Dancing back to NZ
After four years, former Dancing With the Stars NZ judge Julz Tocker is returning from Los Angeles to New Zealand to tour Ballroom Blitz, and hopes to get good friend (and Hollywood superstar) Goldie Hawn’s mental health programme in Kiwi schools.
In 2020, Covid put a spanner in the works for many of Tocker’s plans. Fresh after arriving in Auckland to judge his third season of Three’s Dancing With The Stars NZ, the country was put into lockdown and weeks later the show was postponed.
“What people don’t know is I also had bought the licence to tour a live Dancing With The Stars NZ production, after the show finished that year,” Tocker tells Spy.
After a tough few years, Tocker says the timing could not be better to be coming home to tour Ballroom Blitz. He is pleased things have come full circle and says the 12-centre
New Zealand tour will blow people away when it starts at the end of this month.
Tocker is proud and honoured to be part of both the New Zealand and Australian tours of Ballroom Blitz which is choreographed by three-time Dancing With The Stars Australia champion Aric Yegudkin.
Tocker says the show features 12 first-class dancers — including Dancing With The Stars NZ winner Shae Mountain — breathtaking costumes, lighting and stage design, fused with heartpounding music by the live band.
In the past four years, Tocker has tragically lost eight friends, the majority dying because of mental health issues.
“I suffered quite heavily with the losses and have been very lucky to have my friends to pick me up and keep me going,” says Tocker.
In his nearly 20 years in
Los Angeles, where he has starred in Dirty Dancing USA and numerous seasons of Dancing With The Stars, he has formed a close friendship with superstar Goldie Hawn. Hawn’s foundation has a programme called MindUP, which for over 20 years has provided a mental health programme equipping students, educators and families. Having experienced mental health issues as well as bullying throughout his career in New Zealand, Wellington-born and raised Tocker has long wanted to bring Hawn’s programme to New Zealand. Over the past few years, he has taken time and trained as an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) master practitioner life coach. “I’m more than ever involved in the mental health sphere and have been working for years to get Goldie’s mindful programme for children in our own schools here in New Zealand,” he says. Tocker says he is working with key players to make Hawn’s programme a reality and also hopes to join forces with Mike King and I Am Hope for a national speaking tour. “Coming home after four years away, is one emotional roller-coaster, I can tell you, but it will be the first of many visits home to spread dance, positive energy, mental health awareness to help save our population’s suicide rate from growing any larger.”
He says he loves how dancing and performing are so good for people’s mental health. “Whether it’s us on stage doing it, or the audience enjoying it, music and dance are cathartic.” Later this year, Tocker is producing a big glam event for Hawn in Hollywood, which will be MCed by comedian Martin Short.
If he is successful in getting Hawn’s programme across the line in New Zealand, he hopes to host the Oscar winner Downunder.