Tant mieux, tant mieux !

In this dance fiction Bagouet shows much of himself and questions which then animated. The personalities present extremely performers, constant references to the world of childhood and playful design of the dance.

Choreography: Dominique Bagouet

“Tant mieux, tant mieux! ” is the first film by Dominique Bagouet.

It is also the only one for which Dominique created a dance to be filmed on the occasion of the Festival Montpellier Danse, in 1983.

He was anxious for the camera to adopt an anthropometric eye, like the observer’s trying to weigh up movements with a look. This eye is completely in accordance with the story which is being told, as we are invited to get into the world of a community, almost a tribe, with strange rituals, which is none other than the imaginary mirror of his company.

With “Tant mieux, tant mieux! ” Bagouet reveals much of his personality and the questions which used to excite him at this time. We come across all that makes his dance rich and strong: his dancers’ extremely present personalities, the constant references to his childhood universe, and a playful conception of dance. We may also be struck by his characters’ extraordinary solitude driven to the hysteria of ‘insignificant gestures’ by the play of pressures exerted by the micro-society he depicts.

Sven Lava Pohlhammer’s musical arrangement wonderfully increases that dimension in the film and the terribly scathing humour with which he looks at the world’

Sources: Charles Picq – January 15th 1998

Dominique Bagouet feels so much love for movement itself that each movement, even the faintest, is brought to what James Joyce would call the ‘epiphany’ of its expression. At the beginning of the film, the dancers in a circle touch lightly their face with their fingers and carefully perform tiny, hardly perceptible, gestures. The camera insistently follows them and also plays, in an offhand manner, to make them disappear and reappear:  it lingers to observe their games, their desires and their expectations. The variety of the scenery, the actions and costumes settles in lightly touches. No insistence, no narration, nor the slightest choreographic development, but the sensuous exploration of a huge, infinite field: all is possible, Bagouet seems to say, all is left to be done. “Et c’est tant mieux!” (“And so much the better!”)

Sources: Fabienne Arvers, “catalogue du centre national du cinéma” – 2000

Credits

Conception: Dominique Bagouet and Charles Picq

Choreography: Dominique Bagouet

Duration: 49′

Direction: Dominique Bagouet and Charles Picq

Dancers: Sylvie Giron, Bernard Glandier, Nuch Grenet, Catherine Legrand, Angelin Preljocaj, Michèle Rust.

Music: Sven Lava Pohlhammer, Rino Lombardi, Gianni Nazzaro

Costumes: Maritza Gligo, Christine Le Moigne.

Production: Compagnie Bagouet-CCNMLR, Festival International Montpellier Danse, Frigo.

Fiction directed in July 1983 in Montpellier

Last update: December 2012