The body has its memories. Those memories hold strong, even when the body changes.
I have a lovely mirror, now; I often sit before it and dance as I sift through the memories this body carries. Mirrors have always been important to me. As a little girl I would stand in front of them for hours, changing my shape, holding poses, taking up space. I see that little girl in my reflection now. Then I see myself as a young woman.
I flow from one position to another. Left-hand, right-hand, following the movement of my arm, shoulder, breath. Reaching out. Feeling the resistance of the air. Then back again. There are no firm positions here, but as in life there is a continuous shifting, like a cloud that keeps changing shape. I can dance in the mirror for hours. Not out of vanity but out of love.
Until recently, I’ve always felt that everyone was older than me. That everyone around me was an adult, and I was still on my way. These days, when I look into my lovely mirror, I suppose I am finally all grown up.
My name is Eileen Kramer. I am a dancer. I’ve been dancing for more than 100 years, and I like to think I’m getting the hang of it. I am not old. I’ve just been here a long time. I was born at home in Paddington, Sydney, in the evening of 8 November 1914, and that’s all I ever like to say about my age. My first memories are of Mosman, on the northern shore of the harbour, where I grew up.
Sydney was a very different place, with all the excitement and joy and foolishness of youth. Although the people of the First Nations had lived, danced and sung on this land for thousands and thousands of years, Sydney itself was just over 120-years-old.
My mother was Hilda Henrietta. Her family came to Australia from England. My father, Julius Kramer, was born in South Africa but his family had come from Germany. I was a little girl in Sydney, a city that was in many ways a child as well – for a while, we grew up together, gazing out over the ocean.
A love of learning has always been part of my nature. My mother encouraged me and told my father that I was a thoughtful child who might one day become a scientist. That was not to be. Apparently, I had a destiny waiting. A fortune-teller at a friend’s birthday party told me that I was destined to become a singer. In retrospect, I can’t vouch for the provenance of the fortune-teller or think of a reason for a genuine mystic to be at a child’s birthday party in Sydney, but one takes their cues where one finds them, so I set my sights on the stage.
In 1933, at the age of 19, I took singing and piano lessons from a local teacher. I could sing quite well but to do so in public made me nervous. Nonetheless, I decided I would like to study seriously at the Conservatorium of Music on Macquarie Street in Sydney. My mother happily agreed, and in the spring of 1935, I became a voice student in classical music at the Conservatorium.
Sydney in the 1930s was the backdrop to many life-changing firsts for me: my first experience living away from home, my first job as an artist’s model, my first romantic relationship, and my first encounter with Madame Gertrud Bodenwieser and her Bodenwieser dancers. It was love at first sight. With great persistence and passion, I progressed from student to dancer and was soon globetrotting across the world with my newfound family, the Bodenwieser Ballet – dancing from Tumbulgum in New South Wales, to New Zealand, Cape Town and Mumbai.
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Since then, I have been a dancer, painter, model, costume designer, choreographer, film-maker and writer; I’ve travelled and worked in Karachi, Paris, London, New York and West Virginia, and met some truly wonderful people along the way. I have loved, lost and lived a life of authenticity and creativity. Since coming back to Sydney, ten years ago, I’ve created two live dance dramas and three dance films, led two workshops at dance festivals, been in a TV series, a stage show and three music videos, and published two books. But above all my experiences and professions of the past century, I remain, always, a Bodenwieser dancer.
In recent years, people seem to have fallen into the habit of asking me where creativity comes from. I wish they wouldn’t. To be quite honest, I don’t have the answer for them. All I can say is that the more attention you pay to life, the more interesting it becomes.
The Covid pandemic changed the way I worked with other people. My trusty phone became even more important than usual – and I discovered the lovely Siri. But in the scheme of things, I didn’t mind the isolation one bit. I never felt lonely or confined. I had my ideas, my writing and my drawing to keep me company. As long as you have a pen in your hand, you are never lonely.
I’ve always liked to draw. When you draw, something is guiding the movement you make with your hand. It’s you, of course, but maybe more than you as well. To make big sweeps, bold moves – and also small, subtle, intricate ones – with a pen or a pencil requires the same commitment as making a dance move. A drawing is a kind of dance on paper, one that lasts forever.
In November 2020, I was still in lockdown, but my friends surprised me with a party for my 106th birthday. I was delighted – and very touched. While I couldn’t join them, the staff here where I live fixed a chair inside the bay window and gave me balloons to shake. Outside, my friends danced for me – to Louis Armstrong’s Kiss of Fire. There have been two more birthdays since then, and I have found myself treated to new Kiss of Fire choreography each time. My endlessly inventive friends.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to find like-minded people to help me to continue to bring my visions to life – on the page, through drawing, through dance. Sometimes, when it is quiet, I will think of a friend and realise that they are gone. At a certain point, if you live as long as I have, you realise that so many of the friends you have made are dead. It’s a sad thought, but I am so fortunate to find myself surrounded by new friends and artists who inspire me to keep working. Most importantly, I have been having a marvellous time.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as death – what we call death is simply our fabric taking on a new shape. You go on to a new shape, a new planet, and gradually you learn the steps and lessons of that life. And by the time you have been all the way around the universe, and lived on all the different planets, you will have taken every shape the universe has in store for you. After all that, I like to think we become a creature of pure spirit, the one we can only glimpse in ecstatic moments of this life. Because who wants to be human forever? A human is not the most remarkable shape to be compared to some of what is out there.
I’ve been here for 108 years. It may be nearly time I left, go on to the next planet, start the next journey. I don’t want to leave; I still like it here. But I’m not worried about death.
Now and again, all through my life, people have told me: “I wish I could do what you have done. I could never do that”. To which I say, “Yes, you could! What is stopping you? Your career? Your job? Do you want to be 100-years-old and look back at your life and know that you never did the crazy thing your heart told you to do?”
Life has kept me dancing, and the dance will go on. Thank you for being my partner as I have danced through my memories. I hope you will think of me next time you hear music that inspires you to move, and think of me as I am now, sitting in front of my lovely mirror, in this lovely body, asking the woman in front of me: “Shall we dance?”
Life Keeps Me Dancing by Eileen Kramer is out 1 August through Pan Macmillan
English (US)