Dance In the Sun
1953/ 6' ,
color, sound
directed and edited by Shirley Clarke
Choreographed and performed by Daniel Nagrin
Music: Ralph Gilbert
Production: Gryphon films
Drawing from her training as a dancer, Dance In the Sun, Shirley
Clarke's first film, is perhaps closest in form to her previous medium
of expression.
It already displays themes which were to be elaborated on in her
later works, and as Clarke explained in an interview with Lauren
Rabinovitz, "All
these kind of things I discovered about the choreography of editing
and the choreography of space/time came from making that very first
film". In dance in the sun, produced with dancer/choreographer
Daniel Nagrin, Clarke cuts between scenes of the same dance, shot
in the studio and on the beach, creating a rhythmic pattern that
accelerates
at film's climax. Through Clarke's careful attention to choreographic
detail and continuity editing, the dancer Daniel Nagrin, moves between
an exterior setting, the beach, and an interior studio. The space
interchange with increasing intensity, connected by Nagrin's body
alone.
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A moment in Love
1957/ 8',
colour, sound
designed, directed and edited by Shirley Clarke
choreography: Anna Sokolow
dancers: Carmela Gutierrez, Paul Sanasardo
Music: Norman Lloyd
Production: Halcyon films
Clarke moves away from the strictly depictive perspective maintained
in Dance in The sun and towards an expressive and interpretive
use of the camera in A Moment in Love. As the dancers move, the
camera
not only follows them but exceeds and breaks their trajectories.
It manipulates their perceptible movements to such an extent that
the
dancers appear to be gliding among the clouds, suspended in endless
and even supernatural bliss. As Clarke explains: "I started
choreographing the camera as well as the dancers in the frame".
With bright, lustrous tone, Clarke goes beyond subjective camera
work to the
point that her camera becomes subject itself.
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Bridges-Go-Round
colour, 7', 1958
directed and edited by Shirley Clark e,
Electronic score by Louis and Bebe Barron
Jazz score by Teo Macero
In the late 1950s, Clarke was hired by Willard Van Dyke to produce
several "sponsored films" for the 1958 Brussels World Fair.
Bridges-Go-Round was taken from footage shot for one such film, Bruxelles
Loops (1957). The film represents a study on perpetual motion achieved
through camera panning, rhythmic editing, and flipping and layering
the same scenes shot from different points of view. A static figure
a bridge- is transformed into a somewhat abstract, active creature
by the camera and the idea of "choreography in editing" or
as Clarke once said, "you can make a dance film without dancers".
Using the magic of film to set Manhattan's bridges free from
their moorings, Clarke sends them on a dizzying carousel ride
around
the city.
By Clarke's request the film appears twice: first accompanied
by an electronic soundtrack by Louis and Bebe Barron and second
with
jazz
performed by Teo Macero and his ensemble. It is her feeling that
sound, so essential to music and movement, greatly alters the
experience of
viewing the dance. These soundtracks are often credited for altering
the viewers perception of the images.
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Skyscraper
1959/ 20' ,
Color/B/W
Shirley Clarke and Willard Van Dyke
A whimsical documentary on the construction of the Tishmann
Building at 666 Fifth Avenue, as seen from the worker's point
of view.
The dazzling images of 666 Fifth Avenue being built from the
ground
up are set to
a jazzy score of beat-style poems and songs and blended with
the voices of actors playing construction workers, in this
unique and
wonderfully
funny document. Magnificently capturing the speed and spirit
of New York City, its inhabitants and its structures, Clarke
transforms
the
meaning of industrial documentary and reveals the collaborative
process in making of Skyscraper. |
