Dancing's Derek Hough: We're Doing Parallel Universes!

Hey everyone!
How are you? I hope none of you got out of practice not voting for us! We're going to need your votes this week!
It's another busy week for us. I'm doing the Macy's Stars of Dance and we have two full dances, one of which is a trio. I'm trying to do something new where I'm going to connect the two dances into one. We have the Viennese waltz and the paso doble, which are very different, so I'm going to make parallel universes. The set will be pretty much the same for both, but it'll be different universes and there'll be an element to go in the next dimension.
Does that make sense? I'm going to try to make it clear that they're connected. I was thinking of having a cliff-hanger after one, but then I realized we have to be scored, so that kind of ruins that! That was originally what I had in mind, but now I'm making them separate but related. I really hope it won't be too out there for the judges. I think just as long there's enough content and technique, they'll get it. In some dances, the story outweighs the content, but we'll have enough of both hopefully.
Rehearsals are going well. Tristan is our trio partner, which is awesome. Kellie's picking everything up, but we still have a bit more work to do. Carrie Ann was saying last week that she doesn't feel the emotional connection from Kellie and I thought that was a fair comment. Hopefully this story will help in that it will put her in a world where she can somebody else. Unfortunately, the song is so short that it can be hard. The waltz is only one minute and six seconds.
I was thrilled with our samba. I thought Kellie did amazing. Samba's not an easy dance. I was kind of worried about it, especially since we were running around everywhere last week. It was a long routine with a lot of content. She came out fast. The samba's also a party dance, so I'm not sure how much emotional connection is necessary. But it's true that we need to do that and the technique well.
We were pretty surprised to get not only the highest score, but immunity. It was such a crazy week last week that we didn't really expect it. It was a relief to know that we were safe, but it was also strange. I honestly don't know how I feel about having immunity on the show. It's certainly not my favorite new thing they've added. That would be the dancing bumpers we do now going in and out of commercials. I love those. It's a great way of showcasing all our dancers and reminding everyone that this is a dancing show. It adds to the show and I'm not sure what immunity adds. But don't get me wrong — I'm happy we didn't have to sweat it out Tuesday.
We also didn't have to do the dance-off, which was nice. We prepared for it. It's funny because I hear and read all these comments about the selection process saying how people used or didn't used strategy, and the truth is we all had it pre-planned. Andy wanted to do cha-cha because that was his best one of the three. Mark wanted to do cha-cha, so they just said to each other, "Hey, you want cha-cha too? We'll pick each other." Zendaya and Jacoby wanted to do jive, so they worked it out. And Sean and Ingo had no problem with the rumba since that was their individual dance too. Literally, everyone was going around making deals, like, "Can you pick me?" So it was funny to me to see people thinking Mark and Aly were dissing Andy by choosing him, but Andy told them to pick him!
I am really bummed to see Andy go, but I'm also super-proud. He made it to Week 7; he's come a long way and Sharna did a great job with him. He came a lot further than people thought he would and he thought he would. More importantly, he achieved more than he thought he could, just from connecting with people with his story, determination and personality. People were really rooting for him. From what I gather, there were people who were against him when the cast was announced. It's real redemption for him. Andy's been through a lot and he's a truly a wonderful guy. I'm really proud to be part of a show that has such a great effect on people. I do wish he had one encore. He deserved one, especially for the Alice in Wonderland routine. In that same vein, I hope he's not thinking about that 5 he got. I went back and watched his dance, and I enjoyed it. All of his dances are endlessly enjoyable. I told Andy, "Remember, as soon as the season's finished, the judges' comments and scores disappear. The only thing that survives is your dance. That's what you and fans are going to go back and watch." I think we all want more Andy dances!
Thanks for reading. See you Monday. You can vote for us again this week!
Derek