Craig Phillips BAppSc (Phty) MPhysio (Sports)

Dealing with SAS troops is a long way from wearing ballet tights on stage, but it would seem Clinical Pilates has provided me with a wide and varied career; from being a dancer with the Australian Ballet to a physiotherapist. My dancing career started as a tap dancer back in Adelaide in the late 1960s, before anyone had heard of Billy Elliot. After moving with my family to Melbourne, I continued dancing during my school years and eventually secured a place at the Australian Ballet School. It was tough going from rowing and army cadets at a boys school to ballet, but the ribbing from my mates suddenly started to change when some of them realised access to young dancers was not a bad thing after all.

After three years at the Australian Ballet School, I graduated into the company and life changed dramatically. I spent eight months of the year touring around Australia and overseas, visiting and performing in some of the most memorable locations on Earth. This was tough but extremely rewarding. One of my most memorable tours was performing in China in 1980, well before Western influence had begun; walking unhindered along the Great Wall, and seeing the old Shanghai before the developers moved in.

During those 10 years with the ballet I saw many dancers injured in the line of duty, so I was keen to take on physiotherapy. I entered Lincoln Institute as a mature age student in 1983, which was helped along by the first dancer retraining grant I received from the Australia Council for the Arts. After graduating in 1987, a second special projects grant allowed me to travel to the US and study at St Francis Hospital Centre for Sports Medicine in San Francisco. Meeting Jim Garrick, a surgeon and director of the clinic, after a sports medicine conference in the mid-1980s rekindled my interest in the Pilates work that I had been doing for many years as a dancer.

My first job with Prahran Sports Medicine Centre gave me a chance to work in sports medicine. However, my links with the theatre world saw an influx of performers into sports medicine to receive the same fast approach needed. The turnaround had to be quick. Performing arts is just like sports, except you have seven performances a week.

For over 15 years, I found myself involved with virtually every major stage and touring show coming through Melbourne and Australia. The Riverdance phenomenon was just one. Late one afternoon we had a call from Dublin, “can you come on tour with us for three months, starting next week?” Unfortunately I couldnt, so the job became one of just organising physiotherapists, doctors, masseurs, and the like in every state. The shows sold out in each state, so as expected they booked more shows. This was hard on the dancers who had come from competition and small shows, as they had no preparation for the rigours of touring and doing nine shows a week. (the Guinness only helped get them so far.) The job of keeping several medical teams organised became a significant undertaking. This prompted a major meeting with the producers afterwards, as to how best to keep their most valuable asset, the performers, functioning under the load.

Over the years it has been very satisfying to see how many companies now take physiotherapists on tour to keep the show on the road – something that had never happened before. Its been a complete educational process that still continues within the performing arts; although it has improved greatly with the companies like the Australian Ballet now touring with physiotherapists. Back in my dancing days in the late 1970s, I remember ending up in the Istanbul General Hospital Casualty Ward with a dancer friend who had injured her knee, she was very sleepy for days after that injection!

Dancers, musicians, actors, and singers are all performing athletes, but unfortunately they do not get the pity that an injured footballer does as they are carried off stage in a stretcher. When we get an injury, the challenge is to discuss with the director how to change the blocking, choreography, and so on to get them back on for the next night if at all possible.

Its being able to understand how a performer functions that has helped us keep many seasons running.

I am pleased to say that over the last 14 years working with Melbourne Theatre Company, the main group I now work with, we have lost very few performances to injury. Mind you, some have been very close calls, and it is a credit to those performers. We do not carry second casts as a general rule, as the public comes to see the “names” and will ask for their money back otherwise.

I have found my job to be very challenging over the years, from being a crash test dummy for some of the stunts, tricks, and choreography that directors dream up. Being dropped through a trap door to simulate someone being blown up or testing harnesses for being flown in and out of a scene. Then there are the set designs; lovely to look at and great concepts, but the actors may not survive. One production of Great Expectations had a magnificent set, but the actual mechanics of getting a cast of some of Australias most well respected and oldest actors to function on a black, multi-level, raked set with side lighting in long Victorian costumes did see some near disasters. The wax dripping from the massive candelabras onto the set did make it more entertaining, to say the least.

Since then, I have seen the dance medicine world grow. I have been a member of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science for 13 years, and have served as a Board Member for the last seven years. Every year, the Association holds a conference with dance and performing arts medicine professionals in Europe or the US – the aim being to keep the organisation global. The passion of the physiotherapists, doctors, educators, and surgeons has always be inspiring, keeping me close to the stage and watching the mechanisms that keep Broadway and the West End performers functioning.

In October 2007 the conference was held in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, and was co-hosted by Ausdance, the Australian Ballet School, and the Australian Sports Commission at the Australian Institute of Sports in Canberra.

These days my time is split in numerous directions. While I still enjoy the challenge of working with dance students and performers, particularly at the Melbourne Theatre Company, there is a lot of work to be done. Two years into my Clinical Doctorate at The University of Melbourne has seen me working to fine tune and develop research proposals for the Clinical Pilates program, which has continued to grow both in Australia and oversees. Australian Football League clubs, the English Premier League, the Australian Defence Forces, and the British Ministry of Defence are just some of the groups I am finding myself working with. From being asked to speak at the British Ministry of Defence annual Defence Medical Rehabilitation Conference at Headley Court last year, to the ongoing pilot studies with Liverpool Football Club sees the scene ever-changing.