The question, "Why did you move to New York ?" begs itself but the answer is quite obvious. Maria Hassabi replies to it anyway: "It was the place I needed to be because I wanted to dance."

"In the beginning," the Cypriot dancer/choreographer tells Athens daily Ta Nea, "I just focused on pursuing my studies in the city. But I fell in love with New York, then jobs began to flow in and I'm still here."

Hassabi decided to head off to the US, as so many young artists do, to fulfill her dream of studying modern dance in Los Angeles. She graduated from the Californian Institute of the Arts in 1994 and then moved to New York where she undertook further training in the Alexander technique and in Pilates. She also studied under Merce Cunningham.

Soon thereafter collaborations with up-and-coming choreographers started flooding in. Actually Hassabi still dances regularly with the New York-based dance company Chamecki/Lerner so that she doesn't get to miss dancing.

From everyday movement to the catwalk
When it comes to her choreographic side, Hassabi explains that the area of her work is contemporary dance, "as translated via whatever happens in the present". Here is how the New York Times described the contemporary dance scene: "Manhattan's downtown choreographers have been using movement that is functional, conventional and pedestrian to illuminate movement that we think of as art." In this sense, Hassabis work fits in.

In one of her more recent works entitled Lights (performed in Athens earlier this year, at the Biennial of Young European Artists in Sarajevo last year as well as at the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Portugal) her dancers are lit dramatically from below and mimic a model's catwalk poses "they jut out their hips, lift a shoulder...their profiles in striking poses, all the while quite expressionless" or move over and around their light.

Hassabi explains that, each dancer controls his/her own light and as such is able to control what is shown and what is hidden from the spectator. "It is a game that begins with the light and the stories unfold by the dancers."

Goals and acceptance
After seven years as a dancer and two-and-a-half years as a choreographer, "there is a lot of stress". Still Hassabi maintains that "a city like New York can surprise you with so much culture all around - with exhibitions, music, dance, art and the endless amount of news and information".

Surprises also come in the form of positive reception of her in the press. The Village Voice , for example, called her work "breathtaking". Showbusiness Weekly, said last year, "Maria Hassabi performs a continuously moving cycle of dance that entrances the audience. She locomotes on the floor, her hips barely leaving the ground. Although the movement requires incredible strength, her style barely implies effort as she glides over her shoulder to another corner of the stage."

Her work has also shone on the catwalk and Calvin Klein's invitation to choreograph his Spring 2002 collection must have come as an added pat on the back for Hassabi, who regularly accepts work in the fashion industry, though she remains faithful to dance.

And how does a Cypriot find expression in the Babel of New York? "My work began here and so it has a New York look and attitude," she says. "In any case, in New York we are all foreigners. You just need patience to be accepted. That is all."