Eileen Kramer
Kramer in 2019 at the BOLD Festival of Australian Dance
Born (1914-11-08) 8 November 1914
Mosman Bay, New South Wales, Australia
EducationSydney Conservatorium of Music
Occupations
  • Ballet dancer
  • choreographer
  • artist
  • actor
Years activec. 1943 – present
Websiteeileen-kramer.com

Eileen Kramer (born 8 November 1914) is an Australian dancer, artist, performer and choreographer. She began by studying singing and music in Sydney in the 1930s, but after attending a performance of the Bodenwieser Ballet in 1940, immediately decided on a career change to dance. After joining the troupe that had made such an impression on her, she toured around Australia and overseas for the next decade. She then lived and worked in France and the US for the next 60 years, before returning to Australia where she remains active in the arts as of June 2021.[1][2][3][4]

Early life

Eileen Kramer was born and grew up in Mosman Bay with one other sibling, a brother.[5] Her father, a car salesman, began showing signs of alcoholism when Kramer was about 10, leading to her mother leaving and secretly relocating with the children to Coogee when she was 13.[5][6] Her mother then began working as a store detective at Farmers (now owned by Myer), a department store on George Street.[5]

Bodenwieser Ballet in Centennial Park, Sydney, ca. 1939

In 1936, when her mother remarried, Kramer left home and lived in a shared cottage on Philip Street until 1940 and studied singing at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.[7] To support herself, she worked as an usherette and an artist's model, at one time posing for Norman Lindsay.[5] In 1940, her mother took her to a charity concert which included The Blue Danube, performed by Gertrud Bodenwieser's dance company.[5][8] The next day, Kramer sought out Bodenwieser, and after successfully auditioning and completing three years of training, she joined Bodenwieser’s main troupe and began her career in professional dance.[9][10]

Career

Kramer toured Australia with the Bodenwieser Ballet for the next 10 years.[5] The group also toured internationally post-war to France, New Zealand, South Africa and India. After leaving the troupe in 1953, she travelled to India, then lived and worked in Paris as an artist's model, often for Andre Lhote and his studio.[11] It was here in 1957, aged 42, that she met an Israeli-American film-maker named Baruch Shadmi.[5] The two collaborated on a mixed animated and live-action film for which she hand-made over 400 figures.[5] At a casino in Dieppe, while Shadmi played roulette, she met Louis Armstrong and he taught her to do The Twist.[5] While working on their film in the mid-1960s, Shadmi suffered a stroke, and Kramer effectively put her dance career on hold for 18 years while caring for him in New York.[1][12] He died in 1987. In 1988, Kramer resumed her career and moved to Hinton to live with an old stage friend, before moving to Lewisburg in 1992.[13] It was there she began a relationship with a “rich Southern widower“ named Bill Tuckwiller.[10][13] In 2008, she self-published her first book, Walkabout Dancer, an account of her life.[9]

In September 2013, after Tuckwiller's death, Kramer returned to Australia at the age of 99 because she missed the kookaburras[2] and the smell of gum trees.[12] In 2014, to mark turning 100, she crowdfunded, choreographed, and performed a dance piece called "The Early Ones".[11] In 2015, she was nominated as one of the 100 Women of Influence Awards by The Australian Financial Review and Westpac.[14] In 2017, she created a dance-drama A Buddha's Wife, inspired by her travels in India, part of a wider work celebrating her life, and supported by the Arts Health Institute.[2] A portrait, The inner stillness of Eileen Kramer by plastic surgeon Andrew Lloyd Greensmith, was a finalist for the Archibald Prize in 2017.[15][16] In 2017, a portrait of her by filmmaker Sue Healey was a finalist in the Digital Portrait Prize (National Portrait Gallery, Canberra) and a finalist in the Blake Prize (Casula Powerhouse, Sydney) in 2018.[17] Healey was also awarded the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film or New media.[18] Her co-written memoir, Eileen: Stories from the Phillip Street Courtyard, was published in November 2018.[19] In December 2018, she was a guest on ABC's One Plus One programme.[5] In 2019, she entered a self-portrait for the Archibald Prize, becoming the award's oldest ever contributor.[20]

