I had to build their trust because I would be making a lot of demands on their precious child. They had to see my seriousness and passion so that they could be inspired to reciprocate. I needed them to support their daughter on this journey, to be as serious and passionate as I was. If I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing, there was no way in hell that Zendaya, a sixteen-year-old superstar in the making, would become passionate about it. But from the outside, “passionate” can sometimes seem “over the top.”
The deciding moment came early on, during the initial rehearsal period. Zendaya was returning from an appearance on the Teen Choice Awards, and we had rehearsal scheduled, and she made me wait. Twenty minutes late, then half an hour. I smoked cigarettes back then, so I was smoking outside the building when a car pulled up and out came Zendaya.
Again the lazy, tired-looking walk, the slow Oakland swagger combined with a teenage I-couldn’t-care-less attitude. She passed me by with no apology, no acknowledgment even. I realized that Zendaya wasn’t fully present in that moment.
Where was the sense of building camaraderie with your teammate? Where was the drive, where was the faith, where was the love? People signed up for the show for many different reasons, as a passion project, as a way to further their career, or because they were bored as fuck and their agent got them the gig.
Dancing with the Stars wasn’t just business-as-usual for me, but a dream job for which I just happened to be compensated. It wasn’t some paycheck that my agent landed me—I didn’t have an agent, all right? I was committed to the process, not for the tabloid exposure or because it was prime-time television, but because it made me happy and gave me purpose.
In that first rehearsal, I didn’t sense the same commitment from the Zendaya camp. That day as I was standing outside, Pops strolled past next, then a kid came along, a little boyfriend the young star was supposedly dating. At her age, the word “dating” didn’t mean much of anything. The girl was dating her career. She was always supremely focused, but now there was a boyfriend, who didn’t seem to notice me at all.
Claire was the only one who did. “Hey, Val!” she called out. Then came another manager, a tutor, and a few other members of a sixteen-year-old’s entourage.
No “Hey, Val, I’m so sorry I’m late.” Nothing like that. I put my cigarette out and headed back into the rehearsal room, where the group had set up shop around the music machine.
I shifted into teaching mode, which for me is like having tunnel vision. I tuned out absolutely every single thing in order to zero in on what we were doing. The assembled entourage disappeared and it was just me and her in a room, and I was teaching a sixteen-year-old girl how to dance the right way, full out, 100 percent of the time. Zendaya would do a step and I would weigh in with constant feedback, challenging her every move.
Again!
And again, and again, and again!
No! Again! No, you can do better!
Are we going for average or are we going for excellence?
Learning to dance was not about doing it superbly one time, but about being consistent. We weren’t going for “okay” that afternoon, because Zendaya was a special talent, and special talents had a special, higher bar to clear. The standard was set not by the outside world, but by Zendaya herself, because of her talent. But it wasn’t talent that would allow her to succeed, rather it was her desire to fulfill that talent to the best of her ability.
“You’re going to give me ten of those steps perfectly,” I told her. “Because it’s not about greatness every once in a while, or only sometimes, but greatness every single time.”
I clapped my hands for emphasis. EV-er-y-SING-le-TIME!
The room around us fell silent. Collectively, Zendaya and her people realized that this was not some silly dance show that they signed up for, and that I wasn’t just another Hollywood kid who knew how to dance and choreograph. This was not even just about her learning how to ballroom dance. It was more than that. Somebody was holding her accountable, creating an environment where she could truly grow and learn and become the very best version of herself.
I understood what a vital part of the equation parents were, because I had encountered the situation again and again at Rising Stars. I was a product of an environment where my own parents had meant everything to my development as a dancer.
What the world saw that season, and ultimately what I’m most proud of, was how passionate I could be about working with young talent, how driven I was, and how focused I was. That opened doors to a whole different slew of fans, young fans, yes, but also older people to whom I showed a completely different emotional palette and a completely different style.
Being paired with a young partner helped me by taking the whole idea of romantic melodrama totally off the table. Instead of questions like “Are you guys an item?” we got queries such as “Wow, that was an incredible performance! How did that make you feel?”
“How it makes me feel is that I’m proud of her,” I answered. “We’re going to showcase her dance ability on a whole different level, showcase her star power on a new level, showcase her ability to learn something different outside of her comfort zone.”
During the rehearsal period Zendaya introduced me to her tutor. Underage performers in Hollywood have somebody present who oversees their schooling every single day and who also counts how many hours they work. The woman pulled me aside.
“Hey, I really appreciate everything you’re saying,” she said. “You’re telling her some really good stuff. Her parents aren’t expecting this.”
