Lords of The Dance

Marlon “Swoosh” Wallen is one of the coolest dudes on the planet. Not only is the 26-year-old the founding member and chief choreographer of Flawless, and therefore the best street dancer around, but his dance troupe has gone global and the world is now their oyster.

It’s been a year since Flawless set Britain’s Got Talent alight and since then their fame has rocketed. Their film 3D Streetdance went to Number 1, they’ve featured in fashion shoots for GQ magazine, entertained the crowds at London’s 02, become ambassadors for the Prince’s Trust and appeared in music videos with the likes of Madonna, Beyonce and Leona Lewis. They were even chased by Usher recently, so desperate was he to work with them.

Flawless are also going on tour and coming to Oxford’s New Theatre, so you can see them in action for yourself. Yet despite their rocketing fame and overnight success, Marlon’s designer-shod feet are still firmly on the ground.

“No the fame hasn’t gone to any of our heads. We are too busy for a start, because the whole world has gone dance-crazy.” Marlon laughs, without acknowledging that’s mostly down to him.

“For me it was always about getting Flawless recognised - to make it a legendary street dance group and to inspire other people into chasing their dreams,” he says.

But although fame appears to have arrived overnight, it was a long time coming. Marlon was a jobbing dancer when he formed Flawless back in 2005, hand-picking each of the team himself. “I chose each of the nine dancers very carefully, and told them, ‘You don’t need to be the best dancer in the world but you need to fit in with the group, listen to other people’s points of view and work as a team’. That was more of a deciding factor for me, and that’s how Flawless was picked,” Marlon explains.

Which might explain why Flawless are so close. Marlon describes them as more of a “family unit” and says it was his own experiences of trying to break into the business that forced him to rethink the process. “My solo experience of being a dancer was pretty tough, watching people struggle to experience their goals, going to audition after audition, that made me want to change the way I pursued my dreams and the way we would work,” he remembers. ”I also wanted to change the way street dance was perceived in the dance industry, and for dancers to be treated with the same respect as athletes, so I was always very serious about it.”

Despite his ambitions, Marlon says hitting the big time was still harder than any of them expected, yet they never faltered. “It was hard from the start. Blood, sweat and tears is how we got here. Lots of the team were still in education or college and people weren’t sure about boys dancing so it was hard for them.”

In terms of bullying? “Yeah, it was a nightmare, because there were no other all-boy dance teams” Marlon remembers. “Once we had established ourselves people realised street dance was cool, but until then it was a struggle. There was a lot of negative energy from some people which is why we had to get our heads down and believe in what we were doing. I knew it could happen.”

So did they consider throwing in the towel? Marlon smiles: “Some days you train and if you can come away with one thing that you can go back and work on tomorrow, you have come away with something - just to get one move that would be good enough to perform. So you come back tomorrow and you keep working at it.

”For me, it was always going to be what I was going to do. But lots of the guys struggled with holding down part-time jobs and their studies, as well as Flawless. The members needed to be totally dedicated and believe in Flawless totally to push it forward.”

You’d think that winning the World Dance Championship in 2006 would be enough, and yet despite being the best dancers in the world, fame was still unforthcoming. “Flawless still didn’t have a national profile,” Marlon remembers.

That was until Flawless stepped out onto the Britain’s Got Talent stage in 2009 and changed the course of dance history overnight. “Britain’s Got Talent gave us that profile,” Marlon agrees. “We were confident in what we could do, but BGT was prime-time and it changed the perception of street dance overnight.”

As for the response, Marlon said it was “overwhelming”. “We knew it would change things in a big way. So it wasn’t just about winning,” he says, “because it wasn’t until we went prime-time that people become aware how much street dance there was out there.”

Since then the floodgates have opened and Flawless haven’t looked back. “I want to make Flawless a worldwide thing, tour globally and encourage kids to change their dreams by dancing at school,” Marlon says earnestly. “But the main thing is to be motivational, knowing who you are and what you want and pulling together. For us, streetdance is about peace and sharing something very special. It’s our destiny through dance.”

And looking cool into the bargain is something Marlon has also engineered, hence the suits. Marlon chuckles: “We realised image was important, because it was all hoodies and trainers until then, which is why we have gone for couture style. It was about looking at the industry and changing that. We are slim, trim and slick; it’s a different look, earns us a level of respect and we come across with a different profile. We are versatile.”

So are they versatile on stage too? “People have only seen Flawless for 5-10 minutes at a time until now, so the show lets you see how individually talented each of the Flawless team are and how many different styles of dance they can do,” Marlon promises.

“And we are very focused on getting to this point and are still humbled by it. We had made provisions to get here of course, but yes, this is full-time now which is a great achievement.” And then his face breaks into a grin. “Actually, its absolutely phenomenal because this is what we wanted to do.”

* Flawless are at Oxford’s New Theatre on September 17. Box office 0844 8471588.