Ausdance pays tribute to two inspirational women who passed away this week, Roz Hervey who was 58, and farewelled family and friends after a diagnosis of Motor Neuron Disease (MND) in 2022, and Bodenwieser dancer Eileen Kramer, aged 110, who had celebrated her birthday only last weekend.
Roz Hervey was an innovative and much-loved dancer, choreographer, director and producer who worked with some of Australia’s most cutting-edge companies and artists, generously sharing unique performance insights with colleagues, collaborators and young dancers. As she said in 2021, ‘I am drawn to artists exploring the human condition who are not afraid of honesty. Authenticity is really important to me.'
Her most recent work was with Restless Dance Theatre where, as Creative Producer for nine years, she had co-devised its current work, Private View. Roz had also spent more than a decade with Force Majeure as Associate Artist, and her 2002 performance in Kate Champion’s Same, same But Different had won her an Australian Dance Award for ‘Outstanding performance by a female dancer’.
Over nearly four decades, Roz’s career included success as a director, choreographer and producer with a range of Australian companies. Among others, she worked with the Meryl Tankard Company, DV8, Dancenorth, Theatre of Image, Sue Healey, the One Extra Company and Patch Theatre. She is survived by her husband Geoff Cobham, who is Patch Theatre's artistic director, and her daughter, actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey, and son Huey.
Eileen Kramer was the last surviving member of the great Bodenwieser Company, founded by Viennese dancer, choreographer and teacher Gertrud Bodenwieser who had fled the Nazis in 1938, arriving in Sydney in 1939.
Born in NSW in 1914, Eileen Kramer first saw Bodenwieser when she was about 24. ‘… I was taken to see a performance of the Bodenwieser Ballet that had recently come from Central Europe and I fell in love with it straight away," she said in 2023.
Eileen spent many years with the company in the 1940s and 1950s, before building an international career, touring as a dancer and choreographer. She returned to Australia when she was 99, and has since performed, choreographed, written three books, given workshops and even sewn her own costumes. She celebrated her 110th birthday on 8 November.
Eileen is featured as one of six ‘Icons’ in Sue Healey’s wonderful film of the same name (soon to be shown again in Melbourne), and was present at its launch in Sydney in January this year. She participated in the DaCi international & World Dance Alliance conference Panpapanpalya 2018 in Adelaide, and in the ABC’s Compass program a decade ago, having provided inspirational leadership to generations of young (and not-so-young) dancers over many years.
Former Bodenwieser dancer and recently-retired QL2 artistic director Ruth Osborne farewelled Eileen with this post: ‘Thank you dear Eileen for inspiring so many and reminding us of the Bodenwieser legacy. Your passion for an artistic life was inspirational’.
"I am not old. I have just been here for a long time."