Aussie Dancer/Choreographer was 110-Years Young
Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel
They say, “age is just a number.” For Australian dancer/choreographer Eileen Kramer (November 8, 1914 – November 15, 2024) age was just “a dance number” – a dazzling 110 years.
With the New Year upon us SurfWriter Girls Sunny and Patti would like to honor this amazing talent, who seized each new day. Providing enjoyment for others through her dance, she watched her own life evolve through each movement. “There is a continuous shifting, like a cloud that keeps changing shape. I can dance in the mirror for hours.”
Born in Mossman Bay, Australia, Kramer joined the acclaimed Bodenwieser Ballet company in 1940 and danced her way throughout Australia and around the world in an incredible 84-year career.
Touring with the ballet company – which combined classical ballet with the emerging modern dance form – until 1953, she performed in France after WWII and traveled throughout Europe, Africa, India and other locales.
Kramer later worked as an artist’s model for French cubist painter Andre Lhote and had a long-running professional and personal collaboration with filmmaker Baruch Shadmi that lasted until his death in 1987 when she resumed her dance and choreography career.
In 2008, Kramer, who was living in the United States at the time, published her autobiography, Walkabout Dancer.
Then in 2014 she returned to Australia. And to celebrate her 100th birthday, staged, choreographed and performed an original ballet, The Early Ones. She also began collaborating with award-winning dance filmmaker Sue Healey and appearing in other filmmakers’ dance films and video productions.
The winner of many awards and prizes, Kramer was featured in films and books and lauded for her contributions to dance, film and the arts. She even did a TED Talk.
A self-described “child of the bush and the harbour,” she embraced the world, meeting people from all walks of life, including jazz great Louis Armstrong, who had a few dance moves of his own – teaching Kramer the twist in the1960s.
Kramer saw over a century’s worth of history unfold and was right in the middle of it, interpreting social and world events in artistic terms and communicating through dance.
For Eileen Kramer, dancing was an extension of herself, as much a part of her daily activities as eating and breathing. The title of her recent memoir tells it all: Life Keeps Me Dancing.
And it kept her enjoying each day…and using her talents to bring enjoyment to others.
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