Loops is an amazing new project, created collaboratively between the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and The OpenEnded Group, to release Merce Cunningham’s choreography for his solo dance Loops under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

By releasing Loops under a CC-license, anyone is able to perform, reproduce, and adapt it for non-commercial purposes. Simultaneously, the digital artists of The OpenEnded Group (Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, and Paul Kaiser) will release a digital portrait of Cunningham, also entitled Loops, as open source software. This artwork derives from a high-resolution 3D recording of Cunningham performing the solo with his hands and promises to provide ample substance for derivative works.

The public release of the Loops project will take place this Tuesday, February 26 at 6:30 PM in the Merce Cunningham Studio. The event is co-hosted by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and will include a presentation of the choreography and digital artwork, remarks from Merce Cunningham as well as Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie of The OpenEnded Group, and a reception. The choreography and code will be released simultaneously online the same day.