JOHN YOUNG
QSM, ANATD
(London) BB, AFNZTD BB, MSATD (Aust) Life Member BB

John Young has been
dancing since 1947 and Anne since 1977. John brings to dancing the
accumulated knowledge of a lifetime as a full time professional teacher for
the 58 years since he founded his studios in 1952. Since then 100,000
Aucklanders, including 4,000 tango dancers have been taught by the John
Young system. He was the first to teach Argentine Tango in Auckland,
introducing it in 1989.
Ballroom and Latin
American
John trained initially with
Sammy Leckie, the Irish champion, while visiting overseas, and then with Ivy Biberstein, New Zealand's greatest dance teacher and has had additional
training with world titleholders.
He has trained a number of
New Zealand ballroom title holders and world intermediate Argentine Tango champions
(Buenos Aries) Graham and Denise, and five NZ Argentine Tango champions.
He has appeared on a
number of television programmes, including Target and Sky Sports, and
was dance director for the Topp Twins and City Life. Seventeen of
the 22 dancers in the Top Twins programme were originally trained by
John. He danced in
the TV One News commercial with Helen Medlyn and has directed the
dancing in many other commercials.
John also judged many New Zealand championships and the
original TVNZ Come Dancing programme.
John was recently awarded
the Queens Service Medal for his Services to Dancing, the first time this has
been awarded for ballroom dancing, and is a life member of the
Society of Australasian Teachers of Dancing and an Associate of the NATD London.
ANNE YOUNG

Anne was trained by John
and Ivy Biberstein and has attained Oscar level in both Ballroom and Latin
American - the highest level in medal dancing.
She has appeared on
television, including Ice TV and on Sky Sports where she and John taught Stu Wilson how to dance Argentine Tango when the Argentine
football team was visiting New Zealand.
Her social dance class was recorded for 9 weeks by TV3.
Anne has taught for John since 1983.
Argentine Tango
John
and Anne were the first to teach Argentine Tango in Auckland,
introducing it in 1989.
John originally
learnt from Pedro Monteleone (who taught and danced with Madonna for the film Evita).
John and Anne have also trained in Argentina.
Graham and Denise,
the 2002 World Intermedios Argentine Tango Champions and five other New
Zealand Argentine Tango champions have been taught by John using his
system that is derived from Tango greats Juan Copes, Eduardo Arquimbau,
Osvaldo Zotto, Carlos Coppella, Mingo Pugliese, Omar Vegas and others.
Photo left - John and Anne Young. Permission to use
this photo has been granted to a number of people world wide and just
recently has been on
YouTube. It also showed up as the screen saver on a computer in an
apartment in Argentina rented by two of our tango students