Gregory Osborne, Renowned Ballet Dancer, Dies at 39

Gregory Osborne, guest artist with many of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies and whose classic good looks helped make him a favorite in the traditional dance repertoire, died Saturday in the city where he was raised.

Osborne, who looked more like a prototypal surfer than a ballet dancer, was 39 and died of cancer, a family spokesman said.

His death was a blow to admirers abroad and in Southern California.

“He really was an extraordinary talent,” said Thomas R. Kendrick, former president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. “He was clearly one of the great talents to come from this area.”

Osborne made one of several homecoming appearances at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1988 when he appeared with the National Ballet of Canada in a performance of “The Four Temperaments.”

He also performed with the American Ballet Theatre and many other ballet companies throughout his career.

Stanley Holden, the director of a West Los Angeles dance academy where Osborne studied as a young dancer, described him as a brilliant dancer and a friendly, warm person who had stayed in touch with his old friends, even as his career took him around the world.

“He was a very special person,” said Holden, head of the Stanley Holden Dance Center. “Everybody loved him. When he returned to Los Angeles on vacation and came here to keep himself in shape, everybody in the professional class with him used to love watching him. He was a pure classicist and a very beautiful person.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Another beautiful person gone.”

Osborne, who turned to dancing as therapy after he broke both legs in a sledding accident when he was a boy, became intrigued with dance as a possible profession while in his early teens.

Born in Louisville, Ky., Osborne--whose family moved to Newport Beach in 1968--began studying with Lila Zali, founder of Ballet Pacifica, when he was a sophomore at Corona del Mar High School.

He also studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, starred as Patrick in a Corona del Mar High School production of “Auntie Mame” and was encouraged by Ferdinand Nault, director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.

Teacher Jo Black-Jacob said Osborne was one of the “top talents” she ever had in her drama classroom at Corona del Mar High School.

“He was unbelievable,” she said. “He could sing, dance and act. . . . He was super hyper and always go, go, go.”

Before arriving in New York at age 19 to take on the dance world, he attended Texas Christian University, rushing through to complete his bachelor’s degree in fine arts in only three years.

He joined the American Ballet Theatre in the 1970s and won a bronze medal at the First International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Miss.

His renown spread, and in 1983 he left the American Ballet Theatre for what he felt were more promising roles as a principal classics dancer with the National Ballet of Canada.

He became best known for his performances in “Les Sylphides,” “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “La Bayadere” and “Giselle.”

Modern dancing, he told The Times in 1983, “doesn’t make my mind and my body activate like the classics.”

Reviewing a 1988 performance of John Cranko’s “Onegin” at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Times dance critic Lewis Segal said that Osborne--since his affiliation with the Canadian ballet--”has developed into a distinctively heroic danseur noble. . . . “

Osborne was also seen regularly with the English National Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet.

Throughout his career, he appeared with many top ballerinas, including Cynthia Gregory, Natalia Makarova, Martine van Hamel and Veronica Tennant.

He also appeared in several feature films and television specials, including “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can,” “The Turning Point” and had a starring role in Lewis Furey’s motion picture “Shadow Dancing.”

In 1990 he left the National Ballet of Canada to pursue a free-lance career.

“He was undoubtedly the greatest dancer to come out of Orange County,” said Ashe King, a retired dance studio administrator who met Osborne at age 12. “He brought beauty and talent to his chosen profession.”

“He was enormously talented,” King said. “It was very obvious even at the age of 12.”

Osborne is survived by his mother, Lois; father, Matthew, and brother, Richard. A memorial service will be held in Newport Beach, but details are pending. In lieu of flowers, family members asked that donations be made to the AIDS Services Foundation/Orange County.

Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson contributed to this report.