![]() ![]() Sometimes, when it is quiet, I will think of a friend and realise that they are gone. 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. There have been two more birthdays since then, and I have found myself treated to new Kiss of Fire choreography each time. Outside, my friends danced for me – to Louis Armstrong’s Kiss of Fire. 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. In November 2020, I was still in lockdown, but my friends surprised me with a party for my 106th birthday. skip past newsletter promotionĮileen Kramer working on caravan masks for a performance in London. 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. 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. My mother happily agreed, and in the spring of 1935, I became a voice student in classical music at the Conservatorium. Nonetheless, I decided I would like to study seriously at the Conservatorium of Music on Macquarie Street in Sydney. I could sing quite well but to do so in public made me nervous. In 1933, at the age of 19, I took singing and piano lessons from a local teacher. 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. A fortune-teller at a friend’s birthday party told me that I was destined to become a singer. My mother encouraged me and told my father that I was a thoughtful child who might one day become a scientist. 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.Ī love of learning has always been part of my nature. My father, Julius Kramer, was born in South Africa but his family had come from Germany. Her family came to Australia from England. Eileen Kramer (right) with her mother and brother around 1917. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |