Ribatz, Ribatz ou le grain du temps

I am going to film an experiment that has never been tried before, the outcome of which is completely unpredictable. To rediscover, movement by movement, 25 years after its creation, a forgotten choreography of which some black and white photographs and a few musical notes are the only remaining evidence. In 1976 Ribatz, Ribatz was one of the first big success stories for Dominique Bagouet’s newly formed company. He was set to become one of the most important contemporary choreographers of his generation but died prematurely in 1992. Invited by Carnets Bagouet – the association created on the death of the choreographer for passing on and promoting his work – the former dancers of this piece will attempt as a group, over the course of several days in an enclosed space, to recall the sequences of hundreds of movements that had, over several months, inhabited their bodies. They will do this, of course through dance, since it was through dance that they created, each in his or her place, this pattern of movements, time and sound, that was never noted down and is now lost; and only through dance because their challenge is to allow a physical memory which can not be interpreted through words or image, gradually materialise, this memory whose only remaining trustees are the piece’s original dancers.
As the photographer in his dark room watches the image emerge, slowly defining itself from the bottom of the developing tank, so I would like to film, over the course of this experiment, "these men and women dancing", to ask them, also, to put their feelings and their process into words. And perhaps, in so doing, to fix onto film, the grain of passing time, of time passed.