Works Available Under the Creative Commons License
50 Looks
“50 Looks” was a solo constructed from a gamut of fifty still positions. Cunningham used chance to generate a long series of ninety-one of these positions. Due to the nature of chance operations, some of the fifty looks were done multiple times, some were done only once, and a few were not done at all. Cunningham’s notes indicate that the solo was choreographed in December 1979, and was originally conceived as a video project. The earliest version of “50 Looks” is a 42-minute black-and-white video, made by Charles Atlas, of Cunningham performing the solo in silence, on the small stage at the back of his Westbeth studio. The exact date of this videotaping is unknown. In the video, Cunningham dances the complete sequence of ninety-one positions four times, decreasing the duration of the pauses between positions with each set. An abridged version of the solo, lasting three minutes, was later incorporated into the 1981 dance “Gallopade,” in a section called “50 Looks with Poses.” Cunningham also danced “50 Looks” in Events for many years, beginning at least as early as November 1981.
50 Looks is available to the public for live performance or for incorporation into new work. You can see and learn 50 Looks here. Download the live performance license for 50 Looks here.
For other uses, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org
Loops
The dance was described by Cunningham as an "Event for soloist" and was first performed in 1971. By means of signals, "the respiration and heart beats of Cunningham were heard live as part of the performance. It was performed in front of Jasper Johns' painting "Map (Based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Airocean World)." There were also slides by Charles Atlas. "Loops" was subsequently performed both as a repertory dance with "Changing Steps," and in "Events."
In 2008, Merce Cunningham released part of “Loops,” which had been the basis for a series of works by the OpenEnded Group, to the public for their use. Captured in multiple video files in 2000, this portion of Loops focuses solely on his hands. In addition, Cunningham also made a recording of him reading diary excerpts he did for the project available for public use.
Cunningham released these materials under a Creative Commons license, so that they can be used, remixed, and incorporated into the work of others in the future.
A case study of Loops and its release can be found here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Studies/Loops.
Loops is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org