A Review of SlowMeDown by Maria Hassabi

SlowMeDown was a looped cinematic dance performance presented in a dark room that only contained a large screen and large pink carpet for the audience to sit on. The darkness and the minimal number of things in the room allowed the viewers to only focus on what was on the screen without any other distractions; I felt as if I was in a movie theater. However, the large pink carpet on the ground, instead of traditional seating, initially confused me. Yet, once I began to focus on the film that was already playing in front of me, I understood that the carpet was a part of the cinematic performance piece. The pink carpet that the audience was sitting on was an extension of the pink carpet in the film. The inclusion of the carpet made the piece feel multi-dimensional because it transcended from the film’s realm into physical reality.

Once I understood the purpose of the pink carpet and finally focused on the screen, the film was at a point where it was fluctuating between a colorful image of the dancers and the pink carpet. This transition was strangely blurry and did not focus well on either image. I felt as if I forgot my glasses at home and decided to go watch a movie without them. Honestly, I was not fond of this transition as someone who has bad vision to begin with, and hates squinting to try and figure out what is in front of me.

When film had entirely focused on the dancers, I realized the title of the piece was not a joke. The dancers performed their choreography at an extremely slow pace, ranging from complete sculpture-like stillness to snail-like paced movements of individual body parts. However, I appreciated the leisureliness their movements. It allowed me to examine the dancers’ each and every movement and fully see the combination of their movements in “slow motion”. Later in the film, some of the performers’ movements were edited to be repeated multiple times in a row, which allowed me to see something “new” in every repetition of that single motion that I had not seen the first or even second time around. I was able to thoroughly analyze that one particular motion until I was able to see all that was occurring with and around the dancer.

Later in the film, there was a point where there was no music in the film and a complete silence fell in the room. It was the kind of silence where you did not want to make a sound, or you would feel awkward. Yet, I feel the dynamic between the silence and sloth-like movements added something profound to the slowness of the performance and made me focus solely on their movements. The silence complemented the slowness of the movements. Yet, the music came back once I was fully engrossed in the choreography and the silence. However, there was no gradual reintroduction of the music, it was a repetitive cacophonous sound that scared me and those around me. I felt the reinstatement of the music was somewhat refreshing and familiar, but abrupt and juxtaposing to the previous silence.

Overall, I thought SlowMeDown by Maria Hassabi was an interesting way to present a dance performance in a film. The slowness, the stillness, the repetition, and the sound dynamics allowed the audience to appreciate the choreography in a different way than in a traditional dance performance. It allowed me to explore dance choreography more thoroughly and at a leisurely pace than any other dance performance I have ever seen.