The Dancer tells the story of a young woman who comes of age in the 1970s, her origins and influences and adventures, and the tragic circumstances of her early death in a remote hilltown in southern India. It is a literary biography of the experimental dance artist and choreographer
Philippa Cullen, who was born 24 March 1950 in Melbourne, Australia, and died 3 July 1975 in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India. She studied all forms of dance and dance-ideas. To create her own soundscapes, she developed theremins and movement-sensitive floors, which she called body-instruments. She believed that dance is an outer manifestation of inner energy and that it articulates more clearly than language. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, she worked with other dancers and performers, musicians, engineers and visual artists, including electronic-music composer Greg Schiemer in Australia, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany, and academics at the Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands. With the writer George Alexander she created her sound-ballet Utter. With Stockhausen she collaborated on the meditative work Inori. The curator
Kiffy Rubbo wrote: “It is almost impossible to describe the special quality of Philippa’s dance – her ability to communicate and to liberate the energy and beauty of the body...her stillness and energy...her singular spirit”. ==Bibliography==