Context

• This is the final section of the piece and acts as a reprise for the previous 7 sections.
• The dancer who plays the initial ‘Rooster’ in the opening section reprises his lead role in this section however transforming into the devil character of the song title.
• The remaining dancers use the space to travel through and past the rooster/devil repeating material from the previous sections of the dance.
• • It is entirely possible that the final section of Rooster, Sympathy for the Devil (appendix 1) may be envisaged as a summation of the whole choreography as it includes every member of the cohort and ties in movement from all of the previous sections of the choreography (Rooster 1994).  This is a characteristic typical of many of Bruce’s works such as Ghost Dances (1981) and Sgt. Early’s Dream (1984) and, again, is likely to relate to his background in classical ballet, as traditionally the whole company gather on stage at the end of the ballet to perform the finale (Bremser 2011, Grant 1982). 
• The song lyrics describe the hypocrisy of British politics in lyrics such as “Rode a tank, Held a generals rank, When the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank...  Let me please introduce myself I’m a man of wealth and taste” (Rooster 1994).  This is likely to reflect the opposition to the war in Vietnam which continued throughout the 1960’s, as many Americans and Britons believed the war to be corrupt even though politicians claimed it to be just and necessary.