Words by Eoin Fenton.
In 2014 Brooklyn-native Terrence ‘2 Milly’ Ferguson coined a dance move that would dominate the 2010s, the Milly Rock. You may not know it by name, but the simple movement of circling and swiping an open palm while rocking the body side to side is sure to ignite Proustian memories of vine compilations, skinny jeans, and snapbacks. The Milly Rock was embraced by the likes of Lil’ Wayne, Travi$ Scott, and Playboi Carti before trickling down the internet past ironic hipsters to skinny white boys at frat parties. In late 2018, 2 Milly filed a suit against Fortnite for stealing the now ubiquitous dance. It was dropped a few months later.
All of this serves as the backdrop for the Basel-based choreographer Jeremy Nedd’s from rock to rock… aka how magnolia was taken for granite. The piece opens the Southbank Centre’s Dance Your Way Home series, inspired by author Emma Warren’s book of the same name which explores the history and power of communal dance.
The work takes place on a sterile, white stage. One backcloth has images of a snowy mountain range you might see on a postcard in a Swiss airport. The five performers, all dressed in hooded trackies, clump together into a rolling boulder, slinking downstage at a glacial pace. The dancers rise and slowly begin to rock. They take their time, grouping and regrouping into new formations, finding the groove in the isolated beats. Minutes pass while the cast find their feet in the rock, unemotional and resolute in their examination. It’s a frosty opening.
from rock to rock, with all its detachment, induced its fair share of puzzlement amongst the crowd. People give confused glances to their neighbours, shaking their heads as they scoff bemusedly. One woman simply ignored the action on stage, googled the nearest restaurant, and left with her husband in tow — there were a few walk outs. Those that engaged however, became increasingly rapt by Nedd’s alpine cool. Dancers skim the floor like Olympic skaters, swirling their arms as if to catch the flurries of snow around them. The hooded figures whip their hands at a frantic pace like space-age wizards at the top of a mountain while Brandy Butler sings a soulful Raag.
It’s not all mystery and mood. There’s a great deal of wonder and humour in the work. Jeremy Guyton and Nedd bring dapping to virtuosic levels as they create complex secret handshakes. One dancer stomps past in platform shoes made of stone like a hype-beast Yeti while another glides around the perimeter of the stage on a hover-board — remember those?
The context of the Milly Rock is emblematic of the tension between Black American culture and capitalism. Often we see how inside jokes on ‘Black twitter’, ballroom slang, and TikTok dances get diluted over and over again. The world of from rock to rock doesn’t directly concern itself with the question of appropriation or capitalising off culture. Rather, it treats dances like the Milly Rock, the electric slide, and the dougie with a certain anthropological veneration. This sterile, blank environment allows us to witness the artfulness of the Milly Rock, its groove and its humour.
Frequently in other productions the blend of the commercial, social, and abstract can make for an unharmonious cocktail. Nedd manages to strike the right balance here. The tone is subtle but never serious, modern but always leaving room for a human warmth. The cast begin an unfussed electric slide that builds into joyful gallops and jumps across the icy white to the soaring vocals of Deniece Williams. These vibrant oases of movement within the frozen landscape are enough to make us melt. By the end, some file out still scratching their heads, the rest of us float home, ready to fish out some skinny jeans and get to rocking.