[Donnie] So Darren and Helena, how long have you been
together now?
[Darren] Well we've been dating for over 2 years now
and we've been dancing together for just under 2 years yeah
[Donnie] So you dated first and then danced together?
[Darren] yes
[Donnie] How did that work?
[Helena] Not very well, no I'm joking.
[Donnie] Normally it’s a recipe for disaster right?
[Helena] It normally is. We started dating, saw each
other round and then both of our partners we weren't very happy with and then it just came together.
[Darren] Also we were dating long distance as I was
in London and Helena was in Southampton so it was a bit of a trek to try and see each other between practice schedules and competitions and everything like that so yeah.
[Donnie] you could worry, when I was dating Heidi, she
was in New York and I was in London
[Helena] Wow so that’s a bit further than us, we were
alright
[Donnie] at least you were in the same country right?
[darren] yeah exactly that
[Donnie] okay so one of the things that actually occurred
to me Darren is you’re more typical of today than people might think. Let me explain what I mean. So you are an Australian originally, living in London so you’re living in a foreign country, you’re dancing with Zoe, you've moved all the way from Australia
to London dancing with a girl and then you split up.
Now there'll be so many other kids and people and young adults today that will be in that same situation. Hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, you've moved there, you've got your partner, you've
had upheaval in your life and given everything up and then you end up split; which is a tragic situation at that time okay. Have you got any advice for other people who will end up in that situation like you.
[Darren] I mean it's a tough case because the thing
is that obviously I ended up in London. I was in London for 10 years but before when I moved to London I couldn't even find a partner which was even more difficult. So then I moved to Ukraine and I had a partner there
which was even harder and then that didn't work out and moved back to London, I had another partner that was in Germany and I had to go to Germany every single month just to practise; and then again that didn't work out and then COVID and everything happened
so I found that it is tough; and it hurts your soul a little bit when you're working so hard to try and produce something with another person and then it doesn't work out [exactly] but the thing is that it makes you stronger, but at the same time it makes you focus on yourself more.
[Donnie] ok so that’s the advice you would have for somebody
who you know literally dozens if not hundreds of males and females all over the world who will find themselves in a very similar scenario right?
[Darren] yeah absolutely that I mean the key thing is
that it doesn't matter where you are in the world or if you have a partner or not you can still go in a studio and practice and work on yourself so that when the right person does come along with the same mindset, the same drive and the same goals, you're up for the task. What you don't want is to be, you know, sitting at home with no goals and minds, trying to find a partner and hoping for the best. That doesn't work that way. So even if you split up with your partner or anything like that the best thing is to just get back in the studio and there's always something more to work on.
[Donnie] Cause you can’t blame your partner when they’re
not there
[Darren] Exactly. Exactly the case, yes
[Donnie] ok, ok fair enough. So now you won the amateur
rising star didn’t you? Before?
[Darren] yes
[Donnie] and then you met Helena and you decided to turn
pro. Your mum and dad were both ballroom dancers. Was that a good thing or a bad thing or both?
[Darren] its opposite sides of the same coin isn’t it?
It was a good thing. They had varying opinions so they always said to me growing up when I was in Australia I was you know a champion of all the age categories but even at that stage when I was juvenile champion and say my partner outgrew me because i’m very
small and then I had to find a new partner, which was difficult because of my height and things like that, even back then when I was a junior Champion before I started with my sister because there was No one basically for me to dance with, they always asked me.
Do you want to dance? Because they understand how difficult and how hard it is at the international level to be successful and obviously my answer was always ‘Yes I want to do it '. So they were always making sure that I was doing it because I wanted to
do it not just because it was something they did. Because they understand the hardships. so it was nice in that way. The other way was not so nice as that, you know, I was at school and then also I did dance with my sister, which was also quite amusing.
[Donnie] especially in Latin right? I mean that’s the
real mind bender right there.
[Darren] exactly so we were doing 10 dance at the time.
She was much more of a ballroom dancer but she always really liked Latin and obviously I was much more of a Latin dancer but I did like and appreciate a lot of ballroom.
[Donnie] I think we should let people know at this point
that Richard and Julie Morrissey are your mum and dad right?
