Loop Loop Dans

Permanently installed on the doorstep of Heerlen’s new city hall, Loop Loop Dans (dutch for Walk Walk Dance) invites passersby to make music to the beat of their own step, alone or with others. All it takes is just a hop, step, skip, or a roll, to play lines on the pavement like musical keys. Commissioned as part of its “City as a Playground” initiative, the artwork pays tribute to Heerlen as Europe’s emerging prominent hub for hip hop and urban dance.

Touching the lines—whether with a foot or a wheel—triggers rhythms, tones, and melodies. Keep at it long enough, or collaborate with others, and fully orchestrated snippets of song emerge, composed by the user’s movements. With all the technology (sensors, speakers) discreetly enclosed in the low-lying wall of an adjacent garden bed, Loop Loop Dans becomes a seamless part of the site’s permanent infrastructure.

Daily tous les jours consulted directly with Heerlen on its strategic “City as a Playground” initiative, helping to identify numerous areas within the city centre as sites suitable for artistic interventions that could serve not only as attractions, but as enablers of a renewed vision for Heerlen. 

One of the things that we learned from the interviews and workshops we conducted with citizens and key stakeholders, was how Heerlen’s city centre had become a place where they mainly went to shop, and less so a destination where people might want to spend time together doing things. In the end, Daily tous les jours proposed a series of interventions (Loop Loop Dans being just one) that foreground dance as a core feature of the city’s identity and to celebrate local performers—bringing dance to as wide an audience as possible, all year round.