Australian dancer, aged 100, still hears call of the stage
Print Edition
Starring in music videos at the age of 100, Eileen Kramer is probably the oldest working dancer and choreographer in Australia, if not the world — and the centenarian revels in her age.
“I don’t mind. I’m 100!” she laughs from the Sydney rehearsal of a music video. “I’m liberated. I don’t have to be 35 all the time.”
Conversation with Kramer moves swiftly — from how she used to eavesdrop on philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in a Paris cafe, to modelling for famous artists, to Louis Armstrong teaching her to do the twist.
She puts her life’s unusual trajectory down to seeing, at the age of 24, a performance by Sydney’s Bodenwieser Ballet, run by Viennese immigrant Madame Gertrud Bodenwieser, who had fled to Australia via Colombia, escaping the Nazis.
Kramer tried out for the troupe and was accepted to classes. She recalls that after her first session she felt “free” — and within three years was a member of the company.
Although named the Bodenwieser Ballet, it is credited with being Australia’s first truly influential modern dance company, and despite her lack of classical training, Kramer found she had talent. “It wasn’t wild, untrammelled movement; there was a definite technique to do. It just suited me.”
Kramer credits the languid movements learned at Bodenwieser and her own love of expressive gestures with enabling her to continue her dancing career for so long.
Other contemporaries have suffered more physical problems. “The other members of the Bodenwieser Ballet mostly have something wrong with their bones. I haven’t got anything wrong because I didn’t do all that ... hitting the ground when you come down. So I think that’s why I haven’t got false hips or knees.”
Kramer says she still works on her ballet exercises, admittedly from the comfort of her bed most mornings.
She stays in touch with modern life using a mobile phone and has used Facebook, and asked about the secret to her longevity, she jokes: “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I don’t chase women.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
