“What a classic is and how it performs in (our) time. Paul McCarthy, Rocky, 1976” is a long title for a short piece that wants to raise questions on how the concept of classic could be applied to a structurally ephemeral form of art such as performance. The word “classic” has several meanings, it can refer to the greek roman culture (the classics), to romantic music (classical music) or to contemporary cinema (a classic of the 90s), but it always refers to a common patrimony, a sort of public space of culture. What happens to a performance in the moment it becomes a classic? Can be performance be considered as public space of culture? How does this condition affects our relation to it?

Facing the reasons of reproducing old performances, the piece re- enacts Paul McCarthy’s video Rocky. We transcribed and translated in a new score its random movements in order to be able to re-produce them as a choreography. What a classic is and how it performs in (our) time. Paul McCarthy, Rocky, 1976 is both an academic work as well as a rough, provocative performance. On one hand, the work is a ruder, straighter, more aggressive version of the original video thanks to its “live” quality, on the other hand it will loose its original spontaneity and win a aura of classic by being a rigorous 1:1 copy and new contextualization of the original movements.