As I write this an Australian federal budget is shortly to be delivered, just ahead of the 2025 federal election. Leading up to these two events, the Ausdance network has been working hard to bring dance to the attention of various areas of the Australian federal government. Two documents have recently been submitted:
Ausdance Federal Budget Submission: The Ausdance network is calling on the federal government to recognise the vital role dance plays in the nation’s health, economy, and cultural identity by making meaningful investments in the 2025 federal budget.
Ausdance National Office of Child Safety Submission: The national Ausdance network has made a landmark submission for dance to the National Office for Child Safety in response to its Child Safety Annual Reporting Framework consultation paper.
It is not possible to overstate the urgency expressed by Ausdance members to comprehensively address the issue of child safety. The overwhelming response of the dance sector – following substantial consultation over more than four years – is that it should be better regulated so the safety of children in organisations is improved.
Dance is frequently marginalised, along with other areas of the arts, in government circles (with a few major exceptions and, without wishing to deny the input from others, the impact of former Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and, later, Paul Keating spring immediately to mind). So it is always a more than commendable matter when efforts are made to promote the potential impact dance can make across a variety of areas of society.
Both Ausdance submissions are in depth approaches to what dance can accomplish for a wide section of the population. My fingers are crossed for a positive approach from those to whom the submissions have been made. So many will benefit, young and old across the many areas identified in the submissions.
Ever on the move in the development of dance, Sydney Dance Company just recently announced a new initiative—a teacher training program ‘dedicated to the art and practice of dance education’. Led by Linda Gamblin, Head of Training at Sydney Dance Company, the course will begin in July 2025.
This is an exciting initiative from Sydney Dance Company. Teaching is an art in my opinion and dance teachers need specialised teacher training in addition to having danced themselves. Follow this link for a detailed look at what the course will encompass.
Miracle in the Gorbals
In February I was drawn yet again to the Lifeline Book Fair, which has now become a huge Canberra event, and which these days is held more than once a year. My most interesting purchase was a somewhat battered copy of a book by Arnold Haskell that gave a detailed analysis of Robert Helpmann’s early work Miracle in the Gorbals. I saw this work in London in 2014 when it was produced for Birmingham Royal Ballet by Gillian Lynne, who performed in the original 1944 cast as one of the inhabitants of the Gorbals. My review of the Birmingham production is at this link.
The book was published in Edinburgh in 1946, just two years after the premiere of the ballet. It was a more than interesting read, especially the section entitled ‘5. Interpretation’, which I wish I had read prior to seeing the work when I did. But it is hard to know what actually was Haskell’s opinion of the work. Haskell spoke of Helpmann as being ‘a man of the theatre’, which he believed (I think?) was the reason Miracle in the Gorbals was successful. But in ‘Epilogue: A Warning’ Haskell wrote:
Ballet must return to the way of Fokine, who rescued it from decay. His works are not merely beautiful in themselves, they are object lessons in choreography and no one so far has proved himself to have so thorough an understanding of the medium.
Ballet does not need ideas to survive, it needs beauty of line and movement. If ideas can be incorporated at no loss, then well and good. Ballet is not a treatise on current affairs. BALLET MUST APPEAL TO THE EYE. [Haskell’s capitalisation]
All in all a very interesting purchase.
Li Cunxin honoured
Former artistic director of Queensland Ballet, Li Cunxin AO, has been presented with the Prix de Lausanne 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognises his exceptional career from overcoming adversity early in life, to his rise as a celebrated dancer before leading Queensland Ballet to global success.
The Prix de Lausanne has, since 2017, presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to a dancer or choreographer who has made an outstanding contribution to the ballet world. The recent award to Li is such a well deserved recognition of his contribution to dance! Other notable recipients include Wayne McGregor and Alessandra Ferri.
Houston Ballet, directed by Stanton Welch since 2003, has recently announced its 2025-2026 season. Among the works to be presented will be a world premiere from Australian choreographer Alice Topp as part of a triple bill called An Evening with the Stars. The triple bill opens in late May 2026. Neither Topp’s work nor its accompanying music has been named as yet but Topp’s choreographic career clearly continues to grow internationally. Read more about her work and career to date at this link.
