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Werken van Evelyn Juers

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Just scraping in for #AusReadingMonth at Brona’s This Reading Life, Evelyn Juers' magnificent bio of the dancer Philippa Cullen (1950–1975) is a book that will, I think, appeal to different kinds of readers. Readers who are interested in the arts, especially dance; readers who are interested in the art of biography; and readers who are interested in Australian innovation and creativity.
For me, the middle section of this biography is the most intriguing. The book begins with an explanation of Juers' personal relationship with Philippa Cullen, relevant partly because she died so tragically young at 25, and partly because it explains the biographer's approach to the task. Part One is about Cullen's family history, on both her mother's and father's side. Part Two is about her childhood in Beaumaris and Sydney and her coming of age, and I posted a Sensational Snippet from this part about Juer's inclusion of the history of the Cullen house in the bio. But it's Part Three that transfixed me...

At the risk of provoking howls of dismay, I should preface my thoughts with the truth about my lack of experience with dance as an art form. As a child I was taken to the ballet where I hated the way the beautiful music was drowned out by the thumping of the ballet-shoe blocks on the floor. (We had seats near the front.) Much later, I saw a doco about the damage done to the feet of ballerinas from dancing en pointe, and decided then and there that I would never pay to watch women ruin their feet like that. We wouldn't do it to animals, but it is done to women (but not men, of course) in the name of art. So much for ballet...

I do like the kind of dancing that Hollywood made famous in toe-tapping musicals. I could watch Fred and Ginger all day, but that kind of dancing is not popular any more. Those magnificent dancing troupes depended on dozens of underpaid young women putting in hours of practice to get the choreography perfect, and nobody is willing to pay the real cost of that kind of perfection these days. I also occasionally like watching competitive ballroom dancing with the jazzy costumes on TV, but I've never seen it live.

But modern dance — reeling and writhing or physical jerks? Call me a philistine if you like, but it doesn't interest me at all. Juers' achievement with this book is to make a bio of a dancer who I've never heard of, compulsively readable to someone like me. For anyone interested in dance, it will be unputdownable.

I was fascinated by Philippa Cullen's conception of dance... what she wanted to do was to integrate the movement of the body with the music of the theremin. Her aim is for the dancer to have precise control of volume, duration, pitch, timbre and location, and for dancers to be able to control each other's sound.

Now, if you're not familiar with the theramin, watch this video of Celia Sheen's rendition of that eerie theme for Midsomer Murders, and pay particular attention to the tiny movements of her fingers which produce variations in tone, pitch, duration and volume. What Philippa Cullen wanted to do was to achieve similar effects using the whole body. If only there were a video of one of her performances!

Notice at the end of the video too, the credit for the designer of the theremin, Tony Henk. You can't just buy a theremin and take lessons like you can with a guitar or a clarinet. It has to be built, by someone who knows what they're doing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTZK9FNgK74]
But, barely out of her teens, Philippa applies for a travel grant from the Australia Council and sets off alone for Europe where (despite not speaking German and having awkward, demoralising and sometimes disturbing relationships with some horrible men as well) she undertakes incredibly theoretical studies to achieve her ambitions.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/30/the-dancer-a-biography-for-philippa-cullen-b...
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anzlitlovers | Nov 29, 2021 |
House of Exile is a work of creative non-fiction. It is a biography of a group of European intellectuals and those close to them, and of the devastating psychological impact for them of the rise of Nazism, the outbreak of war and enforced exile. Although non fiction, it is written in the style of a novel, and Juers frequently focuses on the thoughts and feelings of her characters. It should be said she is not totally imagining these - as most of the people portrayed here were writers, there are extensive records such as diaries and letters for her to draw on.

The story centres on Heinrich Mann and his lover, later his second wife, Nelly Kroeger, and on his more famous younger brother Thomas Mann. The many other writers whose lives are discussed in the pages include Bertolt Brecht and Virginia Woolf.

For me, Nelly's story is particularly memorable, and it was clearly a central concern of the author. She was 27 years younger than her husband and had spent a lot of her life in Berlin working as a barmaid, and has gone down in history as something of a bimbo. Perhaps it is significant that this portrait of her came from the letters of her brother in law Thomas Mann, who looked down on her.

In fact, she was the daughter of a fisherman, from a much more working class background than Heinrich, and had had the basic education available to a woman of her class. I really enjoyed learning about what this bookworm of nearly 100 years ago liked to read - she had quite a few books and would read in cafes before work, jotting down notes as she read. Intriguingly, her favourite books included Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Hedda Gabler, all by men about women. Juers describes the first meeting of Heinrich Mann and his future wife - she was reading in a café. This scene and many others in the book could come from a novel, but although Juers avoids interrupting her narrative with the footnotes/endnotes of a conventional biography, most of these story scenes draw on real correspondence and diaries.

Nelly also wrote down her own life story, but unfortunately for us after he read it Heinrich destroyed it and then used a lot of her work as a basis for a novel of his own. Juers is kinder to him about this than I felt reading about it.

The quality of the writing and the stories of how the subjects grew up and of the events in their lives make it all the sadder that most of them never really adjusted to new lives in exile, and many committed suicide in the 1930s and during the war.

This volume lacks some of the features that many biographies now come with. There are no photographs or pictures (most biographies now have at least one section of photographic plates). The author's Note on Sources runs to 11 pages detailing books and archives consulted but the book doesn't contain footnotes/endnotes or an index.

House of Exile is a challenging but memorable read and a fascinating approach to biography, and highly recommended.
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½
 
Gemarkeerd
elkiedee | 1 andere bespreking | Aug 24, 2011 |
Thorough research, an interesting subject-matter, so why am I a bit doubtful about it? See http://tinyurl.com/ycdqgkc
 
Gemarkeerd
anzlitlovers | 1 andere bespreking | Nov 1, 2009 |

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Werken
4
Leden
74
Populariteit
#238,154
Waardering
½ 3.5
Besprekingen
3
ISBNs
15
Talen
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