Sydney: 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 in which she is performing. “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 after 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.
