Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Annie Young danced her way to another solo first place gold.
She performed a self-choreographed dance to Shakira’s “Objection Tango” to win at the Rising Star Competition held at Chartiers Valley School in Pittsburgh on March 29.
This is Young’s fifth gold medal in as many competitions. She is the daughter of William Young and the late Cleo Young.
“It was my first solo dance that I choreographed myself that I took to competition,” said Young of her accomplishment. “I was excited. I didn’t expect to do well.”
She said the dance took her about two months to choreograph and perfect. However, she has many years of experience behind her that helped her to succeed. Young has been dancing for 12 years, and started when she was just seven years old. She has been in seven competitions and won approximately 15 medals and awards.
Along with dance director Lindsay Folk, Young is an instructor at the Tyrone Dance Academy at the Tyrone YMCA. Not only did Young fare well at the competition, but the Tyrone Dance Academy competition team brought home numerous medals, trophies and other awards. After seven hours of group and solo competition, the girls walked away with ten gold medals, quite an accomplishment for a dance school of any size. The ten gold medal winning dances were all choreographed by Folk and Young.
“The girls all did really well,” said Young of her excitement for the competition team.
The Tyrone Dance Academy is busy recovering from all of its wins at the competition and is preparing for a dance recital in June. Also, a Krispy Kreme fund raising effort is underway to raise money for the Academy. Anyone interested in ordering doughnuts can fill out a sign-up sheet at the front desk of the Tyrone YMCA.
As for Young’s future, she is going to continue working hard at dance and being an instructor. She and Folk plan on opening a dance studio in Tyrone sometime soon.
“Hopefully Lindsay Folk and I are going to open up our own dance studio next year,” she said.

By Rick