A dancer, named Sally McCloskey, was photographed at Angel Peak (about 30 miles outside Las Vegas, Nevada) in 1953. She did an interpretive dance for the photographer while, in the background, the Operation Upshot-Knothole atomic bomb test created the familiar mushroom cloud in the sky.

Apparently it was not unusual to see those early above-ground atomic tests from Las Vegas.

“I’’d have one girl, Sally McCloskey, we did a little series that was called Angel’’s Dance. And she was a ballet dancer, not a showgirl, and she did an interpretive dance to the mushroom cloud as it came up and we shot a series of pictures and sent it out on the wire and they called it Angel’’s Dance. We just did anything we could to make the picture a little bit different because the newspapers would run the mushroom cloud pictures, but they were always hungry for anything that had any kind of a different approach.”

Donald English, Photographer.

Here is a video of the atomic test that Sally McCloskey danced in front of.

Also the atomic cloud here.