Eileen Kramer in 'En Route', a film by Sue Healey 2016
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16th August 2019 - THE COAT
Quite an odd thing happened to me the other day - from somewhere in the past, there emerged the Coat. And I am not sure which end of the story I should start with – but I have to start somewhere…so I’ll start with Madam. That is Madam Bodenwieser – she introduced modern dance 1930s style to Australia and I was lucky enough to be a part of her company. We eventually started going on tours around Australia, to both hot and cold parts – by this time I had become the costume designer with the Bodenwieser Ballet because, although Madam Tchinarova, mother of Tamara Tchinarova, the beautiful classical dancer, made most of the ballet costumes in Sydney at that time, she didn’t really understand central European expressionism – which was quite a different style. But that is not the point. Madam Tchinarova didn’t have anything to do with the Coat. It happened on one very cold tour my friend Jean Raymond and I felt that Madam wasn’t warm enough – so Jean said to me “Let’s get her a nice warm coat”. So, Jean paid for the material and I made it. Madam would wear it after our concerts. She would always come on stage after our concert, fluttering to the edge and speak to the audience, “We are so happy to have been able to come to your lovely town of Tumblegum”, or where ever we were. We always waited with baited breath – would she remember the name of the town? Because we came in like a whirlwind- we would have one short rehearsal and perform that night, next morning all sleepy and slothful we would get out of beds and into a bus - off to the next town – we hardly knew where we were. We were always very happy to see Madam in the coat. Well the years passed. I didn’t know what happened to the coat but surprise surprise I went to Canberra to see an exhibition called Eternity, and there was the coat on a stand looking very splendid. Unfortunately, to my horror, it was inside out! I went home to the hotel, got paper and pen and wrote a stern letter and indignant letter to whoever had put this coat on display, inside out. |
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Now I will describe the coat.
It was a black woollen coat lined with gold tissue. The curators of the exhibition must have thought that it was a gold coat lined with black wool. But in this case – if you imagine you had a tailored jacket and you turned it inside out it would be all bulky under the arms especially. So it looked bulky and uncomfortable. Time passed again – I had a letter from a friend in the University in Canberra and she said Eileen, we will never be able to turn that coat back the right way because somebody has cut away the black material all around under the arms and it looks terrible - so the gold side must stay out. More time passed…one day quite recently, the story of the coat was resurrected. Dr Rachel Fensham a highly regarded academic from the University of Melbourne had thought that was an interesting coat - so she began to research it. Rachel made a special trip to Sydney to interview me, so we sat and talked about it. Then she went back to Canberra and took another look at the dejected inside out coat and she decided that she liked the strange lumpy look. She saw it quite differently to how I had imagined it. She saw it as a stiff unyielding garment with hand-stitching which she took to be decorative detail. So I am going to make a drawing of that coat to show you what I mean. Rachel, sainted lady, wrote the longest article I’d ever seen about a coat… for a very distinguished international journal. The title is ‘Costumes and Choreography from Bodenwieser’s Trunk: The Coat as Affective Memory’. There began a long discussion in Canberra about my little old coat. Not just a discussion, but there were different points of view about whether the lining was black or gold and whether it was shown the right or the wrong way. Not only that, mind you, scientific study was made of the threads of the fabric as to whether that lining had once been a Swinging Bell costume – the Swinging Bell was a very wonderful dance created in Vienna by Madam, for two dancers. When performed in Australia the dancers were Evelyn Ippen and Bettine Brown. The fabric, heavy bronze lame, was very long and spread out all around the dancers who gave the impression of moving like a chiming bell shuddering in its last few chimes. The discussion was had that I might have used the old Swinging Bell costume as the lining of the coat – but I could never imagine myself cutting up an old costume, which was a big round heavy garment, cut on the cross. But I could not argue the point because I coudn’t really remember going into the silk store on Pitt St. and buying that fabric 70 years ago. So I would not argue with those much more learned than I. So Rachel and I had a nice cup of tea, I gave her the lowdown on Madam’s coat and a long discussion about where it was all these long years… Jean Raymond who paid for the fabric, unfortunately is no longer with us. So the result is – nobody really knows the true history of the coat. And that same Eileen Kramer has after 70 years just returned to Australia - what does she care about coats and things? All she wanted when she came back, was to hear a kookaburra. But because dancing was still in her blood, she began a new old life as a Bodenwieser dancer at the age of 99. And believe it or not, she is about to make another coat! |
