Australia’s oldest dancer and choreographer has died ‘peacefully’ just one week after celebrating her 110th birthday.
Eileen Stellar Kramer, who was believed to be the oldest woman in New South Wales, was remembered as a ‘trailblazer’ and a national treasure after she died on Friday.
The beloved artist was born in Sydney on November 8, 1914, and dedicated much of her life to performing around Australia and the globe.
She first made her mark in ballet in Australia around the time she turned 27 and before going on to tour the globe, and live and work in Paris, London and New York, before eventually returning to Sydney at the age of 99.
True to form, Ms Kramer expressed her love of dance to the very end.
In an interview to mark her centenary celebrations 10 years ago, she said she had never shied away from her advancing years nor used them as an excuse to forgo her morning pliés.
‘I don’t mind. I’m 100!,’ she said. ‘I’m liberated. I don’t have to be 35 all the time.’
She put 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 after escaping the Nazis.
Australia’s oldest dancer and choreographer Eileen Kramer performs during a full dress rehearsal of her work The Early Ones at a theatre in north Sydney in 2015. She passed away on Friday just one week after celebrating her 110th birthday
Ms Kramer tried out for the troupe and was accepted to classes.
She recalled that after her first session she felt ‘free’ and within three years was a member of the company.
Although named the Bodenwieser Ballet, the troupe was credited with being Australia’s first truly influential modern dance company, and despite her lack of classical training, Ms Kramer found she had talent.
‘It wasn’t wild, untrammelled movement; there was a definite technique to do. It just suited me,’ she said.
As she grew into her final years, she said she still worked on her ballet exercises, though admittedly from the comfort of her bed most mornings.
‘But I do get up and do pliés and things. Some of the foot exercises in classical ballet are very, very good for strengthening your feet,’ she said in 2015.
‘And I need it now because I can only see with one eye so my balance is affected.’
Ms Kramer attends the 50th anniversary celebrations at the Sydney Opera House last year
Ms Kramer recalled touring Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India with the Bodenwieser troupe before setting up on her own company.
‘I was always interested in India and when we toured there I got a taste for India, I suppose,’ she said.
‘In Pakistan, somebody told me I could paint. Next thing I found myself in a pavilion… painting scenes of Paris. I had two assistants. So I set to work and did it.’
In Europe she earned money as an artist’s model, something she had done in Sydney for Australian painter Norman Lindsay.
The globetrotting performer has been remembered as a trailblazer and national treasure
Ms Kramer then married and moved to New York with her filmmaker husband, but gave up dancing when he had a stroke, caring for him for 18 years until his death.
Afterwards, she returned to performing, but at the age of 99, after the death of another partner, decided to come home to Australia.
‘I began to think of kookaburras. The smell of gum trees,’ she said.
‘It’s natural to come back to your own country.’
In a statement, Ms Kramer’s legal enduring guardians told the ABC on Friday that she was a ‘trailblazer’ and ‘true creative spirit’ and said she died ‘peacefully’.
‘She is the last dancer of the Bodenwieser era, she was the longest living woman in NSW and most likely the longest living dancer internationally.’
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