Created the 17th of september 2004

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Elvis Presley and Merce Cunningham. Two names which were never seen together on American bills and stages. And yet these two artists were in at the births of rock ‘n’ roll and contemporary dance respectively, both in the same country, the United States, and at the same time, the early nineteen fifties. In fact we can be more precise about the births of the two forms: in both cases the birth certificate reads “ 1953”; this was the year which saw both the arrival of the first rock ‘n’ roll songs, including Elvis Presley’s famous My Happiness, and the creation of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

In half a century, the paths of rock ‘n’ roll and contemporary dance have never met and they have never influenced one another. Each had its own path to follow, each had its own forms of cross-fertilisation, one in Memphis, the other in New York. Jean-Claude Gallotta, who was born around the same time, has naturally drawn inspiration from both forms. “Rock ‘n’ roll” he says, “was the soundtrack to my teenage daydreams and perhaps by helping me to meet other lost souls it helped me to find a way out of my existential crisis.” “My Rock ”, a show created for the three all-day events held to mark the opening of the MC2 in September 2004, is made up of fifteen or so short dance sequences set to songs chosen from the essential albums of rock history and interlaced with a commentary by the choreographer which puts each singer into the context of his time.

It starts with Elvis, but we also hear the Beatles, the major group of the nineteen sixties. After them rock was no longer considered to be just entertainment but culture; the Rolling Stones, passionate blues fans who introduced white western teenagers to this black American style and who are universally acknowledged to be “the greatest rock 'n' roll group in the world”. Bob Dylan, the emblematic protest singer, who drew on folk, blues, country and gospel to bring anti-establishment, violent or poetic content to rock music; The Who, a group which exploded in 1965 with “My Generation” and invented British rock in its purest form; Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, the New York group with the biggest influence on rock history from the 70s onwards; the melancholic, introspective Nick Drake who died aged 26;  Iggy Pop and The Stooges, sexually-charged, unrestrained, for whom nothing was out of bounds, pushing back all the boundaries; The Clash, with their pioneering mix of rock, reggae and funk; Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet with the deep, wounded voice; Nirvana with their legendary singer Kurt Cobain who managed to express their persistent angst so that a whole generation identified with them; Patti Smith, the New York singer who created a link between the literary folk-blues embodied by Bob Dylan in the 1960s and the burgeoning punk rock scene with its austere violence inherited from The Velvet Underground and finally Wilson Pickett, a legendary artist with his raucous voice and rasping singing style, who wrote songs such as the incredibly famous In The Midnight Hour, and who was inducted into the Rock 'n’ Roll Hall Of Fame in 1991, which is like a Who’s Who of the world’s rock music, then died in January 2006 and who will remain the undisputed master of soul music.

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