Jeremy Nedd’s From Rock to Rock is a meditative and atmospheric piece that interrogates the theft of Black cultural expression through the story of the court case brought by rapper 2 Milly against the video game company behind Fortnite for appropriating his dance move, the Milly Rock. It serves as a poetic resistance against the commodification of Black creativity by corporate forces, which extract without offering credit, compensation, or context.
The performance opens in near silence, with five dancers—Brandy Butler, Nasheeka Nedsreal, Zen Jefferson, Jeremy Guyton, and Nedd himself—entwined to form a single solid mass, echoing a rock at the front of the stage. Their slow, careful shifting evokes the passage of geologic time: the rock erodes, splits, and reforms. These bodies become tectonic and sculptural, shaped by nature’s invisible forces. When the stone finally fractures into five distinct forms, thunderous claps snap the calm. Suddenly, the Milly Rock appears.
This move drives the structure of the show. Dancers break into duos, groups, and formations that fracture and reassemble like shifting plates. One performer glides across the stage on a hoverboard wearing an astronaut helmet, like a robotic ghost; another stomps with granite-block shoes. These surreal figures conjure a world suspended between the physical and the virtual.
In one standout moment, a joyous sequence breaks through the automation. The dancers smile as if they’re enjoying every movement, and we see humanity return to their bodies. Later, Butler’s soulful solo by the rock is a moment of musical and emotional gravity. Her voice is astonishing, rising like heat from cold stone. The finale is a poetic monologue delivered by Jefferson as Butler plays the piano, his message ringing clear: “I gotta be me, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be me for free.”
The Milly Rock is deceptively simple—arm swipes and rhythmic footwork—but danced in perfect synchrony, the performers resemble avatars, programmed to replicate identical movements on a loop. At one moment, the soundtrack cuts, and the dancers move in silence as though they were never responding to music, but instead to code. Their technical skill is undeniable, but this exactitude introduces a kind of hypnotic monotony. The work unfolds at a tectonic pace: slow and cerebral rather than action-packed or plot-driven. To fully engage, the viewer must surrender to its rhythm.
The ambience is elevated by carefully curated visual and audio elements. The set evokes an icy mountain landscape, while ethereal soundscapes mimic howling wind and crunching stone. The dancers wear soft tracksuits and move almost silently across the stage, leaping and stepping as though they are weightless, more pixel than person. The lighting—sometimes brighter-than-white, other times awash in soft yellows against a nighttime blue—echoes the contrast between nature and simulation, body and data.
From Rock to Rock is not always an easy watch, but it is a thoughtful and skilfully executed piece that invites the audience to engage mindfully with the issues it quietly meditates upon.
Choreographed by Jeremy Nedd
Published with The Reviews Hub
Rosie Wood 
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