Lorna Osborne (Axon), veteran Melbourne-based Tivoli dancer, choreographer, director and long-term dancing teacher, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, February 19, aged 96.
Born in Richmond on June 21,1928, and an only child, Lorna attended dance classes with Miss Lorna Vesper in Richmond from age five to fifteen.
She studied RAD classical ballet, tap, musical comedy, Highland, Irish and National dancing and from the age of seven successfully entered competitions in Ballarat and Melbourne. Lorna then studied dancing with Miss Olive Wallace in the city, performing in various concerts. Lorna’s mother Mary, a pianist, also sent her daughter for piano lessons with Miss Myra Prout.
Primary school years spent at Richmond State School in Brighton St were followed by a scholarship to Prahran Technical School for Girls, where Lorna achieved high marks in all artistic and technical subjects, including commercial drawing, dressmaking, needlework, millinery, design, cookery and social studies.
Lorna’s professional dance career included White Horse Inn at His Majesty’s Theatre, Love Racket (1950), Where’s Charley?\/Charley’s Aunt (1950) with Tommy Fields (brother of Gracie Fields), Brigadoon (1951) at His Majesty’s Theatre before touring Sydney, Brisband and Adelaide, Oklahoma! at His Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne, then the Theatre Royal in Brisbane\/Adelaide, and Zipp Goes a Million\/Brewster’s Millions at the Tivoli Theatre, Melbourne. Lorna was also declared ‘Miss Tivoli 1952’.
Following her professional career on stage, Lorna started her own school of dance in Oakleigh in 1957. ‘The Lorna Osborne Dancers’ operated for 53 years, and Lorna was immensely proud of her collection of formats for hundreds of tap time-steps.
Lorna would choreograph, direct, design costumes, sets, lighting and publicity for her annual ‘Spectacular Song and Dance Revues’, presented at the Oakleigh and Springvale Town Halls and the Alexander Theatre at Monash University.
Lorna also became involved in choreographing and performing in amateur musical theatre shows with her husband, Gordon Axon, for companies such as the Southern Cross Light Opera Company, Dandenong Light Opera Company, Whitehorse Musical Theatre, Festival Theatre Company, CLOC Musical Theatre, 1812 Theatre, Sandringham, Malvern and Encore Theatre Companies.
Family friend Leigh Baker describes Lorna: ” With grace or pace our Lorna thrilled with beautiful ballet or scintillating tap, no showbiz pretensions yet a total all round professional with a heart of gold and a myriad of friends and admirers!”
Lorna Osborne’s funeral will be held on Thursday, March 6 at 11.30am at Emmanuel Anglican Church, 26 Abbeygate St, Oakleigh. No flowers by request.
All attending are asked to wear bright colours. Lorna’s friend Kathie Walsh also requests: “Dancers are asked to bring their tap shoes to wear after the Church service to celebrate the life of this fabulous lady.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cheryl Threadgold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lorna Osborne (Axon), veteran Melbourne-based Tivoli dancer, choreographer, director and long-term dancing teacher, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, February 19, aged 96.Born in Richmond on June 21,1928, and an only child, Lorna attended dance classes with Miss Lorna Vesper in Richmond from age five to fifteen.She studied RAD classical ballet, tap, musical comedy, Highland, Irish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}