[Darren] yes. So then it was good but then the thing
is that you didn’t get to do everything else. You know it was like I was always in the studio even if it wasn't my time to practise or teach or have lessons, I was still in the studio because mum and dad were teaching when they were in the studio or there
were other couples practising. So you're always your life was very very isolated into one kind of thing. Which was okay you know, there's other kids out playing with friends and things like this. So they always try to help in the way that I did other sports
and martial arts and things like this so I wasn't so, how do you say, like fielded into just being at home, at school and at the studio. Because that was it sometimes. I go to school and then I won't get home from the studio to 1 AM in the morning and you
know I'm like 12,13 years old so it didn't really help. but yeah it was good in a way and in some other ways It was bad because you couldn't do a lot of normal stuff being the fact that they were also professional dancers.
[Donnie] Helena, how did you meet up with Darren, to
get together in the first place? you were just both in London was it?
[Helena] So we were both in London we were both dancing
with different schools we were partnering students for a teacher student competition [ah ok] that and we both just happened to be teaching on the same day and we were, as you know those days can run very long and there are lots of breaks and you get, you’re trying to
motivate yourself to keep going and Darren and I start talking and both of us were British closed finalists at the time and we both had been around each other but never spoken to each other so that was kind of our chance to actually like talk and get to know
each other [to hook up] yeah.
[Donnie] why did you decide to turn pro? What made you
decide that?
[Helena] we had to take a little break in December because
I broke 2 bones in my foot and you know as a typical dancer it wasn't a dancing incident I was walking down the street in Singapore and I tripped and rolled my ankle and broke 2 bones
[Donnie] so the rumours that you did it kicking Darren
are not quite on the mark is it?
[Darren] no, everyone believes that more for obvious
reasons but no she did it just being clumsy
[Helena] so I had to take a break and I was in a boot
for about a month and I couldn't dance and I think then when you have that situation it makes you stop and think because you're forced to you can't actually do anything else and it gave us the time to actually think about how our dancing is going where we
want our dancing to progress and what we wanted to change in our dancing and we wanted to change a lot.
We wanted to change the style of our dancing, we wanted to change how we appeared as a couple, we wanted to change coaches, and there was a big shift,
yeah and we felt that we were turning into more professional dancers as a style. that our style was not, I think, best suited for amateur and more suited to professional and building up from me starting to dance again, I didn't want to then build up back to
dancing, put everything into something to then turn around with the same product. To turn around to do amateur again to work on that for 6 months and then turn professional. I wanted to, if this is the style that I'm going for I'm gonna put 100% of everything into it
[Darren] Because we were already kind of at a crossroads
because we finished Assen and then we did our British nationals and we kind of like we were looking back with our current coaches and everything like that and they all said you know it's not, it doesn't look like the other amateurs and we're kind of looking
at it being that we wanted a total style shift and everything like this so when Helena had a little accident it gave us the time and the freedom to really assess [really reflect]. So we then took that and then basically we just changed our coaches and then we
came up with a completely new product which we’re still developing but it feels much more like us. Because obviously competing you don't get a lot of time to reflect on anything.
[Donnie] So you start in Australia you do all that kinda
tour through Europe and Germany as you explained. Helena, where are you from?
[Helena] So I was born in London. My parents were,
my mum was born in Jamaica and my dad was born in Iran so I’m a mixture of a lot of different cultures. But I was born in England
[Donnie] okay so you meet up with this Aussie, this itinerant
Aussie right, and now I’m talking to you and you’re in New Jersey so why don’t you talk us through that?
[Helena] so big changes obviously with the last 6 months
and with all these changes for professional and like Darren said a little bit about wanting to change styles and wanting to change coaches and we started to work with Ricardo and Yulia
[Donnie] and obviously they know nothing
[Helena] of course not, world champions but nothing.
So we felt that this was the direction that we wanted to go for. We felt that the style we had at the time was a little bit too, it wasn't very clear it was a little bit drifty between you know somebody couldn't look at us as a couple and say they are a powerful
couple or a rhythmical couple or dynamic we felt we didn't have a, we weren’t getting clear answers either from other teachers and then we started working with Riccardo and Yulia and it was very clear the style we wanted to go for, the way that we wanted
To do it and we find that the system that they teach with it just made sense to both of us. [suits us]
[Donnie] great okay so that's the answer to that then
for people to know
[Darren] that's the secret
[Donnie] okay and they’re based at Koros in New Jersey.