An oral history I recorded with Topp for the National Library of Australia in November 2024 is now available online at this link.
News from Mirramu Creative Arts Centre
Vivienne Rogis, co-founder with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, has recently returned to Canberra from Melbourne, to rejoin Dalman at Mirramu as assistant director. The Mirramu website records:
Viv Rogis is a pilates and movement practitioner with 30 years experience. She believes in the power of movement as medicine for the body and mind. She is interested in movement as art, as fun, as medicine, as community.
Her practice incudes performance, choreography, teaching, curating, researching, & writing about dance. Most recently she has been focused on pilates to help people reach their movement goals including pain reduction, prehab and rehab, as well as strength and capacity building for athletes and dancers.
Rogis performed in Canberra on many occasions before moving to Melbourne. Read about some of those performances at this link.
Coming up …
I am looking forward to seeing Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet as staged by Queensland Ballet, which opens towards the end of March. Watch this brief clip in which ballet master Matthew Lawrence talks about staging the production. It is especially interesting to hear him discuss making the production ‘three dimensional’.
The extraordinary Coralie Hinkley, passionately involved in so many dance-related activities, died in September 2021. An obituary is at this link. After her death her collection of papers, photographs, writings and so many other items were donated to the National Library of Australia by her daughter. The collection, Papers of Coralie Hinkley, has since been processed, and a finding aid is available for viewing online at this link.
The collection is extensive and covers Hinkley’s life and career, including her time spent abroad as well as in Australia. Given that I, in my long-past youth, was a pupil at Fort Street Girls’ High School in Sydney, I have started my investigation of the material in the collection by looking at the photos and other material relating to Hinkley’s teaching project at that school (which unfortunately did not coincide with my time there).
Hinkley began her project at Fort Street in 1963 when she was appointed to the school with the encouragement of the then Principal, Alma Hamilton. While eventually there was a performing group as part of the project, every student across the six years of the secondary school curriculum received a dance lesson every week.
Amongst the various materials relating to Fort Street are reading lists, class notes, notes on specific works being created and Hinkley’s views on the aim of dance in education. On the latter she wrote:
Dance in education should contribute to the growth of the individual and this study is based on a scientific understanding of their needs and capacities. The modern dance provides an emotional release, an increased sensibility to the environment, skill in working creatively. The vital energy for artistic creation is fostered and nurtured; the child is developed physically, mentally and spiritually and the aesthetic side of her values is encouraged to flower.
There are also numerous photographs in the Hinkley collection showing the diversity of works created on the Fort Street students. Something of a surprise are images showing dancers performing/posing next to the sails of the Sydney Opera House, as in the header image and an image below. The photos were taken in 1970 although the Opera House did not open until 1973.
There are two oral history interviews with Hinkley in the National Library, one which I recorded in 1997-1998 and which is available online at this link, and one recorded in 2013 by Alex and Annette Hood, which is available at this link.
More to come on the Hinkley collection in due course.
Queensland Ballet has announced that its new director, following the retirement of Li Cunxin and the sudden departure of Leanne Benjamin, will be Spanish-born Ivan Gil-Ortega who will take on the role in February this year. Gil-Ortega is a celebrated ballet professional with over 25 years in the field. He has held roles with companies and creatives around the world, and has worked as a principal dancer, assistant director, artistic consultant, freelance rehearsal director, stager, and coach. The media release noted Queensland Ballet’s enthusiasm for the appointment. In part the media release says:
We are thrilled to welcome Ivan to the Queensland Ballet family following a stellar career on stage, in studio and working alongside some of ballet’s leading lights. Throughout the recruitment process, Ivan articulated his vision very clearly with a particular focus on our dancers of today and our dancers of tomorrow, through the work of our Academy.
He is also brimming with ideas around nurturing home-grown talent here in Australia as well as exploring world-stage collaborations and exchanges which will see him leaning into his international peers and networks. Ivan and his family are very much looking forward to calling Queensland home and we cannot wait to see them here very soon, Brett Clark AM, Board Chair said.
Gil-Ortega has worked with Queensland Ballet previously when he assisted Derek Deane on the production of Deane’s much admired Strictly Gershwin. Follow this link to a fuller biography of Gil-Ortega provided by Queensland Ballet.
