Dancing Backstage: Was Maks Glad to Be Back?
Melanie Brown and Maksim Chmerkovskiy by Kelsey McNeal/ABC
It's a wonder they ever got the 100th episode of
Dancing with the Stars off the ground: Imagine trying to wrangle more than two dozen kissing and hugging celebrities into their seats. Even the judges got into the act. Carrie Ann Inaba left the judges' table to wrap her arms around Drew Lacey. After the show, there would be a massive cake, a group picture and a celebration at a Hollywood hot spot. But the
real party started on the dance floor, as six seasons' worth of stars and pros staged their own joyous reunion.
"Can everyone take a seat,
please," pleaded warm-out comedian Bill Sindelar for the umpteenth time. (They ignored him, of course.)
Sabrina Bryan needed to hug Wayne Newton.
Joey Fatone grabbed pro Kym Johnson. Mark Cuban shook hands with Jerry Springer. "All my boys are here!" cried Johnson, who partnered Springer, Fatone and Cuban. "Except for Penn [Jillette], who had to do his show in Vegas."
For the studio audience - seeded with 100 fans from all 50 states who won a contest to be there - it was an amazing spectacle, a stellar night of star-gazing. "There's Apolo!" cried one woman as the Season 4 champ stood on the sidelines getting ready to dance.
"It's like I never left," says
Maksim Chmerkovskiy, who returned for a reunion dance with Spice Girl
Mel B. "We're doing a samba and a mambo. The samba is new, and the mambo is the one we did on the show. I was thinking about doing something new, but it was a big hit on the show, so I decided to bring it back. The audience is going to love it."
Chmerkovskiy, who's been sorely missed this season, just opened a third dance studio on Long Island. He says the temporary break from
DWTS was just what he needed to recharge his batteries. "No one supported me in this decision," he says. "Not one person was even understanding. They were like, 'We don't care if you're tired. People would kill to be in the spotlight like this. You're 28, suck it up.'"
But to Chmerkovskiy, who hadn't been home in two years, it was time to reconnect with his family, his students, and live life away from the cameras. He's still under contract and may return next season. But the break did wonders for his state of mind. "When the show started this season, I thought I was going to miss it," he says. "But I didn't have that feeling at all. I've been training, I've been on a schedule to work out, I've been experimenting with yoga and I love it. When the hell would I have time to do that?"
The only sad point in the evening was the ouster of
Mario from the competition. The audience gasped when Broadway star Marissa Jaret Winokur was saved, knowing that it spelled doom for the R&B star. But Mario was smiling to the end, a class act who says he learned a lot in the past two months, including the finer points of listening to his partner, Karina Smirnoff. "I knew how to listen to a woman," says the 21 year-old. "But I learned how to
appreciate what she had to say. Big difference."
Did he think he deserved higher scores? "A lot of people felt that way," says Mario. "But there was nothing I could do about it and I have to keep being the entertainer that I am. I was talking to some of the other dancers and we were saying if we'd had a month to learn all these dances, how amazing we all would be."
Mario pauses, then smiles. "What Karina taught me is that under pressure, you perform your best. I think I'm going to still ballroom dance. I'll continue." -
Deborah Starr Seibel
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