Special Feature at Black Men In America.com

The Many Talents of Darrin Henson

By Vanessa Werts

Exclusive To Black Men In America.com

Remember the adage: jack of all trades, master of none? Well sometimes it doesn’t apply. Occasionally a person comes along with an unrelenting determination to do it all. Award winning choreographer, actor, producer, and director, Darrin DeWitt Henson is not only mastering his craft, he’s taking the entertainment industry by storm.

In an unforgiving business where you’re only as hot as your latest project, Henson is proving that he has staying power. Best known for his role as Lem, a reformed thug on the hit Television series Soul Food; and most recently for his leading role in the box office hit Stomp the Yard. Other motion pictures to Henson’s credit include the HBO Film Life Support, and The Salon. His repertoire also boasts the musical stage play Fabric of A Man, and his directing debut, Violations, starring Malik Yoba and Cynda Williams.

A true renaissance man, Henson continues his momentum with four new projects scheduled for release later this year. Sounds like a man too busy for much else, right? Wrong. Henson’s love of music and dance has set him on yet another journey. He is currently touring cities throughout the country with his seminars and workshops, Darrin’s Dance Grooves Seminars, teaching both children and adults the importance of exercise and good health. Henson is also promoting his second DVD, Darrin’s Dance Grooves 2.

When Henson’s tour brought him to the Washington D.C. area, BMIA had the opportunity to sit down with him for a most intriguing interview. During an hour long lunch at a D.C. suburb restaurant, Henson shared his approach to achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and details of his upcoming projects.

To my pleasure, Henson was incredibly genuine, personable, and full of wisdom.

BMIA: Tell me about your seminars and workshops.

Henson: We have two workshops: public and private. Anyone can attend a public workshop…they fill up pretty fast…we work with up to 75 people at the same time. We also do workshops for groups, where a group can have me come in to conduct a workshop, and it’s not open to the public. Our private sessions are for small groups [up to 10] or one-on-one where we focus on them and work with them individually. We find out what their goals are…what they want to do…then we design a plan to help them get there.

BMIA: Do private workshops include help with dieting?

Henson: Loosing weight is all a state of mind…it’s about conditioning the mind. We don’t call them diets we call them ‘livets’ because most of the time when people are dieting that’s exactly how they feel, so we want to create an infrastructure and base for people in their lives, to create a mental, physical, eating, ah…pattern for them to feel good about. We want them to have a feel good relationship with themselves. So we call them livets. So we use the taste, touch, and smell sensory system…and feeling system, to work for the actual person. If you eat something and it tastes good then we’re gonna construct it and teach you how to eat it where it actually supports your taste buds; exercise where you start to desire more of it opposed to less of it in the way that you exercise. So this is what’s important about how we approach our way of moving forward into our new selves.

BMIA: When you have a private workshop, do you tailor the program to meet each individuals needs?

Henson: Absolutely. What we do is, we find out how the person moves, what they’re used to doing, what their abilities are…and I have A, B & C routines; I have a beginners routine, I have a middle stage routine, and then I have an advanced routine depending on the particular individual. If there’s a person who wants to lose weight and dance, what I do is I sit down with them and go over a number of different exercises to see what level of intensity they’re at. I have them exercise before the actual dance class, and then we start the dance class and I construct moves that go along with their ability. And what I have them do is…I have them do it three times a week for at least one hour. So it’s an aerobic activity as well as a fun activity. Everybody loves hearing music, everybody loves some form of dancing whether it’s line-dancing that you would. You do the Cupid Shuffle for an hour, you’re moving to different songs like the Cupid Shuffle or the Cha Cha Slide, Electric Slide; these are all theme dances that you do which deal with health, fitness, and exercise. And after an hour of sliding you’re working your thighs, you’re working your abs, you’re working your arms…you move everything. Many different things are constructed for them.

BMIA: What age group do you work with in your dance workshops?

Henson: The demographics are ages 5-30.

