Dancer, choreographer, writer, painter and for many years a contributor to The Weekly, the remarkable Eileen Kramer has died peacefully in Sydney at 110. She was thought to be the oldest woman in New South Wales.
Eileen was born in 1914 in the leafy streets above Sydney’s Mosman Bay. Her mother encouraged her creativity. She studied singing at the Conservatorium of Music but, after seeing a concert by Gertrud Bodenwieser’s revolutionary contemporary dance company, she switched her allegiance to dance.
“I saw these beautiful girls dancing to [Johann Strauss’] Blue Danube Waltz. That was it for me. Everything else was over. I went straight into their class and in three years, I was a member of their company,” Eileen told The Weekly when we celebrated her 104th birthday.
“When I first began dancing,” she said, still with the impish twinkle in her eyes that would never leave her, “I would finish the class, wouldn’t talk to anyone, would get dressed quickly and float down King Street in an ecstasy of dance. I’d just parted with my first boyfriend but I had no pain because I’d gone straight into dance.”
Eileen Kramer’s love affair with dance
There were other boyfriends, even husbands, but none lasted as long as her love affair with dance.
With the Bodenweiser Ballet, Eileen toured first Australia, then New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia and India. She remained with the company for ten years.
Then, in 1953, she set out alone to travel the world. She danced her way through India, and Pakistan, where she performed in films, then on to London and finally Paris, where she worked as an artists’ model and met her husband, a filmmaker named Barouk Shadmi, with whom she moved to New York.
Life in bohemian New York
There they collaborated on creative ventures, she was taught to Twist by Louis Armstrong and met Ella Fitzgerald.
When Barouk suffered a stroke, she gave up dancing and nursed him for 20 years.
Eileen returned to dance and choreography in her seventies. At 99, she flew home to Sydney, because she longed to hear the laughter of a kookaburra. She was embraced by the local dance community and by local filmmakers. She continued to choreograph and dance in new work, and she published her memoir in 2018.
Never too old to dance
The Weekly caught up with Eileen again in 2022, when she celebrated her 108th birthday at the Bangarra Dance Theatre beside Sydney Harbour.
Her dear friend, the actor, singer and cabaret artist, Paul Capsis, serenaded her with songs from the 1930s. They had met while performing in The Wizard of Oz at Belvoir Street Theatre in 2015. Paul had played the Lion. Eileen, then just 100, played Dorothy.
Eileen, always gracious and graceful, continued to share her knowledge and creativity with dancers young and old until the very end of her life.
“People ask me, what is my secret? I tell them not to lose that connection with their childhood,” she told The Weekly. “That’s when you’re creative. Some people drop that and do something else but I’ve stayed with creativity all my life.”
