Dance in the Sun (1953)

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.