Practitioner Study (5)

Over our choreographic process we have been reviewing Christopher Bruce's work and choreographic style. One of my favourite pieces that we have watched was 'Rooster', a piece Bruce made in 1991 and first performed in 1992 (Rambert, no date) I was drawn to this piece as Bruce incorporates modern, jazz, and classical dance and pairs it with songs by The Rolling Stones. Rooster is broken into eight sections with eight different songs. The final section named 'Sympathy For The Devil' consists of all 10 dancers spanning 7 minutes is a reprise of all preceding sections and features movement from each. 

Rooster (Bruce, 1991/1994): 2014 revival. Photo © Tristam Kenton
https://rambert.org.uk/performance-database/works/rooster/

'Rooster' depicts the relationships between men and women with Bruce using 5 men and 5 women for the piece and plenty of partner work throughout. He conveyed sexual tension prevalent while growing up in the 60's (Timbadia, S 2016) The dancers move from each other throughout the piece with lifts, gestures, and partnering. He had the dancers displaying very stereotypical gender stereotypes with their gestures such as the men fixing their ties and straightening their cuffs and the women twirling their hair. 

Bruce's choice to use music by The Rolling Stones to display the feel of the 60's infinitely helped to convey the vibe of the piece to the audience, because of the jazzy nature of the songs it gave way to sharp fast intricate movements that kept the air of the piece very 'swing' like. Courtly gestures are used throughout the piece between the men and women emulating the new era of the 60's. Each piece also tells a story with it's lyrics making it easier for the audience to spot the reoccurring messages in the final section. This inspired us while choreographing and we realised that repetition and familiarity is the key to get something across. We plan on using similar accents of our music and repeating movement that show the message of our piece so as to emphasise what we are trying to convey


Rambert (no date) Rooster by Christopher Bruce Resource Pack - Rambert dance company. Available at: https://rambert.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Rooster-Resource-Pack-1.pdf (Accessed: 04 November 2023). 


Timbadia, S. (2016) Sympathy for the devil - analysis, dance-journal-year-2. Available at: https://simrantimbadia.wixsite.com/dance-journal-year-2/single-post/2016/01/03/sympathy-for-the-devil-analysis (Accessed: 04 November 2023). 



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