She then engaged David Smith to help her develop a system that dancers could use. She says, in a 1973 grant acquittal report:[10]

“I suggested that we find a way in which the whole body could be used to create the sound. The engineers were not at all sure that a large aerial would work or how big the range would be, but after much encouragement from me we found that a triangle of copper wire produced an electro-magnetic field that covered the whole stage. So my first major ballet, Electronic Aspects, was built around this triangle antenna with the sound merely an oscillating sine tone where each movement caused a change in the pitch.“ [11]

The ballet she made for the theremin was called Electronic Aspects. There is no known video documentation of it, however Philippa's notebook has several pages of movement guidelines for each of the dancers in the ballet. [12] Fig.2.

Fig.2: Cullen's choreographic note for Jacqui Carroll's movements in Electronic Aspects.
Note the triangular drawings indicating the placement of the theremin antennae
around which the dancers would move.

Soon after this she began working on another ballet called Utter (1971-72) and a second which became Homage to Theremin II (1972). There is video documentation of both of these.

Utter was choreographed for the 1971 Ballet Australia Choreographic Competition. Based on phonemes from the four languages that George Alexander, her partner at the time, spoke. Utter “explored the use of the voice as a sound source for dance and received a special mention in the competition [Carroll, 1975]. Cullen presented Utter again in April, 1972 for AZ Music's Sound Ventures III. As one reviewer described, the sound came directly from the four dancers who

“hissed, chanted, droned, whispered and shrieked their own stream-of-consciousness accompaniment as they pranced around in a cleared space in the centre of the auditorium. It was full of vitality, sometimes as beautiful as a temple frieze, sometimes deliberately ugly, occasionally just for fun.” [13]

Phillipa wrote, in the program notes for the AZ Music Sound Ventures series in which Utter was performed

“Cage has denied the existence of music itself, if music is considered as hearing isolated from sight, touch, smell, etc.
I deny the importance of dance itself, if dance is considered as movement isolated from voice, touch, sight.
This ballet [Utter] explores the relationship between movement and sound when both are made by the performers who are no longer merely dancers; they have to be musicians and actors as well, just like the commedia dell'arte.
Mostly they interpret instructions given by me beforehand rather than perfect certain steps.
The structure is alogical and depends upon sensory relationships between the performers and the audience.” [14]

An Akai 1/4-inch video portapak had become available and was used to record Utter and rehearsals of the later Homage to Theremin II (1972).

Figs.3 & 4: Still frames from the video of Utter

The video of Utter begins with credits for the dancers and the sound followed by descriptions of what the dance consists in. Then we open to a stage with a circle of light projected on to it as five young women dancers stream out from backstage and run (while emitting a continuous cry, said to be the word orgasm ) around the circle to assemble in its centre. They then start a series of angular gestures making various short utterances timed to each gesture. With each gesture they begin to step away from each other, as the disk of light expands. This continues for a minute or so and they end up standing at the four corners of a square with the fifth dancer at the centre. The two dancers in the back corners of the square advance forward to stand behind the two at the front who then bend forward, hands reaching the floor, as the dancer behind each of them begins a drumming action on their lower backs. The dancers, in their forward bend, then stomp away from their corner positions and meet at centre-front where they and the other dancers begin a faster rumbling of their feet on the stage.

The other dancers then begin a series of gestures in which they raise and lower their arms followed by movements raising one leg, as two dancers in the centre go through tilting and rotating motions. During the whole sequence each gesture/motion from each dancer is accompanied by a loudly voiced phoneme. The dancers work back into a cross formation with the centre dancer moving forward to stand behind the one at the front point of the cross. The lights then fade out. Clapping and foot stomping sounds are heard as the light slowly fades up revealing the dancers holding hands, pulling themselves into a circle as the sound becomes increasingly intense at which point they all fall to their knees, crawl around while making swishing sounds that become more articulated, emulating real speech. The crawling becomes more upright and they form two pairs with the stray dancer moving from pair to pair. The sound is now far more articulate though still not understandable. The two pairs and the stray become a pair and a triple and they stand in spotlit areas of the stage. They now move as though they were in a highly gestured conversation and the sound emulates the rhythm of conversation, which almost becomes understandable given the gestural accompaniment. The two groups enter something of a boxing match with gestures and stomping that might have come from the actions seen in a fight. This ends up focussing on one dancer who jumps up and breaks the group (now in pairs) which returns to the triple and pair they began as, the triple engaging in laughter and gesture while the pair engage in a tugging of hands and arms swing wildly around as they tug. Ultimately four of the dancers whirl off stage leaving a single one, arms crossed, standing at the focal point. She remains standing there as, in a chorus of voices, the other four stream back onto the stage. They all then engage in individual dance/movement/gestural play, laughing, one crawling, others tumbling as the stage lighting fades and the spotlight returns with the dancers now stalking around it, gestures becoming more tired and drooping, each dancer making popping sounds as they collapse into a pile in the spotlight, from which they rise, forming a backward turning circle and unwinding off the stage. Applause. [The dancers were Margaret Knightly, Christine Koltai, Gail Flanagan, Deirdre Evans and Delwyn Rouse.]

Fig.5: Cullen and dancers rehearsing with the theremin antennae for Homage to Theremin II.

The video of Homage to Theremin II (1972) is a rehearsal recording, it does not show the finished coherent dance performance. The four dancers, Philippa Cullen, Jacqui Carroll, Maggie Knightly and Peter Dickson with the sound engineer, Phil Connor, and composer, Greg Schiemer, are working out how to use the four theremin antennae, which were designed by the architect Manuel Noblaza. The video is as much an exploration of possible movements that could trigger the theremins although we are not at all certain where the sound is being triggered from. Two dancers stand on two disc shaped pedestals and as they move, mostly waving arms up and down, the theremin pitch changes in accordance. Jacqui steps down to the floor, walks across to the other pedestal and pulls Beth off it, replacing her. The other dancer walks over and stands under what was called the “bonnet” antenna which consists in a net of wire mesh. The theremin sound rises and lowers in pitch as she moves her hand towards and away from it. Jacqui is then seen on her knees on one of the pedestals, bending down over it and then raising herself. She stands and makes new movements some of which produce sounds... the engineer and composer are still sorting out which antenna should make what sounds. For a moment Philippa is seen laying on the floor under a long thin standing metal tube antenna. Following this Jacqui and Philippa engage in a duet, both standing on the one pedestal, arms and legs entwining each other in exquisitely disciplined movement. It is almost a slow struggle to capture the pedestal. They stop and Jacqui moves off to claim the other pedestal. Her movements then appear to reach up to pluck sounds from the air (to use a reviewer's phrase in describing the actual performance) while Philippa coaxes sounds from the long thin wire. The male dancer is then seen under the bonnet. There is also a beam pointing at a photoelectric cell. A dancer could break the beam, stopping and releasing the sound as they moved through it. Finally the dancers engage with and produce more acoustic sounds, hands clapping, a series of pops and then settle back into the work of discovering how their movements can effect the sound.

Cullen then went overseas, returning in 1974 to continue with her experiments in dance and interactive technology.

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Endnotes

1 See Stephen Jones, Synthetics: Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 1956-1975, (2011), Cambridge, Mass, USA, MIT Press.
See also the catalogue for Philippa Cuillen: an Archive, an archival exhibition curated by Stephen Jones at SNO (Sydney Non-Objective) gallery, Marrrickvile. (23 April-22 May, 2016). For a review see: Realtime : Tribute to a pioneering dance-media artist.