Eileen Kramer, an Australian dancer, artist, performer, choreographer, passed away on November 15, only seven days after celebrating her 110th birthday. Her passing was first reported by ABC News.

Eileen Kramer was born in Mosman Bay, New South Wales, Australia, on 8 November 1914. Her mother, Hilda Henrietta, came to Australia from England with her family. Her father, Julius Kramer, was born in South Africa, though his family originally came from Germany. In 1933, at age 19, she began taking singing and piano lessons from a local teacher, and later decided she wanted to pursue serious studies at the Conservatorium of Music on Macquarie Street in Sydney.

In 1940, her mother invited her to a charity concert at the Conservatorium—an evening that would change her life. The program featured the Bodenwieser Viennese Ballet, Australia’s first professional modern dance company. Kramer was captivated from the moment the dancers moved to the opening bars of Strauss’s Blue Danube. Reflecting on that experience, she recalled, “I was sitting in the audience thinking, ‘Yes, that’s what I want to do.’” The very next day, she sought out Gertrud Bodenwieser, expressing her desire to join the company. Three years later, she was cast in The Blue Danube. For the next decade, Kramer toured with the Bodenwieser company, performing across rural Australia, South Africa, and India, where she even found time for a brief romance with a French diplomat. After the India tour, however, she and the company went their separate ways.

In the 1950s, Kramer was living in Paris, working as an artist’s model. One day in 1956, she met Baruch Shadmi, a Polish-Israeli filmmaker six years her junior, who would become her partner for the next three decades. She was 42; he was 36. Kramer and Shadmi moved to New York, where, in the early 1960s, they began collaborating on an animated dance film, with Kramer both dancing and creating hundreds of models for the project. Partway through, Shadmi suffered a stroke. As his health continued to decline, Kramer set aside her own career to care for him. She looked after him for nearly 20 years, until his passing in 1987. In 1988, Kramer moved to Lewisburg, West Virginia, to be near her friend Maryat, where she resumed her work in theater and the arts. She didn’t return to Australia for good until 2013, when she was 99.

LongeviQuest sends our deepest condolences to the bereaved family and friends of Eileen Kramer.

(Featured image: At the age of 101. (Source: Aged Care Homes))