Shirley Clark’s Moment in Love

Shirley Clark and Anna Sokolow Moment in Love

1957/8, color, sound,design, directed and edited by Shirley Clarke, choreographer: Anna Sokolow, dancers: Carmela Gutierrez, Paul Sanasardo. Music: Norman Lloyd, Production: Halcyon films

In this post I look at the art of dance and film, Shirley Clark and Anna Sokolow’s Moment in Love from Shirley Clark’s Dances for the Camera. I offer that Moment in Love is about the dialectic of the struggle between the male and female, and their classes, which fuels the most interesting aspect of the film, the “dance” between these two opposing forces.

I think it is important to discuss what first struck me about this piece, how I reacted to the superficial structure of the piece. What initially struck me as interesting in the Sokolow and Clark piece was the indefinably of the subject matter. At first, I really had the feeling that the two artists were touching on and commenting on an archetypal idea, the idea of love and it’s qualities, but after several views, other feelings arose. For example, the use of color, layering, and solarization brought up ideas of death and blood, as well as futility and fleetingness, all of which seemed to complicate my first impression.

Before moving forward I must relay that the dance for camera piece Moment in Love was thoughtfully choreographed and filmed. No words needed to be said that were not already better said through the dance. The interaction between the two dancers/characters seemed natural and unaffected, as was the movement. There was not an overwhelming sense of political or social commentary in the piece, allowing it to transcend its historical nature and to be valid fifty years after its creation.

The free quality of the movement made the lovers seem totally available to the discovery of their feelings for each other. The timelessness in the piece suggests freedom; freedom from the worries of the day-to-day minutia. The film begins with two lovers cavorting on green pastures and on top of the world – literally dancing in the clouds. The movement is grounded in modern dance with a very ballet feel, though more loosely executed. They linger and love, dance and woo. One truly gets the feeling that real life does not exist and the day-to-day is this joyous play.

Then the young man appears in the rubble of a dilapidated city. The woman he loves is in the window of a building high above the young man, brushing her hair in a lovely shift. There is a distinct feeling of class separation, the man is standing in the rubble gazing up towards the woman existing above him. He begins to look abject and wanders by himself for a time, an apparition of the woman appears before him in the rubble, then disappears as if she were a fantasy, a faraway untouchable dream.

The young woman then appears in the flesh and they run off together, the coloring of the film then changes to a deep passionate red. They dance as if they are seducing the other and something akin to an explicit love scene takes place. Shirley Clark uses filmic editing to make it appear as if the two dancers were actually merging with each other and the red atmospheric glow that surrounds them. The next scene shows them having to part and one never knows whether their love affair lives on or if it is truly just a moment in love as the title suggests.

As the dancers were moving, 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 herself 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.

Dance for the Camera or Cine Dance

In this post I will be talking about the diverse genre of dance for the camera also called cine dance, video dance and screen dance, as well as covering some of the history of the art form. Dance for the camera is movement-based work that is conceived and choreographed for viewing that exists as a work in its own right. I am using the term dance for camera as an overarching term to describe this relatively new art form that fuses avant-garde approaches to dance making with technological innovation.

Dance for the camera can be based on already existing live dance works, but the work will often have gone through a complete re-working to create work unique to the screen, where dance and film/video are both integral to a work. This separates dance for camera from archival records of stage or site-specific dance compositions. The inclusion of the camera, the process of editing, the collaboration between the cinematographer and choreographer adds to a dance, so that it becomes work that could only be realized in this way.

Still and moving images of dance can be profound, and timeless. A dance filmmaker can incorporate the imagination of the dancer, which can restore that dimension lost in filming dance. Dance on film can expand one's understanding of dance as a metaphor. For example, instead of seeing only moving bodies, films can emphasize the dance of nature or the rhythms of emotions. Ideally the viewer is led into a world directed by poetic and abstract thinking.

Up until recently the idea of dance for the camera was not widely spread or even taught much in schools, even though dancers, choreographers and filmmakers have been filming works for well over a century. Visually, when dance was filmed, it was taken linearly and viewed and thought of as how the video and camera related to dance on the stage. However, the camera can look at movement from any point of view, through the camera eye, dance is not limited to the stage in a formal sense. The audience doesn't have to watch the work from the classic audience perspective. Instead, it can see a whole new aspect of dance, thanks to editing and splicing. For me, it's about an expression of two different ways to convey an idea and how those ways can come together. Not only do I feel dance for the camera is a study of the dancers' movements, but also a study of how the camera moves to capture the subject, to make a piece that stands on its own.