For the past several years Paul Knobloch has been the Australian Ballet’s Ballet Repetiteur. Things appear to be changing, however. A recent media release announced that in February Knobloch will be returning to Canberra, where he was born and educated and where he had his initial dance training. He will be working with Jackie Hallahan’s Dance Development Centre (DDC) on a series of events to celebrate the school’s 40th anniversary. The media release states, ‘As DDC gears up to celebrate its monumental 40th anniversary, Knobloch’s involvement promises to elevate the festivities and inspire the next generation of dancers.’
Paul Knobloch. Photographer not identified
I can’t help wondering, however, whether or not Knobloch will return to the Australian Ballet? Here is a link to the media release.
Dancing andFatboy Slim
During January I was sent a Youtube link to some dancing being performed (back in the 1990s) to Fatboy Slim’s song Praise you. I have to admit that I had never heard of Fatboy Slim—not really part of my general interests I’m afraid especially not during the 1990s when I was rather busy with various other matters (mainly watching children growing into adults, writing a PhD thesis, and working in a range of casual jobs).
Here is the footage, which I found to be an interesting variety of community dance. It reminded me a little of an unexpected performance at a wedding of one of my sons (back around the same date as the footage). Quite out of the blue (I thought anyway) the guests assembled and danced in a similar fashion. It was somewhat different from the traditional celebratory wedding waltz!
Oral histories
I had the immense pleasure in January of recording an oral history for the National Library of Australia with Megan Connelly, currently director of the Australian Ballet School. As part of the NLA’s COVID responses project, Connelly talked about managing the pandemic at the Australia Ballet and the Australian Ballet School before talking at length about her extraordinary dance career to date.
This interview was the 169th oral history I have recorded for various organisations (mostly the National Library). Here is a link to the updated list of those interviews (arranged alphabetically).
Reading in December
My December reading included Barbara Newman’s Striking a Balance. Dancers Talk about Dancing. My edition was published way back in 1992, although the talks were recorded mostly in 1979 and published in the original edition in 1982. I was especially interested in the format since over the past several decades I have recorded oral history interviews with dancers, choreographers and artistic directors. Two of Newman’s essays stood out for me—those with Moira Shearer and Bruce Marks. What made them especially interesting to me was the extensive comments they made about how they approached particular roles. Shearer spoke at length about how she perceived the character of Giselle and where she fitted into the overall storyline of Giselle. Bruce Marks spoke in a similar fashion about Siegfried in Swan Lake. Others also reminisced about particular roles they had taken on but Shearer and Marks seemed, to me at least, to be especially analytical in their thoughts.
Vale Carolyn Brown (1927 –2025)
I was deeply saddened to hear that American dancer Carolyn Brown had died in January at the age of 97. Brown had a truly remarkable career with Merce Cunningham Dance Company over many years. But I remember her in particular because she helped me with my doctoral thesis, which concerned the designs made for the Cunningham company by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns during the 1960s and 1970s. We met for the discussion in New York in a cafe close to Lincoln Center Plaza. Brown was incredibly generous and honest in her recollections of the years of Rauschenberg and Johns.
Never forgotten for many reasons. Try this link for an obituary from The New York Times.
Carolyn Brown: Born 26 September 1927; died 7 January 2025
After 35 years as editor of Dance Australia, Karen van Ulzen is moving on. She has been a strong and successful editor and her retirement is a particular loss to the dance community. In a Facebook post, Karen wrote:
Dance is my lifelong love but it is time to hang up the keyboard. I am looking forward,k to indulging my other loves: visual art (specifically painting) and writing. However, dance is still my love and I hope to continue to contribute to the artform in some other way.
Portrait of Karen van Ulzen. From Yaffa/Dance Australia online. Photographer not identified
Taking over from Karen is Olivia Weeks whose dance background includes teaching and an extensive background with the Royal Academy of Dance. Of her plans she told Dance Australia:
As Editor, I’m excited to contribute to our ever-evolving dance landscape. My goal is to continue to champion the incredible talent Australia has to offer, celebrate the stories that make our industry so unique, and ensure Dance Australia remains a vital platform for our community in 2025 and beyond.
