Returning: Compass

Compass finally returns this Sunday night to ABC and what an episode it delivers.

This episode is not so much a religious-themed episode so much as an affirmation of life.

Meet 100 year old Eileen Kramer, who still loves to dance and has an amazing zest for life. This true bohemian danced for the famed Bodenwieser Ballet and now appears in music videos.

At 100, dancer Eileen Kramer’s creative spirit is undiminished. Still dancing, and about to have the world premiere of a new piece she has choreographed and will dance in, this Compass celebration of a life nourished by the spiritual power of dance explores the wellspring of Eileen’s amazing vitality and longevity.

As a child growing up in Sydney in the 1920’s Eileen always longed to go on the stage. Taken to the ballet by her mother in her mid twenties, Eileen was captivated by the avant-garde Bodenwieser Ballet which had come to Australia from Europe in the late 1930’s to escape the impending war – the next day, Eileen auditioned and was accepted into the company. She then spent over 14 years dancing on tour around Australia and overseas before she left to see the world and follow her own creative path.

Travelling through India, making a living from dancing, she wound up in Paris where she learnt to dance the twist from Louis Armstrong and met her future husband, film maker Baruch Shadmi. They moved to New York in the late 1950s and spent the next five years making their own animated film. When Baruch suffered a stroke, Eileen put her dancing career aside and cared for him for eighteen years until his death in 1987.

Now in her seventies, Eileen re-discovered dance and romance when she moved to LLewisburg, West Virginia. She was set up with Bill, a widower in his eighties, and much to her surprise, they fell madly in love. Living with Bill gave her a new-found freedom and she began working with The Trillium Performing Arts Collective. At the age of eighty, Eileen re-invented herself once again, as a choreographer. Over the next twenty years she worked at full capacity, dancing, choreographing and making costumes for their major performances. Supported by her Trillium friends after Bill’s death, Eileen became nostalgic for the smell of gum leaves and the call of the kookaburras. So at 99, after living overseas for over half a century, she returned to Australia with no more than a couple of suitcases filled with clothes and costumes.

With slender means but a great capacity for connecting with young people Eileen charmed the staff and clientele of a Chippendale cafe where she met a musician who asked her to dance in a video clip for his first single. This led to a new cycle of creativity working with professional dancers to realise her latest crowd-funded dance piece. At 100, this true bohemian’s inspirational attitude to life is infectious and she shows no signs of slowing down.

6:30pm Sunday March 15 ABC.