The vote of confidence from a tutor-slash-chaperone meant everything to me. By the end of rehearsals, her parents came to appreciate my tough-love style of teaching, too.
“I wanted to kill you, man,” Kazembe told me later. “I’d never heard anybody speak to my daughter that way. Only I speak to my daughter that way. But I couldn’t criticize or say anything to you, because you know what? That’s exactly what I would have told her. You were saying the kind of things that I tell her.”
We came in second that year, a close-but-no-cigar finish. The hardest thing for me wasn’t losing, but the fact that I lost with a partner who was clearly a winner. My message to Zendaya had always been very simple. Work your ass off. Outwork the guy next to you and the rest of the business will take care of itself.
She had done all that, working as hard as she possibly could, giving me everything I asked for and more—but she didn’t get the result that I felt she deserved, and it was my fault. At every point between our initial introduction and that second-place finish, Zendaya had been excellent. In terms of content for the show and how much I was able to put across as a person, as a teacher, and as her partner, I probably had one of the best seasons I’ve ever had.
And it still wasn’t enough. Zendaya and I would dance together again, going on to do many performances in different venues. We’re still like family: she became my sibling, the sister I never had, not just for those three months on Dancing with the Stars but always. Once you invest your heart in a person during that difficult, inspiring, sometimes heart-breaking journey, the bond is forever.
My Teenage Dreams Come True
Life looped around, and it seemed as though I was always encountering faces and places from my past that came winging back into my present—some of them uninvited and unwelcome, but most of them a source of head-shaking, ain’t-life-peculiar kind of moments.
I grew up watching the NBC sitcom Saved by the Bell, which was already into reruns by the time my family immigrated to the States, but which I could still catch at home even with basic cable.
As a newly arrived immigrant, I found that America was a place where you could say, “I was so poor growing up that I only had basic cable.” In maybe nine-tenths of the world, American basic cable would be a dream come true. Among my friends, basic cable was a source of complaint that indicated a deprived childhood. When people started talking about the shows they watched as children, and they mention
the Cartoon Network, my reaction is always “Oh, so you had money growing up, right?”
Maks and I had black-and-white pictures in our baby albums, not color ones. We were also poor in terms of the tube when we moved to Brooklyn, where we had access to a half-dozen channels—2, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 11—plus public television on channel 13, but who wanted to watch that? Come on, PBS? Come on, Barney & Friends? (No shade on PBS, since they broadcast the Ohio Star Ball dance competition, my second TV appearance after Sally.)
Don’t let the word get out, but at the very beginning of my time in America I confess to watching a few episodes of Barney. Back then, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family” was about my speed in the English language. The big purple dinosaur showed me a syrupy-sweet reality that even as a child I knew was too good to be true, though a part of me desperately wanted to believe in it. I quickly outgrew him after only a couple of weeks.
Saved by the Bell was Barney for adolescents. It depicted the quintessential high school experience that I dreamed about but never had. Looking back I’m glad I had the type of public school education experience that I did, because I came to understand that the world of Saved by the Bell didn’t exist in real life. No one was having flash mob dance-offs in the school cafeteria. But for a quick minute when I was nine or ten, I thought Zack Morris, his sidekick Screech, his love interest Kelly Kapowski, and the righteous nerd girl Jessie Spano were typical American teenagers.
Along with shows such as Family Matters, Blossom, and The Wonder Years, Saved by the Bell entered the syllabus of my personal continuing education program, aimed at understanding “how stuff works in America.” These sitcoms might have been a distorted lens through which to view my adopted country, but to my young eyes they were perfect. I was a sponge, absorbing the nuances of a culture that seemed impossibly cool, impossibly engaging.
I don’t know if many people today remember the Hollywood catastrophe that went down next. The year after Saved by the Bell ended, Elizabeth Berkley, who had played Jessie, got swept up in a slow-motion car wreck of a movie, Showgirls, that became one of cinema’s infamous bombs. Then a twenty-two-year-old, Elizabeth starred as Nomi Malone in what was essentially an exercise in R-rated soft-core porn. The release not only failed at the box office but it became a symbol of the movie industry’s overblown budgets. What the filmmakers lacked in thought they tried to make up with money.
Later on in my childhood, my brother got his hands on a videotaped copy of Showgirls, and I watched it with him, stunned and fascinated to see the girl I knew as an innocent high school character let it all hang out as a Las Vegas stripper. I couldn’t believe it. I personified what’s today called “the male gaze,” and Save by the Bell’s Jessie and Showgirls’ Nomi collided in my mind, making for a heady, confusing mix.
