A young Julian Tocker remembers the fear as his college bus entered the blacked-out Hataitai tunnel that connects Wellington to its southern suburbs.

The boys on the bus would yell, "Lights out, driver!" The entire bus would turn black. And then the fists of Tocker's high school peers would hit his body.

"I'll never forget the school bus. It was diabolical...They'd come and just beat me up," the Dancing With The Stars judge recalls, while sitting in a busy Karori cafe.

davide zerilli

Tocker says his biggest achievement so far has been returning to New Zealand to be a judge on Three's Dancing With The Stars.

The harsh winter sun streams through the window behind him as his aviator sunglasses sit in the middle of the table. He's just finished brunch in his old stomping town, and soon he'll be taking a trip down memory lane at his old primary school St Teresa's.

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"I feel quite passionate about coming back to talk to the kids about not letting people bully [them] and to not let it affect them and to always stay true to what you want to do," he says. 

"If you have a passion for acting or singing, if it's drama or dance or playing an instrument - whatever it is - I really want to try to push that and as long as you keep following that passion, you know it could be for a hobby or a career, it doesn't matter. If you love it, do it."

Because, despite the adversity Tocker encountered, that's exactly what he did.

Life hasn't always been a ballroom dance for the 30-year-old judge. 

Dani McDonald

Tocker returned to his old primary school to encourage kids to follow their passions.

Similar to the British film Billy Elliot, where the young ballet dancer hides his love of dance from his boxing fanatic father, Tocker too grew up in a sport-dominated family - in this case, rugby. His father was a rugby player-turned coach, his sister married former New Zealand Māori and Lions player Riki Flutey, and his brother, JP Tocker, is a former player and rugby commentator.

Dancing, Tocker says, was never really an option.

But the young athlete, who had a foot in rugby, cricket, waterpolo, basketball, athletics and tennis, (as well as drama and speech) saw a couple dancing on television. He wanted to give it a shot. 

Julz Tocker, 30, returns back to his old school at St Teresa's Primary in in north Wellington.

He asked his mum to take him to dancing lessons behind his father's back.

When Tocker's mum stood at the edges of the dance studio watching her son, he asked her to leave.

"I was like, you don't come to rugby practice, you don't come to basketball practice, you've never been to cricket practice, trust me I'd know, and you've never been to athletics so why would you come to this," he said.

"I had to control that from the word go and that was also quite interesting. She was supportive of me getting there and I was like, 'OK I'll let you know when you can come and get me'.

"I'd just get myself on the bus after school and get myself into town and go to my Friday night dance class. It was so cool."

Eventually he told his dad, but his response wasn't so positive.

Dani McDonald

It wasn't the children lining up to capture a selfie with the Dancing With The Stars judge, rather it was the parents.

"Dancing is not seen and that's why I want to come back and I want to talk to the kids. I just didn't take no for an answer and I didn't take the bullying. Of course I got bullied from everybody," he said.

As Tocker arrives at St Teresa's a few kids stare and take snaps with their mobile phones, but it's the mums that are the first to get selfies with the dancing star. 

His teachers remember him as the flamboyant kid that loved school discos and just "made things happen".

davide zerilli

Julz Tocker hid his love of dancing from his father growing up.

As a student he'd sellotape plastic bags on the windows of the same school hall where's he's teaching today's school kids salsa, to make a Matrix-like production. "He was just so fun," the school secretary Brenda McCabe recalls of him. 

"You always got things organised." 

Tocker took to dancing at 12-years old. He was about to transition to St Patrick's College in Kilbirnie where, while considering leaving school to focus on dance, he would encounter even more doubters.

davide zerilli

The 30-year-old dancer was subjected to bullies and ney-sayers growing up.

"In my college they said, I don't know if this is a good idea. Are you sure you know what you are doing? I think you should stay," he says.

"And I'm like, I'm out. You don't even know what I do. You've never seen me dance, you've never seen me perform, you don't even know, so don't give me information on something you don't even know anything about.

"I look back at that and I remember I was sitting there in the big school assembly at college with 1000 boys and I was like, I know I'm going to do something else."

He left school at 16 and went to Australia. From there he went to London, Italy, back to London, lived between Asia and London, and then moved to America.

Since then he's played the lead role in the 2017 Dirty Dancing USA Broadway tour, was a New Zealand Latin Champion, Australian Latin and Ballroom Champion and was placed in the World Latin American Semi Finalist titles in 2012.

He's been involved in Dancing With The Stars Australia and in the States as a professional dancer, choreographer, and co-hostof the 2015 and 2016 series, Dancing With The Stars After Show.

He also worked with Hollywood actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in the musical film La La Land.

"It was one of those surreal moments where you go, am I seriously just sitting here on the ground eating Tender Greens (a US food chain) with Ryan? And he just gave me his salad because I was really hungry still.

"It was a real special moment. Ryan had obviously lived in NZ while filming and he picked up on my Kiwi accent quite quickly. He was like, 'where are you from bro?' And I was like, 'how can you even do that accent, how do you know?'

"We bromanced about NZ."

As he makes his way through the hallways of his old primary school, reminiscing over memories of having a pizza delivery guy bring free pizza to school because of a speech he was making, he's scribbling his signature of ripped up pieces of paper, dancing and posing for selfies with students and teachers, and marvelling at the fact students have laptops nowadays.

But, despite the massive achievements he's had overseas and the glamour of working with the world's best, it's coming home to little old New Zealand that the star marks as his career highlight.

"To be honest with you, it's so full circle because, coming from a country and schools of people not accepting me as a dancer and to come home and just be like, here I am and I have continued doing what I wanted to do when you all said no, I've continued and I haven't given up. I'm not going to give up."

 - Stuff