Obviously we were there and saw that you had quite a good blackpool. how do you feel on reflecting about Blackpool, what would you say?
[Helena] i would say that when we went into Blackpool
obviously it was our first professional Competition, it was our first competition after all these changes so sometimes that's a nice thing because you have no expectation
[Donnie] and a freshness
[Helena] exactly we had a freshness and we had no previous
placing that you know we were previously a forty eight or previously something else so we were very excited and I think looking back we’re very happy with the changes that we made, we’re very happy that other people and other professionals saw those changes
and the positivity. yeah it's been really really nice, the feedback. I feel like though it was also the fact that we decided to make these changes and we had the mindset so we had such a good time preparing we had so much preparation which was great in comparison
to other years. So much preparation because we wanted to obviously have these goals in mind without any expectations just meant that we could prepare like never before so it was just so much better and then obviously when we were in Blackpool i was really
thankful because we had the camp. We had the legends camp because it was great for us obviously doing all that preparations and finals in the studio and things like this, it's not competition practice and obviously we hadn't stepped on the floor in 6 months
so the fact that we could go out there and dance with you know 12 other couples that straight away we got back into ah that's what a competitions like
[Donnie] and yeah the great thing about dance camps is
you can have the competition, real competition rehearsal and energy without the pressure of the results straight away
[Helena] exactly and you want everything to, you almost
want everything to go wrong at the camp because then you're testing it to go right for the competition
[Donnie] yeah get rid of all the gremlins for the real
occasion
[Darren]Yeah but no it was really good we had very different,
because obviously we came up with a very different product and energy and everything that everyone was very positive; and we've kind of also now taken a week on from that, looked back at all of our videos and everything so we already have the new goals and
directions from what we want from our own dancing which is great. because it's just I love how they can record every single round of the competition. It's fantastic and you can look back and reflect.
[Donnie] alright so what are your plans now?
[Darren] a lot of work
[Helena] so obviously moving forward are still continuing
to work with Ricardo and Yulia and continuing To kind of improve on this path, we're planning to be competing more in America which will be just a first for both of us because obviously you know we know that Darren’s like travelled quite a lot through Australia
and we've both competed a lot in Europe but we haven't competed a lot in America and I don't think that that many British couples do if you're based in the UK its just never seemed to be that popular, that crossover from Britain to America so this is an exciting
thing for us.
[Darren] but it's going to be great because another
reason why we were concerned before turning professional even before we'd finished up everything and actually decided to make that shift is that in the UK there's 4 comps a year apart from the majors that you can do so there's only like 8 competitions a year.
[Helena] yeah the professional scene is a lot smaller
in the UK than it is in America it's much bigger which means that we still have so many opportunities to compete in America
[Donnie] sure 140 comps or something a year and because
you know it's the home of pro-am yeah. I mean if you're a dancer the USA is the place to be
[Helena] yeah yeah there's so much happening all the
time and we were shocked actually when we came because we see there’s so much when we're in England but you don't realise until you actually come to America how much there really is.
[Donnie] i mean the NDCA have done a fantastic job in
America and the whole market is just thriving. You know, you’ve got so many competitions every weekend and they’re all busy.
[Helena] exactly and that’s the exciting thing.
[Darren] there’s nothing worse than doing a comp where
you have 2 rounds,
[Helena] No sometimes in England you have a straight
final
[Darren] its not, I can’t compete like that I need to
know that it's you know the competitors are around you and you can Feel the energy of the whole competition just yeah
[Helena] I think as you know Darren is a very active and
competitive person and part of what he thrives on is beating everyone else
[Donnie] well i know that and i knew his mum and dad
[Helena] yep so you know where he gets it from
[Donnie] yeah. The apple and the tree and all that. Yeah
ok well it's been really fun talking to you and doing this I’ve really enjoyed it actually, I hope it's useful. Is there any other message that you want to give
[Helena] we just want to say thank you so much for sorting
this interview for us and we just appreciate everything that you’re doing in dancing in general. we're very grateful as competitors
[Darren] it gives us the most opportunity we can to
dance with our friends, our family and you know be able to show the world what we want and it's fantastic
[Donnie] great ok. So good luck to you both. Gonna look
forward to you being Trail Blazers on the floor.