Eileen Kramer, the trailblazing creative who was part of the company which “altered the face of modern dance” in Australia, has died at the age of 110. Her peers say her eleventh decade was the most creative of her life.
The dancer, choreographer, artist and writer died peacefully at her home in Lulworth House in Sydney at 4.45pm on Friday, exactly a week after her 110th birthday.
Kramer was born in Paddington, Sydney on the evening of 8 November 1914.
Her creative collaborator, choreographer and artist Sue Healey, said Kramer was the oldest person in New South Wales and fifth oldest in Australia when she died – “although age meant nothing to her … It was all about the spirit”.
After joining the Bodenwieser Ballet, Australia’s first modern dance company, in the 1940s and touring with them for over a decade, Kramer continued to travel, dancing in the jazz bars of Paris, painting murals in Karachi and making films in New York, and mixing with performers such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and the Marx brothers.
She returned to Australia from America at age 99 “landing with nothing,” Healey said. “She arrived back home with only a suitcase, because she had spent her life travelling the world.”
“She said that it was the sound of the kookaburras and the smell of the gum trees that she needed to come back to,” Healey said. “It was quite by chance that we found her.”
One of Healey’s friends, performing artist Shane Carroll, “just sat next to her on a bench and got talking about being a dancer”.
“And as soon as we found her, there was a group of us that have been with her every day for the last 10 years. And extraordinarily, I think these … years for her have been her most creative.”
As well as continuing to choreograph and perform new works, Healey said Kramer wrote three books, led workshops at dance festivals, appeared in films they made together, a stage show, a TV show and a music video for a rock band.
“She rewrote all the rules for centenarian behaviour, let alone being an older person,” Healey said.
“It was all about creativity for her, and that’s what kept her going.”
In a statement, Kramer’s legal enduring guardians said she was “a trailblazer, and true creative spirit” who would be “dearly missed by those who knew her and those inspired by her across the world”.
Kramer said at age 108 “above all my experiences and professions of the past century, I remain, always, a Bodenwieser dancer.”
The Bodenwieser Ballet was founded by Austrian choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser. Of Jewish descent, Bodenweiser escaped Hitler on the eve that he came to Vienna.
Her company “completely altered Australian modern dance,” Healey said.
Kramer saw the Bodenwieser Ballet perform at age 24 and “fell in love immediately and just knew she had to become a dancer,” Healey said.
“She was fairly late to dance. She was not trained at all, but she managed, after three years, to get into that company.”
Kramer will appear in a final performance as Eurydice on video in Healey’s premiere of her work Afterworld: A requiem for Eurydice at the Sydney festival.
“It’s about the transition between life and death, which Eileen talked about daily - she loved a good Greek myth and this work is a requiem for her.”
