Twin brothers John and Lenny Pearce are two of the youngest members from dance and hip hop team Justice Crew, winners of 2010’s Australia’s Got Talent and now burgeoning chart toppers with the release of their single And Then We Dance.
What can you tell us about the rise of Justice Crew?
JOHN: We first got together April 2009, so we’ve been dancing and doing stuff together for just over a year and a half now.
LENNY: Nothing really happened until the show. We’d been trying to get out there for a long time. We weren’t really known until we won the show, and that’s when everything began escalating.
What made you enter Australia’s Got Talent?
J: Our mentor Maurice June told us about the auditions, which were that Saturday and so we just did. Why not?
L: It was something we’d never tried before. And we ended up doing well. We got standing ovations all three rounds. And it was less than a year – we’d only been together 10 months. We’d already won the Australian Hip Hop Dance Championships, and then placed 13th in the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in Las Vegas, so we weren’t sure how to make it bigger. Until the show came along.
There’s recently been a big release of dance crew movies – are they a pretty accurate depiction of what it’s like to be in a crew?
L: The latest movie Step Up 3D was like how the show ran around us. We did it, we made the semis and before the grand final we all had, like, a breakdown. We almost broke up as a group… before the show finished. And then we sat down and pulled it all together. It was just like the movie.
J: Every time you rush to the top there’s always going to be that bump you’ve got to get over. You can never get to the top easily.
And Then We Dance, both the single and behind-the-scenes DVD documentary, are out now through Sony Music. www.justicecrew.com.au
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