In 2022, she made a video when dancing on a chair on music of David Orlowsky and David Bergmüller.[21]

Personal life

Kramer never married nor had any children. Her first relationship was with Richard Want, her psychoanalyst, in 1936.[6] She also had a romance with a French diplomat while in India.[6] Kramer later had two extended relationships while living abroad, with Baruch Shadmi (1920–1987) and William "Bill" D. Tuckwiller.[10]

Selected publications

Kramer signing a copy of Eileen: Stories from the Phillip Street Courtyard in 2019
  • 2008, Walkabout Dancer (Trafford Publishing: ISBN 978-1-4251-7359-3)[22]
  • 2018 (with Tracey Spring), Eileen: Stories from the Phillip Street Courtyard (Melbourne Books: ISBN 978-1-9255-5639-1)[23]

Filmography

  • 2017, Eileen - short film by Sue Healey[18]
  • 2020, The Witch of Kings Cros as Herself (Documentary)
  • 2020, The End as Rita (Episode: "Blood Sandwich")[5]
  • 2022, Eileen (video music) as the Dancer

References

  1. 1 2 Fuss, Eloise (1 December 2017). "Meet the 103-year-old dancer still performing, choreographing and making costumes". ABC News. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 Hardy, Karen (16 October 2017). "Eileen Kramer plans to dance on her 103rd birthday". Canberra Times. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  3. ↑ Cormack, Lucy (5 March 2015). "One hundred-year-old dancer Eileen Kramer still taking to the stage". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  4. ↑ Nunn, Gary (1 June 2021). "The dancer aged 106 who bans the word 'old'". BBC News. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 One Plus One: Eileen Kramer, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 20 December 2018, retrieved 21 June 2019
  6. 1 2 3 Souter, Fenella (2 November 2018). "Bohemian rhapsody: Why there's no stopping this 103-year-old dancer". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  7. ↑ Studio 10 (4 April 2019), 104-Year-Old Eileen Kramer Proves Age Is No Barrier To Creativity | Studio 10, retrieved 21 June 2019{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ "The extraordinary life of 104-year-old dancer Eileen Kramer | The Spectator". www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  9. 1 2 "Walkabout Dancer". Booklore. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  10. 1 2 3 "BBC Radio 4 - Seriously…, The Art of Now: Breath is Life - Eileen Kramer". BBC. 4 June 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  11. 1 2 "At 100, She Is Still Performing In Music Videos". HuffPost Canada. 19 May 2015. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  12. 1 2 "Returning: Compass". TV Tonight. 11 March 2015. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  13. 1 2 Mackenzie, Peggy (9 September 2013). "Fare thee well, Lovely Lady". Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  14. ↑ "Eileen Kramer, a woman of infuence - Dance Australia". www.danceaustralia.com.au. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
  15. ↑ "Andrew Lloyd Greensmith". Archibald Prize 2017. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 12 December 2017. Includes image of the portrait
  16. ↑ "Unlikely duo pair up for Archibald prize". ABC: Lateline. 28 July 2017. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  17. ↑ "Eileen – Digital Portraiture Award". dpa.portrait.gov.au. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  18. 1 2 "Eileen (2017). A film by Sue Healey". Michelle Potter. 18 February 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  19. ↑ "Eileen | Melbourne Books". www.melbournebooks.com.au. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  20. ↑ Chettle, Nicole (3 April 2019). "'Just do it if it makes you happy':104-year-old Archibald Prize entrant's life advice". ABC News. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
  21. ↑ "David Orlowsky & David Bergmüller – Eileen (Official Music Video) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  22. ↑ Kramer, Eileen (2008). Walkabout Dancer. Victoria, B.C. : Trafford. ISBN 9781425173593.
  23. ↑ Kramer, Eileen; Spring, Trace (2018). Eileen : stories from the Phillip Street courtyard. Melbourne, VIC : Melbourne Books. ISBN 9781925556391.
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