#AlumniMonday Im living every little girls dream, says Heritage alumnae Kristin Young (07). Shes right. As a ballerina with the Nashville Ballet, shes living the dream that God planted in her heart when she was just five years old and a student at Heritage Christian School. By the time she was in third grade, Young realized that ballet was her passion and began serious training with Ballet Internationales Academy. After practice one day, she remembers telling her mom, Have you ever done something that you dont want to end? Young’s parents and the Heritage family supported her from the beginning. When she played the lead role of Clara in a modern adaptation of the Nutcracker with the Gregory Hancock Dance Theater, her teachers planned a field trip so that her entire sixth grade class would be able to see her performance. By the time she reached high school, Young practiced six days each week, for nearly five hours each day. It wouldnt have been possible, she says, without the support and flexibility that Heritage provided. Her teachers understood her commitment to dance and flexed with her rigorous practice schedule. Young spent her summers as a student at the Kirov Academy of Ballet, the School of American Ballet, the Harid Conservatory, and Boston Ballet. Before her sophomore year of high school, she was one of five student dancers chosen to tour in Taipei, Taiwan with Ballet Internationale, performing The Sleeping Beauty. After high school graduation, Young received her Ballet Performance major from The University of Oklahoma. She performed lead roles in The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Firebird, Carmina Burana, and Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15. After graduation from OU, she was a guest artist with the Tulsa Ballet. Young joined the Nashville Ballet in 2011 and has performed in Cinderella, the Nutcracker, Billy the Kid, The Sleeping Beauty, Carmina Burana, Romeo & Juliet, Peter Pan, George Balanchine’s Serenade and more. Her parents are her biggest fans and havent missed one performance. Young says that hers is a blessed life. Whatever sacrifices she has made along the way have been minor in comparison to the joy she finds in her career. She has yet to lose her wonder for the dance that first captivated her heart as a child. She loves it all--the makeup, the hair, the stretching. Even today, she says, it makes me feel like Im flying. Photo credits: Anthony Matula and Karyn Kipley
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:00:00 +0000
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