I wish Olivia every success and give my sincere thanks to Karen for all she has achieved for dance in Australia, and for her support of my writing over many years.
More on books and reading
After the death of Eileen Kramer I thought it was time to read her autobiography, Walkabout Dancer, a copy of which she kindly gave to me but which I had never taken the time to read. It was published in 2008 in North America and I honestly can’t believe that there was a professional editor at work on the text prior to publication. The text is rife with spelling errors and inconsistencies and inaccuracies in names and places throughout. Perhaps the inaccuracies extend even to aspects of the story itself? To tell the truth, I wish I had never taken on the reading of it. It does nothing to advance the image of Eileen Kramer.
I did, however, enjoy Derek Parker’s 1988 publication, Nijinsky. God of the dance, a copy of which I found in the Harry Hartog Bookshop at the ANU. (That HH bookshop again!). Apart from the fact that it revealed some interesting personal information about ‘the God of the Dance’, it contained some photographs of Nijinsky and his colleagues that I had never seen before. It’s a shame though that some of the photographs on certain pages were positioned very close to the binding and were not always easy to see in full. Well worth a read however.
Vale Arlene Croce (1934-2024)
Renowned American dance critic, Arlene Croce, died in New York in December. She was 90 years old. I never met her, despite having spent some time in New York on various occasions over the past thirty years or so. But I had always enjoyed her writing for various outlets including The New Yorker, Ballet Review, which in fact she co-founded, and other publications. Her background knowledge was wide and very apparent in her dance writing, and I especially admired her exceptional and always appropriate use of descriptive words and her highly analytical approach to her writing.
As part of an obituary, the following words appeared in The New Yorker, issue of 19 December 2024:
Croce took dancing seriously, pulled dances apart and analyzed them rigorously, and her clarity and imagination, her stunning insights, and even her glaring flaws—all this was there on the page. This passion and discipline made her a kind of alter ego of—or perhaps a ministry to—the art. She had an unrelenting determination to say what she had seen.
It is interesting to reread what is one of her best known articles, ‘Discussing the Undiscussable’, which appears in her collection of reviews and articles, Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker. In this article she talks about her reasons for refusing to go to, let alone review, a performance of Still/Here by choreographer Bill T. Jones, a work he created involving terminally ill people who speak about the issue of dying. The article caused something of a stir when it was published in The New Yorker in 1994. It still raises many issues about dance and how it is, or has been, perceived.
The original article appears to be available online without a New Yorker subscription. Try this link
Some statistics for 2024
Over the course of 2024 this website received slightly more than 75,000 views. The top five countries making use of the website were (in order) Australia, United States of America, New Zealand, Canada and United Kingdom. Top five cities from which people logged in were Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Brisbane and New York. During 2024, the top post on a northern hemisphere production was Joy Womack: The White Swan; the top Australian-related post was Etudes/Circle Electric. The Australian Ballet; and the top New Zealand post was Swan Lake. Royal New Zealand Ballet.
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A very happy 2025 to all. May the year be filled with dancing.
Michelle Potter, 31 December 2024
Featured image: A young Canberra dance student performing as Triton in a ballet school production of The Little Mermaid, 2023. Photographer not identified
It’s always a pleasure to mark the end of the year with a rear vision reminder of the dance highlights we saw. 2024 had the best of the old and the new, with RNZB delivering a triumphant trio of seasons. After some important readjustments into new directions in management, the Company’s year opened with Tutus on Tour’s national itinerary of small venues that Poul Gnatt established back in 1950s. In May, Russell Kerr’s pedigree production of Swan Lake was memorably staged with respect and sensitivity by Turid Revfeim.
Their mid-year triple bill included Wayne MacGregor’s Infra, which I found deeply humane and appreciated very much. Sarah Sproull’s spirited To Hold, and Alice Topp’s High Tide had striking choreography and design, and each proved very popular with audiences.
The Company’s end-of-year season—a return of Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—showed yet again what a brilliant concept the 29-year-old choreographer brought to this company back in 2015. His loss will reverberate for years, but this production, shared with Queensland Ballet, and Tracy Grant Lord’s stunning design, ensures that we hold him tight.
