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