Kathleen Gorham OBE 1928-1983

In August 1969 she and another Borovansky veteran, Martin Rubinstein, produced the ballet for
the fledgling Victorian Opera Company’s production of Orpheus and Euridice at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne. 

In 1975, when the lease on her teaching premises expired, Gorham and her students amalgamated with the National Theatre Ballet School in St Kilda, which was headed by her old friend Marilyn Jones. Gorham became associate director. A slight stroke slurred her voice a little, but it did not diminish her commitment to teaching. As well as her regular students, she fostered Aboriginals, the blind, the poor, and the mentally handicapped.

Gorham was as volatile as she was passionate, and staff and friends found her increasingly difficult to work with. Then, in 1981, virtually without warning, she moved to Southport in Queensland, where she opened a school in an unpretentious church hall. She also ran summer schools at Tallebudgera on the Gold Coat with her friend Peggy Sager. In 1983 she was a guest teacher for the Queensland Ballet.

Kathleen Anne Gorham died of a heart attack in 30 April 1983. Her memory is commemorated in the Royal Academy of Dance’s Kathleen Gorham Memorial Scholarship, and she is still revered by hundreds of her former pupils. Among them are dance luminaries such as Steven Woodgate, Rebecca Yates, Sheree da Costa, Mark Annear, Suzanne Mzuri Watts, Aboriginal dancer Roslyn Watson, Gary Ginivan and Beverly Jane Fry, who eventually followed in her teacher’s footsteps to become director of the National Theatre Ballet School in Melbourne.

Frank Van Straten, 2007