New Zealand School of Dance continued to display high performance standards in both Liminal, mid-year, and end of year seasons, when students from both classical and contemporary streams gave committed programs. The highlight for me remains NZSD alumnus Taane Mete’s All Eyes Open.
In Homemade Jam the ever enterprising Turid Revfeim combinedher Ballet Collective Aotearoa with the local Tawa College dance group to energised effect.
Visiting companies to Wellington for the International Arts Festival included a dramatically different Hatupatu, a fusion of Maori legend into a contemporary love story from Tānemahuta Gray. Malia Johnston’s Belle offered striking airborne beauty combining aerialists and dancers. From afar Akram Khan’s company gave a sophisticated The Jungle Book which astonished many first-time dance-goers.
Later in March, Neil Ieremia of Black Grace staged a production of striking dramatic effect and design, under the title Paradise Rumour. It referenced missionary presence in the early settlement of the Pacific.
Jan Bolwell’s impresssive season of Crow’s Feet, Woman, Life, Freedom, to Gorecki, was a moving witness to the struggles of women in Iranian and migrant communities.
2024 was a special year for Vivek Kinra’s Indian dance company Mudra, beginning with an arangetram (astonishingly, by a mature age Pākeha woman of Irish descent. The world can live as one if we want it enough).
In a later season Vivek choreographed a poetic and colourful Vismaya, the seven emotions of nanikas, with a quartet of stunning visiting musicians, in a national tour under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand. We could hope for more seasons of music and dance from these adventurous entrepreneurs.
My subscription to Sky Arts channel is always good value—and this year’s film of Dona Nobis Pacem, Neuemeier’s farewell to Hamburg Ballet, was an exquisitely poignant piece in a combination of J S Bach and John Lennon that I will never forget. It was a masterstroke to also screen the documentary of Neumeier’s dancing life in the same week.
Another very striking film was the Royal Ballet production of Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate. I have family connection to Mexico and it is always welcome to encounter art from that extraordinary country.
This year’s Russell Kerr Lecture in Ballet & Related Arts was a tribute to the late and much lamented Sir Jon Trimmer, following an earlier memorial for him staged by Turid Revfeim in the Opera House. Rowena Jackson’s death was another sad event, but an opportunity to recognise her outstanding personal qualities alongside her celebrated performance and teaching career. I join Michelle Potter in lamenting the passing of Joan Acocella, dance writer of highest calibre, and my valued mentor. Edith Campbell, a stalwart arts and community leader, will be much missed in Wellington, and it was an honour to perform French and English baroque dances at her Memorial Service. Edith would have appreciated the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France that these referenced, as she had an admirable knack of contextualising all art events. She taught Scottish Country Dance for 75 years, up until the fortnight before her passing. Requiescant in pace.
I found myself involved in another performance (who says you’re too old to dance? certainly not Eileen Kramer…) in a piece composed by Alison Isadora for The First Smile Indonesian gamelan, and included on the album we have just recorded to mark 50 years of gamelan in Aotearoa New Zealand. (See Rattle Records website). Keep up the good dancing everyone—and you’ll certainly have a Happy New Year.
Just recently a friend sent me some images she had taken in Adelaide while visiting the exhibition ‘Garden Cycle’ in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. The exhibition consisted of works by American glass artist Dale Chihuly. ‘Is this the kind of thing you saw in Seattle?’ she asked. The question sent me back to my collection of shots taken on a visit to Seattle in 2013 when Chihuly’s work was on display, indoors and outdoors, in the Seattle Space Center.
This was an excuse to use one of my Seattle shots for the header image for this post. Chihuly’s amazing work has to be the best of many aspects of artistic endeavour.
Best production: Coco Chanel. The LIfe of a Fashion Icon. Queensland Ballet
In 2024 audiences were treated to some spectacular new dance—the Australian Ballet’s productions of Oscar and Carmen spring immediately to mind. And I was thrilled by Silence and Rapture, the Sydney Dance Company’s exhilarating collaboration with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. And many more great shows!. But it was definitely Queensland Ballet’s production of Coco Chanel. The Life of a Fashion Icon, from choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, that takes first place for me. I was really pleased too to see that my review of this show for Limelight made the top ten reads of reviews for 2024. It came in as 10th even though it had been available to read for just six or so weeks.
