Dancing's Derek Hough: I Can't Believe We Got a 24

Hi everyone!
Hope you enjoyed the show Monday.
Amy and I had a blast. I thought she did great considering all the craziness the past few weeks. Right before we went on, she said, "I'm nervous, but I don't know if I'm nervous enough." I think it was from the jet lag. If it's a few hours, it's OK, but she was, like, 12 hours ahead and completely out of her body. You want to be in your body and present when you perform in anything. But when you're tired, you're floating. So we did a victory pose where you put your arms up in a V shape and jumped around. That gets your adrenaline going and blood pumping. If you keep still, you'll just get more tired.
I was expecting something like three sevens, so I can't believe we got a 24. For me, scores are irrelevant, but psychologically, the 24 is good for Amy. It can give her confidence, like, "Maybe I can actually compete and not just survive." And it's great we got a good score going into this week, which is not just our first normal week of the show, but our first normal week of rehearsal ever.
We have the swing this week. The whole dance announcement at the end of the show was hilarious since so many people were like, "What?! I said that?" I think what happened was, the producers probably asked, "Which dances are you looking forward to doing?" and maybe even rattled off a list for the celebrities, and not like, "What's one dance you really, really want to do?" The celebrities probably had no idea what to say, like, "I don't know. The cha-cha?" And now they're like, "Oh, shoot! I have to do the dance!" But Amy genuinely wants to do the swing. She wants to go to a club and she dreams about throwing down. It's looking good so far. We've added a few lifts. We do one move where she slides on the heel of her prosthetics between my legs and I catch her. It's kind of scary because that's what tries to avoid so she doesn't fall, but her eyes lit up when we did it. She was like, "That's like the feeling when you're about to fall off something and you get those butterflies." It's awesome to see her get excited about it.
We have a rehearsal term now: clink. When I want her legs to touch, I tell her I want to hear the prosthetics clink so we know they're together. It's kind of funny — we had to do this makeshift thing with them. She has buttons on the inside of the prosthetics and if you press them, the legs attach. Sometimes when you slam them together, they catch and they lock. So it's not a good thing when we're dancing! I got a bottle cap to put over it as a safeguard. That puts her mind at ease so we don't have to worry about that happening on show night or anything. It's been really cool to have to use a different set of terms to teach Amy. We always talk about footwork and toes and everything on the show, but your joints are all attached, so with Amy, I focus on her hips and thighs. If I want her foot to turn out, I tell her to rotate her hip, which rotates her entire leg, so her foot turns out. If I want her feet to close, I tell her to squeeze her thighs and her feet will follow. 
I thought everyone did a good job overall. There are a lot of natural dancers in this group, maybe more so than ever before, not counting All-Stars. I think it's going to be really competitive this season. But I'm glad we have people who set the bar that high because that will only raise everybody else's game.
If you haven't heard the big news, Julianne and I are heading out on tour this summer. We had been talking about this for over a year. It goes back to origins of what we want to and it's performing live in front of people. We've had people tell us over the years that they want to see us perform, so now it's finally happening. It's going to be fun and high-energy. We've been talking to the creative directors about ideas and it's going to be awesome. We want the audience to get involved and for them feel out of breath by the end. I went and did a few little shows in the off season and the audience response was fantastic. Hope to see you out there! You can get tickets here.
Derek