BMIA: What brings you to the DC area?

Henson: I’ve been teaching in the local schools. Yesterday, I taught at Thomas G. Pullen school [in Maryland]; today I’m doing a dance school…and basically what I’m trying to do is bring an awareness to people’s minds and bodies about goals. In other words, if you set a goal, then that means that you have to constructively think about what your goal is, and you have to make decisions daily according to what your goal is. If there’s something that you’re gonna do, eat, or think that doesn’t support your final goal then you have to change your way of thinking…you see? So if you say you want to loose thirty pounds, but eating a certain type of food doesn’t support loosing that thirty pounds then you’ve got to change what you order. If you know going to a place promotes loosing more energy opposed to gaining energy and awareness, maybe you should go to a different place. Maybe what you watch on television, what you read…if it does not support that final goal then you have to change it…it’s about reaching that final goal. So sometimes we have to ‘think about’ what we’re thinking about.

BMIA: It sounds like you work with kids a lot. What drives you to work with the youth?

Henson: Pure spirits. I think that you have to spend less time being, ah…I just think working with children is a lot easier; they’re a lot more unaffected than adults. You have to spend a lot more time reconditioning an adults mind than a child. And if you give them the proper information they’ll use it. It’s kind of like, I look at children and watch them play their PS2 [Play Station 2] games or PS3 [Play Station 3] games; they just pick up and start playing. Next thing you know they know how to play that game. So you know dealing with a child’s mind is a whole lot easier…they’re much faster learners than adults are, because adults start to deal with fear. Children aren’t afraid of anything.

BMIA: Do you find that the kids are engaged when you’re there; are they hanging on your every word?

Henson: Absolutely. What happens is you’re a person walking in there who’s known for his dance ability…you know, television series Soul Food of course…hit movie Stomp the Yard, you have a lot of influence over children and what they do. So I look at it as you know, they listen to certain radio stations and hear certain music, watch certain television programs, but I’m in the flesh with them. So if I can shake their hands and inspire them then I’m ah, you know…not infecting them, I’m affecting them. So you know, that’s how I like to look at it. So I like to, at any available time participate in that gathering of the minds. It’s powerful in an hour with them. What you have is the children start changing their parent’s minds about things. The child says mommy I don’t want to go to the movies, I want to go to dance class. The next thing, the parents find after watching the dance class for an hour they say that’s fun I want to do that. And then you’ve created a parents class. You know I’ve done so many workshops for so long, so now we’re creating parent classes because so many parents bring their kids to the workshop and they come there from nine to five you know, when we do the big ones [workshops]. And so parents are like…we want to take classes. So we created a three hour workshop for parents now. That’s what Darrin’s Dance Grooves Part 2 is constructed for…it’s to do it in the privacy of your own home but with your family. And the DVD is created where you can see both back and front of the instruction now. And it’s broken down a whole lot slower…and I just think it’s a lot more fun than the first one. It was great to see Britney Spears, it was fun to see N-SYNC in the first one, but right now we are living in a reality based world. And reality means that it’s about what’s real to you. It’s not about what Justin [Timberlake] is doing, it’s not about what Beyonce’s doing…it’s about what you’re doing. You can take the influences of Beyonce…you can take the influences Mya, you can take the influences of Justin, of Omarion, the influences of Chris Brown, and do it [dance] in your own home.

BMIA: Do people stop you on the street wanting to show you their moves, or what they’ve learned from the video?