Coco Chanel was beautifully choreographed, fabulously danced and totally absorbing from beginning to end.
I am looking forward to seeing how Alice Lee Holland manages her role as artistic director of Canberra’s youth organisation, QL2 Dance, following on from many years of direction by Ruth Osborne.
I am also looking forward to seeing who becomes artistic director of Queensland Ballet after the sudden departure of Leanne Benjamin. It was a thrill to hear that Liam Scarlett’s Dangerous Liaisons, a sensational QB production going back to 2019, is on QB’s 2025 calendar. A good sign that the strength that Li Cunxin brought to the company may continue perhaps?
Obituaries
2024 was a sad year in many respects. The following dancers, choreographers, writers and historians, who have had an influence on my writing and viewing, died during the year. They worked across Australia and elsewhere and I felt as though I was constantly writing obituaries.
Emerging Choreographers is an annual event on the QL2 calendar. It is a mentored program in which a number of senior QL2 dancers try their hand at choreography. They create and present a short work in collaboration with their peers and each choreographer is supported by professional artists in rehearsal and presentation. Many of those who have tested their early approach to choreography over the years have gone on to make significant careers in the dance world. Some have returned to work on various QL2 projects.
I am not in a position to review this year’s event given that I have a family member closely involved in the program. So I am simply presenting below a very small selection of images from the event.
Those emerging artists who created works for the 2024 program are: AKIRA BYRNE, ALEX POTTER, ARSHIYA ABHISHREE, CALYPSO EFKARPIDIS, CHARLIE THOMSON, CHRIS WADE, JAHNA LUGNAN, MAGNUS MEAGHER and SAM TONNA.
A link to a review of the 2024 program, written by Samara Purnell for CBR CityNews, is at the end of this post.
Scene from Calypso Efkarpidis’ DreamScape
Coral Onn and Juliet Hall in Alex Potter’s Dominion (Pupa)
Scene from Sam Tonna’s Chromed and Polished
Dancers and choreographers acknowledge tech staff at the end of the opening show
It was sad news to discover that Roz Hervey had died early in November. She made a huge contribution to dance in Australia, especially in South Australia. But she also made a huge impact in Canberra where she danced with the Meryl Tankard Company. The National Library has a selection of images taken by Régis Lansac of the works in which she performed in Canberra. Two are below. Nuti on the left was one of Tankard’s most visually beautiful productions and was presented in 1990 at the National Gallery of Australia in conjunction with an exhibition of works on loan from the British Museum. Pile Up on the right was a work by Graeme Watson, which shared a double bill with Tankard’s Kikimora also in 1990.
Read an acknowledgment of Roz Hervey’s contribution to dance in Australia at this link.
Coralie Hinkley: a manuscript collection
The National Library of Australia has completed the cataloguing of the Papers of Coralie Hinkley, which were sorted beautifully and donated to the NLA by Coralie’s daughter after her mother’s death. Here is a link to the catalogue details, including the finding aid. Coralie had an astonishingly varied dance career as the finding aid indicates.
Harry Hartog Bookshop at the Australian National University always has an interesting collection of secondhand dance books. ‘Oh they come from all over the place,’ a sales person once told me. The most recent addition to my book collection from that bookshop was The Helpman Family Story by Mary Helpman, which covers the period 1796 to 1964. While it probably isn’t the most analytical discussion of that story I have come across, it was full of surprises especially about the extent of the theatricality that characterised the lives of many of the family. It was not just Bob (as Robert Helpmann is referred to throughout the book) but other family members as well.
