Meet 106-year-old Australian dancer Eileen Kramer who still seems to be more productive than ever . After living abroad for decades, Kramer returned to her home city of Sydney aged 99. Since then, she is collaborated with artists to create several videos that showcase her primary talent and lifelong passion that is “Dancing”.
She not only writes a story a day from her Sydney aged-care facility but also publishes books and has entered Australia’s most prestigious painting competition. Kramer still dances gracefully, dramatic movements mostly using the top half of her body. In more recent years, she has also choreographed.
She has performed in three big dance pieces at NIDA [the National Institute for Dramatic Art] and independent theatres and participated in two big dance festivals in Adelaide and Brisbane. On asking from where she gets all this energy from only one answer that “she Banishes the word “old”.
Meanwhile, as the head of her own publishing house, Basic Shapes, she’ll release her book about the project later this year. Since entering her centenarian years, she has also published a short story collection: Elephants and Other Stories.
From posing as a nude model to becoming the oldest ever entrant aged 104 in Australia’s most prestigious portrait art prize. Archibald Prize,Creative flair and defiance of conformity have defined Eileen Kramer’s life.
Born in Sydney’s Mosman Bay, Kramer trained as a dancer then toured Australia with the Bodenwieser Ballet for a decade. She traveled to India, and later settled in Paris and then New York where she lived until she was 99.
Her dance career spans four continents and one century, and it has always been her first love.
She was halfway through creating a new dance video when a lockdown in Sydney temporarily frustrated her plans. But not for long. Smell of gum trees, the sight of the huge Moreton Bay figs and sound of laughing kookaburras perched on them are the things that enticed Eileen Kramer back to Sydney.
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