Maria Donata D’Urso’s “Strata.2” is an installation-performance designed around an elastic, deformable structure. Two solos for the same piece, one functioning as the negative of the other. 

“Strata.2 is a dialogue, a game, a dance... A tableau, a diptych. It’s not a show, it’s an architecture, a sculpture; a pas de deux between the light of Wolf Ka and the body of Maria Donata d’Urso. A question of gravity, a moment suspended in time, where the dancer dances for her life... A gateway between “ADN” and “Cosmos”, an ode to tensegrity. 

The term “tensegrity” was invented by the visionary American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, driven at the start of the 20th century by the systemic vision of a better and sustainable world in which everything is contained, in the same way as in his avant-garde geodes, whose structural integrity is guaranteed by reversible tension and compression relationships. 

However, Maria Donata D’Urso prefers to use the term employed by Kenneth Snelson, an artist of the Black Mountain School and a close friend of “Bucky”, describing his monumental pieces as “islets of compression in an ocean of tension”. “Véronique Godé 

Remark by Arnold Pasquier: "I met Maria Donata d’Urso while I was dancing for Gérard Gourdot in the early 90s.  Our friendship led us to work together regularly on each other’s projects. She asked me to make this recording of her solo, reduced for film purposes." 

Born in Catania, Maria Donata D'Urso studied architecture and contemporary dance in Rome. She studied at Merce Cunningham Studio and the Nikolais-Murray Louis Dance Company.

Since 1988 she lives in Paris where she follows a training in Chinese energy and works among others with Marco Berrettini, Christian Rizzo, Hubert Colas, Paco Decina, Jean Gaudin, Francesca Lattuada, Arnold Pasquier, Wolf Ka. In 1999, she created Pezzo 0, outdoor installation, inspired by the meeting with Laurent Goldring.

In 2004, she formed the structure, DisOrienta, to develop her personal projects: minimalist solos, where the usual spatial components are interrogated and reinvented. His attention is focused on the limit places, absence / presence, inside / outside and the ambiguous surfaces, those of the skin, those  touched by the look.

She then begins a poetic and composite project, which she calls the Triptych of the skin. After Pezzo 0 (due) will follow Private Collection and its translucent table, Lapsus is its circular scenography. His latest creation Strata.2 extends this enigmatic journey into the world of bodies.

Maria Donata D'Urso is a laureate at Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto, Japan in 2012.

Source : Disorienta's website

More information : disorienta.org

Arnold Pasquier was born in Paris in 1968. After studying visual arts and cinema, he made tests in Super 8 and video, in which he developed a world of filmed newspapers and fictions. At the age of twenty, he approaches contemporary dance and collaborates with choreographers as documentarist and dancer. This experience marks the realization of a work where dance holds an important place.
From 1997 to 1999, he was received as a resident artist at the Fresnoy (Tourcoing, France) where he designed the installation "C'est ici que j'avais des baisers" (1997-1999) and produced about twenty short films, four radio design workshops For France Culture and dance performances capturing. In 1999, he presented the show "C'est merveilleux" in the Grande Nef du Fresnoy. He is the author of numerous films (fiction, documentary, video art), staged shows, scenographies, radio broadcasts. His work is articulated at the crossroads of these different disciplines. Winner of a residence Villa Médicis Hors les Murs (outside the wall) in Sao Paulo in 2004, he dances for Julie Desprairies in "La danse en accès accès", "Vue sur la mer" and "Là commence le ciel". He co-signs with her the video-dance installation "Les 3 contents", the result of the residence of the choreographer at the Manufacture de Sèvres (France). 

Source: Website of the Compagnie des prairies  
More information https://arnoldpasquier.com