Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement
By Karen Pearlman
Edinburgh University Press
May 2025, 199 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1399501439
It’s obvious from the extent of Shirley Clarke’s influence in the world of dance and film that her work is highly lauded, but she never became the kind of household name of American contemporary filmmakers like Kubrick, Lynch, or Scorsese. This isn’t just because Clarke is female, though even now women remain grossly underrepresented as directors. As Karen Pearlman’s book Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement makes clear, Clarke resisted the concept of the auteur with its easily marketed ‘genius’ branding. Pearlman explores the ways in which Clarke created her films, utilising extensive research combined with dance and film theory to create a book that is both academically important but also readable and engaging even for someone discovering the work of Clarke for the first time. Pearlman’s deep understanding of the work of Clarke is obvious, partly because they work in the same way, collaboratively and embodied, thinking “through” writing, editing and directing as a form of choreography inspired by improvisation, context and participation:
This understanding of an individual as ‘distributed’ can, I propose, allow us to see the body of work Clarke directed and edited as having a unique signature, but also account for the multiple creative inputs into that signature that extend beyond her particular skull and skin (52)
Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement explores many of Clarke’s films in depth, showing the ways in which she uses situation, context, space, time, real vs scripted life, and a networked and collaborative approach to working that focuses on the filming process itself as the main point of creativity rather than a pre-conceived plan. The result is a powerful way of looking at dance and filmmaking that can be applied to any kind of artistic endeavour. There is a clear progression in Clarke’s style from her first dancefilm, Dance in the Sun (1953) which introduces Clarke’s innovative techniques for illuminating feeling states and combining dance with characterisation: “she puts the dancer’s inside on the outside. She situates the feeling that motivates the dancing into a causal narrative about imagining freedom and sunlight” (82) through to her final film Ornette: Made in America (1984). Pearlman makes the case that Ornette integrates her growing skills and diverse background, featuring a unique editing style that mirrors the rhythms of free jazz, challenging traditional narrative forms and synthesising all of her skills:
the enactive directing methods of planning, improvising, finding a way and responding; the embedded editing thinking with the material, the context and the characters; and the embodied rhythms and collaborations where a dancer’s physical and cultural training meets free jazz. Ornette: Made in America also synthesises all of the media in which Clarke had worked – dance, theatre, drama, documentary, video – and, of course, it continues her lifelong work through and with jazz music and musicians.
It’s impossible to read Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement without wanting to watch the films themselves. The book celebrates Clarke’s work, enticingly taking the reader through the frames, transitions, characters, and key themes, but they can be hard to access if you’re not in the US. I managed to find a scratchy version of Dance in the Sun on YouTube and Ornette: Made in America on SBS, both well worth watching, especially the latter, with its exceptional music. If you’re in the US, you can find everything on The Criterion Channel. Even if you haven’t seen the films, Pearlman’s book is wide-ranging, developing a broad framework around creative practices, different types of cognitions and the ways in which these are shaped by creative perspectives, allyship, activism, narrative-flow, and the distributed creativity of all people involved in a project including technologists. The book is enlivened by photos of Clarke at work, artefacts like letters, directions and notes, and the many references and notes that end each chapter.
Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement is a fascinating book that will stimulate anyone already familiar with Clarke’s work to revisit it, and for those not familiar to look it up. That may be incentive enough, but the book will also appeal more broadly to anyone who works in a creative capacity. The book presents a valuable framework for ‘thinking through’ notions of embodied knowledge, creative leadership and the ways in which a creative output can be explored through a holistic lens that encompasses relationships, patterns and interdependencies rather than merely an isolated and inaccessible genius. It’s a powerful and important lens.