An essay

In my essay I am going to analyse the piece “Sympathy for a devil by Christopher Bruce”.

Firstly, I would like to start from describing the main facet of the dance itself, such as: Dancers, Movement, Aural and Visual settings.

As I can see there is 10 dancers, aged about 21-35 where 5 of them are women and another 5 men. There also is one more man who starts the main piece and we could see him doing about 5 gestures when after he would not appear in the rest of choreography. The dancers themselves have different outfits, depending on gender. As I can see men have black tight trousers, black shoes, they all wearing the same model of shirt and tie but different colour and pattern that for me means they want to be attractive and skilful. It also seems that they can make their own decision in what they will wear and etc. Women have black shoes, tights, top and black knee height skirt with red inserts at the bottom what make them identical, equal and some sort of men shadows so they can’t make their own decision.

Performing area take place on stage without any colourful background, decorations, specific lighting and equipment. Stage floor and background are black therefore an audience can be focused on performers instead of being disturbed by crazy lighting or background decorations.

Choreographer uses the song “sympathy for the devil by rolling stones” as an inspiration for his choreography. The song starts with samba rhythm and holler; it continuous for about 28 seconds when after Mick Jagger begins to sing. An actual song starts with lyrics “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste”. The music doesn't speed up or slow down, it keeps an invariable groove.

The movements of the piece are specific, unusual, accurate and repetitive as the music of the choreography. The piece itself is very profound but the music, routine and performer’s expression make me take piece lightly and with a smile. The tension increases towards the end of the choreography when all dancers are on the stage and the music becomes more saturated.

Now I am going to talk about my interpretation of the piece. First of all I liked the style and techniqe of Christopher Bruce’s dance. Furthermore, motions display the subject of the piece very well and clear. So everyone can understand it easily.

In my interpretation the piece that I watched is about men’s dark side. About how they use women as an object for their satisfaction when after that, they just change them to another one and one more. In this way they do not accept them as an individual. I think that in the choreography men act and dance as an animal, as a primitive state of human and as a cock.

The fact that men wears the same outfit but different colour symbolises their personality and theirs superiority over women. This action happens nowadays where usual office men after theirs boring work in the office going to have a good time and use women as an entertainment because they think that they are accessible and worshiped.

As Mick Jagger said: “Samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it is also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive—because it is a primitive African rhythm”.