The Syrian dancer and choreographer has drawn crowds across France for her performances in public squares and parks. As she performed a series of spectacular ballet gestures before deserted grand monuments of Paris recently, there wasn’t a soul in sight -- except AFP cameraman Sameer al-Doumy who made them his canvas.
With the French capital in lockdown for nearly six weeks because of the coronavirus, the 26-year-old had some of the most visited sites in the world to herself.
Wearing a mask, she danced an arabesque in front of the Louvre museum, an “attitude derriere” on the steps of Sacre Coeur and did a “six o’clock” with one leg right up to her head by the Arc du Triomphe.
Trained in ballet and contemporary dance in Damascus, Hasbani left her civil war-torn Syria six years ago and is now a member of the Atelier of Artists in Exile in the French capital, where she’s lived since 2016.
“It is really strange to see these monuments deserted,” she said, though it was wonderful “to admire the city without noise and tourists but at the same time it was sad, as if it was abandoned.”
She has previously danced at Place de la Republique, a traditional rallying point for protests in the French capital, where she created her first piece outside Syria in memory of the hundreds of children killed in a chemical attack near Damascus in August 2015.
Among the sites she posed was Human Rights Square, at Trocadero, overlooking the Eiffel Tower -- a place dear to Hasbani’s heart.
AFP
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