‘Dance is an awareness of movement’ ( Philippa Cullen )

This is a fascinating yet unwieldy book. While it is relatively small, it is quite thick (over 500 pages). The amount of research that Juers has done is incredible – yet this is one of those terrific biographies that needs, but does not have, an index.

THE DANCER is divided into three parts, with a prologue and epilogue. Illustrations are scattered throughout. Notes, sources (a bibliography) and acknowledgements are at the end. Evelyn Juers , a friend of Cullen’s, develops a penetrating picture of Philippa using her personal papers and the memories of those who knew her.

Juers is a biographer, essayist and critic who has contributed to major Australian and International publications. Juers’ voice is also heard as she sometimes interrupts with anecdotes of how she met Cullen , or talked to her friends and family etc. Cullen’s distancing from her family here in Australia and the way she dealt with the actuality of living apart, the depression and culture shock of adjusting to life in other countries and the ‘ cultural cringe’ here in Australia are mentioned. While yes there were letters (lots!) sometimes there were major delays in receiving messages. Phone calls helped too , but this is before the Internet, mobile phones and Skype or Zoom.

Juers tells the life story of Philippa Ann Cullen (born Melbourne, Australia 1950; died Kodaikanal, India, 1975) who sadly died when she was only twenty five. She was a major avant-garde dancer, teacher and artist who produced an astonishingly large oeveure. Complex, provocative and perceptive, Cullen spearheaded the link between science, technology and art, especially dance, sound and music.

In the 1970s, galvanised by the idea of dancing her own music, she was at the forefront of the new electronic music movement, working internationally with artists, performers, avant-garde composers, engineers, academics and mathematicians to build and experiment with theremins and movement-sensitive floors, which she called ‘body-instruments’.

She had a unique , driven sense of purpose, was widely read, travelled to Nepal, Ghana , India , England , Germany and he Netherlands among other places, and performed and/or gave lectures at opera houses, art galleries and festivals, parks, outback towns, on streets and bridges, trains, clifftops, rooftops. Cullen was also very busy teaching dance to conventional students, both at school and university, to Long Bay prison inmates in New South Wales, at summer camps for children and psychiatric hospitals, among other places.

Juers traces the family history of both Philippa’s mother and father, which is densely written and engaging. But do we really need to go as far back as the Battle of Bosworth or the 1770’s? Or, here in Australia to the time of Governor Macquarie?

A major facet of Cullen’s creative process was the way she developed the various relationships between technology, movement and composition. Influenced by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, she researched and evolved various methods for using biosensors and computer algorithms in performance, and studied directional photo-electric cells with the idea of transforming improvised dance into sound. All this was quite radical and far reaching for the time and sometimes there were major technical problems. Also important was care and maintenance of the theremins and audio visual equipment.

Juers also delves into the tangled various writers, composers, musicians, academics and dancers that Cullen connected with. In Australia, there is her family – brother Chris, sister Fiona and the sometimes fractured relationship with them and her parents, friend Jacqui Carroll and inspirational Margaret Chapple for example as well as the Austrian dancer, teacher and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser (whose dance school Cullen attended as a child) also feature. Of great importance was her affair with the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Juers also details the life and influence of Mirra Alfassa, founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the ‘universal township’ of Auroville, which Cullen first travelled to in 1973. Much mention is also made of George Alexander and Klem Pye, two other intimate partners of Cullen. Cullen’s dreams, diaries and self analysis are also included.

Juers sets the art movements Cullen was linked to into their cultural context as well as some discussion of international politics.

This is a major attempt to re-establish Cullen’s legacy. Part 1 of the group exhibition Know My Name at the National Gallery of Australia in 2020 included her work, which now is fragile and transitory.

592 pages
Paperback with flaps, 21 x 14.8 cm
Published October 2021
ISBN 9781925818727

https://giramondopublishing.com/books/the-dancer-biography-philippa-cullen/