Sean Smullen & Aimie Leak

In 2017, after a successful Amateur career, Sean Smullen was featured on Ireland's "Dancing with the Stars" as a professional dancer. Once the show was over, Sean and Aimie both decided it was the right time to return to the competitive dancefloor and compete as a professional couple. They have not looked back since. In July 2019, Sean was elected WDSF Professional Division (PD) representative on the WDSF Athletes Commission. 

Aimie Leak, originally from Bournemouth, has been dancing since she was very young. In 2017, when Sean was performing on Dancing with the Stars Ireland, Aimie continued building and developing their dance school. Once the show was over, they both decided it was the right time to compete as a professional couple, adn have never looked back since.

How does it feel to be a DSI Elite Performer? "When people ask us what does it mean to be a DSI Elite performer, we always tell them it’s a dream come true although, to us it means many things, but most of all representing a company that strives for perfection in every single aspect of their business. From the highest quality fabrics, to the very last rhinestone placed. From books to CDs to DVDs, to the very last edit on DSI TV, before it is even published there is always great pride taken in DSI London work.    It is this great pride that make us, as dancers feel so privileged to be an extension of the DSI brand, but honestly we feel more like a part of the DSI family than anything else. Our favourite days are the trips booked, going to the DSI showroom in London.  Whether we are there for a new design, a dress fitting, new custom made practice wear, accompanying students who's dreams become a reality or even a behind the scenes tour of DSI with CarolE (If you haven’t been yet book yourself a place!!).     So what people should really ask us is, “what is it like to be a part of the DSI family?” and to that we can only reply… It’s FANTASTIC!!"  

Sean and Aimie first started dancing together in February 2014, as an amateur couple competing all around the world. In 2015, they became DSI Elite Performers. When Sean's season of Dancing with the Stars Ireland had finished, they decided to head back to the dancefloor and compete as professionals. Since then, they have been dancing together as an Irish Professional Ballroom couple.

1. World Ranking: 5th place in WDSF World Ranking Professional Standard in April 2020. 2. Bronze Medalists at the WDSF Professional World Showdance Championship Standard in Dresden, Germany 2019. 3. Finalists at the WDSF Professional World Showdance Championship Standard in Riga, Latvia 2018. 4. Semi Finalists at the WDSF Professional World Championship in Moscow, Russia. 5. Semi Finalists at the WDSF Professional European Championship in Chisinau, Moldova 2019. 6. Semi Finalists at the WDSF Professional European Championship in St. Petersburg, Russia 2018. 7. WDSF Professional Super Grand Prix Semi Finalists in Tokyo, Japan 2019. 8. WDSF Professional Super Grand Prix Semi Finalists in Pieve Di Cento, Italy 2019. 9. Silver Medalists at the GOC Professional Rising Stars in Stuttgart, 2017. 10. Finalists of the World Asian DanceSport Festival in Tokyo, Japan 2017. 11. WDSF World Open finalists in Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, France, Luxembourg, Japan and USA. 12. Winners of the Holland Masters in 2016. 13. Reigning Irish National Champions since 2014. 14. Top representative at World, European & International Level.

Although times have been very tough over the last year, we both have endeavoured to try and utilise our time the best we can, with a positive mindset!   We are incredibly fortunate to have been able to practice through the majority of this pandemic. Our studio is situated in a very quiet and sparse area of Wicklow, which meant we were not in contact with anyone and therefore at very low risk. Also, Ireland is fortunate to recognise “DanceSport” as an official sport, and “Elite Athletes” were permitted to train individually throughout the full lockdown.   Before, as we were constantly on and off planes, we had very little time to spare. Days where we were not travelling, we would do a few hours of technical practice, followed by lunch and then teaching. Literally, eat, sleep, dance, repeat. As we did not have too much free time, and were constantly tired from travelling we devoted very little time to our “performance/cardio” element of training. We would perform finals maximum one time per week.   For us, and our dance career, COVID-19 has been a blessing, we have devoted and made our primary focus on the conditioning of our bodies, to enhance our dancing! We started off doing three finals in a row, (all dances of two minutes) with only 5 minutes break recovery. At the beginning, this was very difficult - now we are addicted! We only recently did 50 dances back-to-back with no rest period - that’s how crazy we are (and we do this at least 3 times per week), and now performance days are the highlight of our week!   A huge highlight that got us through the first lockdown, was receiving the most amazing package from DSI London. Full of our beautiful personalised practice wear (even Sean ventured away from black and added colour to his wardrobe!). I can honestly say, when your practice wear is as beautiful and vibrant as ours, you can never have a bad practice, as you know you always look good!   If we are not in the studio working hard ourselves, as we know everyone has been finding the current situation very difficult, we decided to give the gift of dance, not just to our own students but to everyone free of charge on zoom. We are currently on our fourth lockdown, and we have provided free zooms during the whole of all lockdowns, sometimes even 4 times per week. We feel it’s really important, as we’ve been so fortunate, to try and help others who are struggling mentally and financially.   Our most exciting news of 2020 was receiving an Official letter from The President of Ireland Mr Michael D. Higgins, commending our achievements. Within his letter he praised us on:   “The skill, professionalism, perseverance, commitment and talent”, and applauded us for our results and medals on behalf of Ireland.   The certificate is now proudly displayed on our wall.