City Hall designed by renowned architect, Arne Jacobsen. Jacobsen’s schema of wooden architecture and marine references will be negotiated by Hassabi and her team to extend and explore her themes of slowness, stillness and sustained movement.

Dates and time:
Monday 25. September: 13.00-17.00
Tuesday 26. September: 11.00-16.00
Wednesday 27. September: 11.00 –16.00
Thursday 28. September: 11.00-16.00
Friday 29. September: 10.00-15.00
Saturday 30. September: 10.00-15.00

CREDITS 
Maria Hassabi: STAGING (2017) – undressed (Live installation)
Performers: Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, Maria Hassabi, Mickey Mahar, Paige Martin, Oisín Monaghan, Nancy Stamatopoulou.
Outfits: Victoria Bartlett
Composer: Marina Rosenfeld
Sound Design: Stavros Gasparatos
Management: Alexandra Rosenberg
Production Assistant: Kate Scherer

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, MN) with support provided by the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. STAGING was developed in part during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York, NY).

Supported by the Obel Family Foundation and 15. Juni Foundation

STAGING (2017) – undressed
STAGING (2017) is a live installation – a term Maria Hassabi has coined to describe her performative works whose duration is determined by a venue’s opening hours.

STAGING features performers moving at a measured pace wearing multi-colored, patterned outfits, executing a choreography that loops in relation to space and to itself, creating a form that is endlessly staging and re-staging itself.

In STAGING - undressed, the iteration created for Aarhus 2017, dancers are dispersed in different locations in Aarhus’ iconic City Hall, highlighting its architecture, with an ambient sound score composed by Marina Rosenfeld. The work becomes an accumulation of bodies, colors, sound, and architecture, oscillating between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image.

STAGING is the second part of a diptych, along with STAGED? (2016), a work made for theater spaces.

DATE
25th September – 30th September 

VENUE
Aarhus City Hall

AUDIENCE
Everyone