NSW’s oldest woman, Australian dancer Eileen Kramer, dies at 110

The oldest woman in NSW has died at the age of 110.

Eileen Kramer passed away peacefully on Friday, just days after her 110th birthday.

The Australian dancer, writer, performer and choreographer* used her creative spirit to travel most of the world, however her life began in the Sydney suburbs of Mosman and Coogee.

“My mother took me to this terrible dance class in Cremorne but I had inflated* ideas of private classes and wouldn’t go,” Ms Kramer told the The Mosman Daily in 2015.

Eileen lived a free and artistic lifestyle as a young Sydneysider, before touring as an original member of the Bodenwieser Ballet Company, in an iconic Viennese production by company founder, Vienna-born Getrud Bodenwieser*. Bodenwieser had fled Austria when the Nazis invaded in 1938 and arrived in Sydney in 1939.

“I studied dance and joined the Bodenwieser Ballet Company and have been dancing ever since,” she said in an interview with The Telegraph in 2017.

“I have always said I’m not much good at anything else.”

After a decade with Bodenwieser’s dance company, Ms Kramer moved overseas, where she remained for 60 years. While overseas, she met some of the greats of her era – including famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong and iconic singer Ella Fitzgerald.

She worked as a model in France for artists like French cubist* painter André Lhote, before moving to New York and meeting her partner Baruch Shadmi in 1957.

The pair lived together in New York for over two decades, making a full-length stop-motion film* together before Shadmi died in 1987.

Eileen Kramer returned to Australia in 2013 at the age of 99 because she “missed the kookaburras and the smell of gum trees,” but even then her love of the arts never faltered.

“Dance, like art, makes order of life,” she said in 2015.

She continued to pursue her passion. In 2015 Ms Kramer had a role in the Belvoir St stage production of The Wizard of Oz, and she also choreographed her own productions in 2015 and 2017.

She also published two memoirs*, Walkabout Dancer (2008) and Life Keeps me Dancing (2023).

In a statement on Friday, her team said “Eileen was a trailblazer, and a true creative spirit.”

“She will be dearly missed by those who knew her and those inspired by her across the world.”

The oldest person in Australia is currently Ken Weeks from Grafton in NSW, who celebrated his 111th birthday on October 5.

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GLOSSARY

• choreographer: a person who comes up with dance moves
• inflated: self-important
• Getrud Bodenweiser: a dancer, choreographer and pioneer of expressive dance from Vienna in Austria who developed her own style of expressionist dance
• cubist: or cubism, an early-20th Century art movement beginning in Paris that revolutionised visual arts, where the subject is broken up and reassembled in abstract form
• stop-motion film: a filming technique where the camera is stopped and started over and over again to make it look like animated characters are moving
• memoirs: a story that someone writes about themselves and their lives

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QUICK QUIZ
1. How did Eileen start her career as a ballet dancer?
2. What did she do while living in France?
3. What are the names of the two famous musicians she met while living overseas?
4. How old was she when she moved back to Australia?
5. What year did she perform in the stage production of The Wizard of Oz?

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Write your own eulogy
Eileen Kramer sounds like she lived a wonderfully full life for all of her 110 years.

If you are lucky enough to live until that ripe old age, write your life story, called a eulogy, of what you hope you accomplish over your lifetime.

Begin at the start at the year of your birth and your story until now. Then continue the story the way you’d like it to be for the next 100 or so years.

Include fake or fictional names on who you might do life with, what possible family you may have, your career path and where and how you lived your life.

Write it as though you have passed and it would be read to family and friends at your funeral.

If this is too personal, perhaps you could write it about a fictional friend or character, not your own life.

Time: allow 30 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
Ken Weeks is the oldest living person in Australia at 111. If you live to be 111, what year will it be?

What do you hope to accomplish in life after living for 111 years?

What would be your life motto?

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
To sum it up
After reading the article, use your comprehension skills to summarise in a maximum of three sentences what the article is about.

Think about:

• What is the main topic or idea?
• What is an important or interesting fact?
• Who was involved (people or places)?

Use your VCOP skills to re-read your summary to make sure it is clear, specific and well punctuated.