Henson: We have tons of videos on Youtube, people imitating the moves…and they’re on Youtube and people are doing the dances and it’s great. And I’m really happy about that because like I said, we’re affecting people, not infecting them. And if it is infectious, then it’s infectious in a good way. Because it’s changing people’s lives, and I’m very proud of that…I’m proud of that. And you know, Darrin’s Dance Grooves 2 is still an unknown DVD, literally…it’s an unknown DVD because although we have a commercial for it, it’s an internet commercial. We haven’t expanded to do a, ah…you know we have yet to do a national or international commercial like the first one. Basically, the first one was a great DVD that I had created…and pitched the idea… it was a wonderful small company, they put a lot behind it…it took about 2 million dollars to advertise, you know; that’s a whole lot of money. If we had a million of that to advertise right now, just to put it on the commercial then we’d do it and it would be as big. You know we sold 4 million copies the first time. I sold about a hundred thousand copies of the second one…direct sales on my Web site. But you know we’re looking to expand. You know those are great numbers but you know we’re looking to do a lot bigger number because we know how good the DVD is.

BMIA: You weren’t formally trained, yet you are an award winning choreographer. What would you tell an aspiring dancer who wanted to take the same path as you?

Henson: What I tell people is afford themselves the opportunity to have education with anything and everything…ah, Darrin’s road is going to be different from your road. Individually I tell people whatever you feel innately, go with it because that is your road to success. What you feel…that thing in your head that makes you go. Somebody called me two days ago and they said, man you know I’m in my third year of college and I’m really thinking about changing one of my subjects…I want to take an acting class, but I don’t know man…are there a lot of people in Hollywood who went to college and took acting class. I said yes and no. You know I didn’t go to college…I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, I’m just saying, Darrin didn’t…but I still ended up on the screen. I still have three companies, I still have you know, a successful DVD; I still have creative career. What I tell you to do is follow your heart. I say, don’t make a living…live your making. Because when you do that then you’re following what is given to you and what is naturally innate inside of you and you’ll never go wrong with it. You know; if you love swimming, swim. If you love dancing, just dance; it doesn’t cost anything. If you love acting then read about acting; go and get a book, you know, on acting. Go take an acting class. Don’t worry about what the person next to you is doing. That’s their life and those are their choices. You follow you’re hearts desire without fear, without hesitation, without procrastination, and you’ll always advance.

BMIA: As a choreographer, actor, producer, and director, which presents the most challenge?

Henson: They all present their own challenges. Ah…as a dancer, your challenge is to dance for other choreographers, with their style on their body types, right. As a choreographer your job is to create dance steps and stage shows that look completely different from other people’s stage shows. As a director your job is to tell a story. I directed a movie for Showtime called Violations, starring Malik Yoba and Cynda Williams…. You know I started a company a couple of years ago and they gave us the money and said you’ll own this movie, you direct this movie, you produce this movie…you get the company together it’s your movie, here’s the money. It was wonderful. And ah, you know that was one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life because you really have to live in each one of the characters heads as well as be able to tell the story in a way that’s going to be efficacious where people get it. Ah…and as a producer your job is to get other people to believe in your project and ah, you know, win them over; so they all present their own obstacles. I never call things problems because they’re not. And if you do then every problem has a solution so then it’s just an obstacle. And ah…but all of them are different and I love all of them for different reasons.

Henson went “submarine deep on us,” says Gary Johnson, founder of BMIA.com, as we switched from interview mode to dialogue, following my last question. Before it all ended, we talked sports, history, ideologies about race, and philosophies on life, and even dropped some trivia. Henson also showed his sense of humor when I joked him about the pompous character he played in Stomp the Yard.

You can catch Henson on the big screen this year in these high-powered films: The Express, where Henson plays Heisman Trophy winner Jim Brown; The Hustle, a comedy starring Charlie Murphy, where Henson plays a church pastor, and A Good Man is Hard to Find, starring Hill Harper, and Debra Cox.

To find out more about Darrin’s Dance Groove Seminars and workshops, or to purchase the Darrin’s Dance Grooves 2 DVD, go to http://www.darrinhenson.com.

Special thanks to Donnese Tyler for making this interview possible.


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Darrin Henson and Vanessa Werts after the interview.

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This interview was conducted by Gary Johnson for Black Men In America.com with a special thanks to Peggy Hicks of TriCom Publicity, Inc., for arranging this interview.

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