About the Artistic Director
Deb Young grew up in Memphis; she began studying classical ballet at age eight with Balanchine disciples Yuri and Viki Chatal at Memphis Ballet, where her mother (Pat German) danced in the company. A few years later Ms. Young began training at the Ballet Workshop, originally a satellite facility of Memphis Ballet School, with Pat German as adjunct faculty and later owner, and former Memphis Ballet member Jane Shelton also on the faculty. The training at Ballet Workshop represented a significant departure from the predominantly Vaganova-influenced technique that prevailed at Memphis Ballet. Pat German was a graduate of the National Ballet School of Canada, where co-founders Celia Franca and Betty Oliphant taught the Cecchetti syllabus, its style originating with Enrico Cecchetti in 19th century Italy, but evolving into an unmistakably English-inspired method over time. Ms. Young's own technique represents the confluence of the two strong, but decidedly different approaches to classical ballet: the former a heavier-handed, more athletic and earthbound style, and the latter a square, symmetrical, and more fluid style somewhat similar to the Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.) syllabus favored in Great Britain.
Ms. Young received concurrent training in the summer intensives program on scholarship at the National Academy of Arts in Champaign, Illinois at age thirteen and for three years following. The faculty included Gwynne Ashton, Antony Valdor, Alexander Bennett, Natalia Krassovska, Vitale Fokine, Birute Barodicaite, and Buzz Miller, among others, representing a diversity of styles and techniques. NAA offered a comprehensive curriculum in dance, including ballet technique, pointe, pas de deux, repertoire, Jazz, modern, musical theatre, character, mime, improvisation, and special workshops in choreography. Ms. Young learned a classical repertoire from various ballets, among them Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, and Les Sylphides, along with Bob Fosse's original choreography from The Pajama Game, as danced by Buzz Miller.
Ms. Young also studied with James Clauser and David Taylor at the David Taylor Dance Theatre in Denver, Colorado. In 1984 she joined a chamber ballet ensemble whose purpose was to bring classical ballet and live music as performed by the Colorado Philharmonic to mountain communities and resorts. The ensemble danced a mixed bill, including variations from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty and Aaron Copeland's Rodeo.
A graduate of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Tennessee, Ms. Young has lived in Knoxville since 1985. She is married to Ross Young, and has a son, Bentley.