Press for November 2024
– ‘Tale of a turtle engages children—and adults (Bangarra Dance Theatre)’. CBR CityNews, 7 November 2024 . Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)
– ‘Community dancing with an Olympic theme’. CBR CityNews, 23 November 2024. Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)
Dancer, visual artist, choreographer and writer Eileen Kramer has died in Sydney at the age of 110. Born in Sydney, Eileen spent her early years in the suburb of Mosman and then, after her parents’ divorce, in Coogee. After leaving school at the early age of 13, she eventually began studying singing, piano and theory at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music but did not take up dancing until she was in her twenties when she saw a performance of The Blue Danube and other works from the Bodenwieser Ballet. Of that experience she has said:
Well, Blue Danube is beautiful and flowing and expressive and not at all tight and rigid, so I just fell in love with it. Another dance they performed at that concert was the Slavonic, those great big skirts with big motifs on them, and that struck me because when they came onto the floor they took wonderful poses that looked as though they were accidental. But of course it was art, so I went immediately to become a student.
She was accepted as a student by Gertrud Bodenwieser and later became a company dancer touring with the troupe around Australia and overseas for the next decade. Of her time with Bodenwieser she recorded:
Well, to us [Bodenwieser] was exotic and wonderful and we felt she was teaching us not only dance but about European culture and sophistication as well. And she also recognised each one’s quality. So while we learned to work as a group, she also developed our qualities, which was quite wonderful. So then she’d give solo dances inspired by us, not something that she got from somewhere else. My dance that I loved most of all was Indian Love Song. I wasn’t doing a traditional Indian movement but it was inspired by Indian poetry and some Indian postures, but I had to sing the song with that.
For Bodenwieser, and for the rest of her life, Eileen was a designer of costumes. Speaking of her interest in design she said:
I didn’t make so many drawings and that upset Madame a little bit, because she liked to see what she was getting, but I worked in a way of giving more freedom to the fabric so I would make it on the figure and not so much from drawings, although generally you had to have an idea of what you were doing and make a kind of a sketch, but not a detailed sketch. I have been doing this since I was about five years old, making dolls’ clothes and then eventually making my own clothes and making backyard concert clothes.
Eileen Kramer, design for a character in O World. Papers of Gertrud Bodenwieser, National Library of Australian, MS 9263
After leaving the Bodenwieser Ballet she lived and worked in India, France and the United States for the next 60 years. Those years included relationships of various kinds including with her husband Baruch Shadmi, whom she met in Paris. They collaborated on a number of activities but he suffered a stroke and she gave up her career to nurse him until his death.
On her departure from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where she had spent the last several years of her career the local newspaper wrote:
A crowd of costumed friends gave one of Lewisburg’s most colorful residents, Eileen Kramer, a wonderful send-off at the Greenbrier Valley Airport Wednesday afternoon upon her departure for Australia. Garbed in attire designed and sewn by Eileen from Trillium performances over the years, and bearing large masks she’d painted, the gathering lovingly gave tribute to say “Thank you” and “We love you” and “We will miss you.’ Fare thee well, Lovely Lady Mountain Messenger, Lewisberg, 9 September 2013 https://mountainmessenger.com/fare-thee-well-lovely-lady-2/
Eileen lived in Sydney from 2013 until her death. In those last 11 years she continued to create. Her activities are recalled on her website, Eileen Kramer. Of the many activities in which she was involved during those last years, perhaps my favourite is the beautiful film by Sue Healey made for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, available at this link. See also my thoughts on the film here.
Vale Eileen. How lucky I was to meet you when and how I did. When we spoke last you recalled the oral history we did—now more than 20 years ago. You remembered that we lunched in between sessions. You said that no other interviewer had done that! Well I loved that I was able to do so.
Eileen Kramer: born Sydney, 8 November 1914; died Sydney, 15 November 2024
Michelle Potter, 17 November 2024
For other posts about Eileen on this website, follow this tag.
Unless otherwise identified, quotes from Eileen in this post are from an oral history I recorded with her in 2003 for the National Library of Australia, TRC 4923, available online at this link. Eileen’s autobiography, Walkabout Dancer was published in 2008 by Trafford Publishing.
Featured image: From Sue Healey’s film Eileen, 2017. See this link to view the film.
Update: When I first posted this obituary I added an image that was purported to be of Eileen as a baby along with her father and mother. Well, when I looked through Walkabout Dancer, the autobiography, it turned out that it wasn’t Eileen as a baby but Edward (her brother). I am assuming Eileen knew who it was and that the source I used got it wrong! So I have removed the image from the post proper but have included it below. The photographer has not been identified but the date would be 1913.
