Waltraud Gisele Karkar

Waltraud Gisele (Creter) Karkar was born on February 17, 1939, in Grafenhausen, Germany — right as Germany and the world were on the brink of World War II.

She left Germany in 1956 when she married her first husband, the late George William Kasper, a U.S. Air Force pilot. George’s career first took the young couple to the Middle East, where they started their family, and then to Illinois. Waltraud and George shared four sons together.

But it was in 1969 that she met and married the love of her life, the late Dr. Yaqub “Jack” Karkar. During 54 years of marriage, Waltraud and Jack raised five children and built the Central Wisconsin School of Ballet together.

Waltraud’s love and aptitude for dance was evident from an early age. She began dancing at age nine at the Landestheater in Darmstadt, Germany. She then went on to receive extensive training in Europe and the United States, which included completing the Vaganova Grades with Madame Elvira Vecsey, Prima Ballerina and later Ballet Mistress of the Budapest Opera House. During her career as a teacher, Waltraud studied with several highly regarded dance teachers, schools, and companies, including Joan Lawson of the Royal Ballet of England, the Stone-Camryn School of Ballet in Chicago, and the Joffrey Ballet in New York. She wrote the book And They Danced On, which the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg used as part of their training program. Waltraud was awarded an honorary degree by the Isadora Duncan International Institute and was recognized by Dance Magazine as a “Great American Teacher.”

In 2004, at the invitation of Prince Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse, she traveled back to her home country with the ballet school when they embarked on their first international tour to Germany. Her students performed at the Darmstadter Residenzfestspiele in Darmstadt as well as the Schloss Fasanerie in Fulda.

Waltraud’s influence on the Wausau community was profound. She trained countless young dancers who attest to her influence well beyond the doors of the dance studio. In 1994, her positive impact on the community was recognized with one of Wausau’s Women of Vision awards. In 1991, working with city officials, she helped renovate the neglected outdoor amphitheater in Wausau's Stewart Park, a space originally used in the 1920s by local devotees of Isadora Duncan. She also pioneered an artist-in-schools program that brought dance to over 100,000 children in Wausau and the surrounding communities. With her vision to create the best regional dance program, Waltraud put Wausau on the performing arts map by bringing in some of the ballet world’s most beloved dancers, including Irina Kolpakova, former star and current Principal Répétiteur for American Ballet Theatre; Vladilen Semenov, former head of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet; Shamil Yagudin from the Bolshoi Ballet; and Gabriela Komleva of the Kirov Ballet, to name just a few. In 1990, her production of The Nutcracker was recognized as one of the nation’s best by Newsweek magazine.

Above all else, Waltraud’s love was her family and friends, and she will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved her. She was preceded in death by her mother Anna Creter Debus (Leo Debus), husband, sister Hannelore Weber, and son Michael Kasper. She is survived by her sister Inge (Tom) Jefferson; children Todd Kasper, Patrik Kasper (Dr. Stephanie Stella), Christopher Kasper (Nina Ricciardi), and Annaluna Karkar (Dr. James Collison); and most beloved grandchildren Jack Collison, Davis Collison, Evelyn Kasper, and Auden Kasper.

She enjoyed decades of friendship with Mary Marshall and Lois Freeberg-Hagen. And Jeanene Russell Perry and Margot Vetter Borger were like daughters to her.

The family will be forever grateful for the constant companionship and dedicated care that Susan Carlson and Kim Smith provided Waltraud in the last years of her life.

The Central Wisconsin School of Ballet will host a celebration of life later this year. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials to be made to The Wausau Dance Theatre Fund housed with the Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin at 200 Washington Street, Suite 120, Wausau, Wisconsin, 54403. A link to the fund may also be accessed here: https://cfoncw.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=1603