This was around the time when I first got hard and noticed it, when I first put reasons behind getting aroused. Before that, I didn’t even know what was going on down there below belt. As close as I was to my brother and dad, we never had the bird-and-bees conversation that was supposed to be everyone’s birthright. We never spoke about sex, ever, ever, even when a Salt-N-Pepa song came on that put the raunch right up front. I was left to discover my sexuality for myself. Perhaps the old country’s ways intruded into our New World household, making it unnatural for a father to sit his sons down for a discussion about sex. Whatever the reason, I never got one.
Showgirls was the first film that I remember arousing serious sexual emotion in me. I wasn’t focused on the Nomi character necessarily. It was the whole vibe of the piece, how the movie put sexuality front and center, without apology. It was sinful, and I loved every minute of it. Even at age twelve, I recognized there were terrible choices being made by the production team. It stood as the ultimate 1990s movie, excessive and outlandish, though lately it’s become a so-bad-it’s-good cult favorite. Fans now prize the freshness of Elizabeth’s performance.
But back then, when the entertainment establishment looked around for people to blame for the Showgirls debacle, it passed over the screenwriter, producers, and director—all men—and settled on the vulnerable young female star. The critics lashed out with a vengeance, and Elizabeth got thrown under the bus by Hollywood, demonstrating how vicious the town really could be.
The Showgirls controversy receded, but it left permanent scars, especially on the leading lady. She retreated from the Hollywood scene, bruised and emotionally battered. She still maintained her place in the erotic pantheon of my adolescence, but apart from a few indelible images that crossed my mind every once in a while, I forgot about the whole affair.
Skip ahead eighteen years to the fall of 2013, when Season 17 of Dancing with the Stars was gearing up. I was directed to an Equinox gym located in Century City, the high-rise development on the outskirts of Beverly Hills where a lot of show business types and entertainment lawyers had offices. The sound techs miked me up and I headed into the gym lobby for a first meeting with my new partner. They held me there while I waited for the mystery woman to show.
As soon as she did, Elizabeth let out a piercing scream, erupting in joy and happiness, and rushed over to hug me. A conflicted welter of thoughts rose in my mind. I knew who she was right away, but because of the cool, laid-back kind of guy I was, my first thought in reaction to her scream was a single slang word, “extra,” meaning way over-the-top, way too extreme for the situation.
But I quickly realized that she wasn’t faking it, that Elizabeth Berkley was genuinely excited to have me for a dance partner. My cynicism died and I couldn’t help but feel flattered, humbled even. Damn, that feels good, I thought. Let’s go! I considered how different this meeting was from my last season, when Zendaya displayed an effortless teenage cool, refusing to be impressed by anything.
Elizabeth was different, older, wiser, in her late thirties by then. I felt a crushing sense of responsibility. Here was a person who had gotten wounded very badly by Hollywood. But she had put together a great life, married to an incredible fashion designer, sharing a beautiful son together. She had created a popular online site called “Ask Elizabeth” to help young girls maintain their self-esteem and wrote a book on the same topic in 2011.
“Yes, I was a big star,” she would tell her fans. “Then I did a movie that made me less of a star. Oh, wow, ouch, you know? But I still have a roof over my head, and that one bad thing didn’t cost me my life. Thank God, I have a beautiful child. Life is beautiful.”
In rehearsal Elizabeth was very good, loved to dance, and appreciated every second of the process. The elephant in the room was Showgirls, but it was a big friendly elephant, never dark, never aggressive. Elizabeth always embraced her inner Moni. If a fan asked her to sign a Showgirls poster, she hauled out her Sharpie without a hint of negativity.
I’ve said before that I was just as proud of my losses as I was of my gains, and she developed a similar philosophy. If you are going to own your victories, you have to own your defeats, too. No one could deny that in terms of a movie career, Showgirls was a loss, but a loss that shaped her life and helped make her into the happy, healthy person she was now.
I was just enough of an ass to inform Elizabeth that on Saved by the Bell the Jessie Spano character was never my crush.
“Jessie was cool, but Kelly was my girl.”
Elizabeth gave me a wan smile and didn’t seem to hold it against me. She refrained from pointing out the obvious: “Um, they were fictional characters, Val.” In twenty years I hope I won’t get offended if someone tells me they always liked Derek more than me. I hope my life will continue in the face of that withering piece of news. I won’t be offended—actually, some small corner of me will probably get offended, but I’ll get over it.
During rehearsals I couldn’t help but notice Elizabeth Berkley had very arresting eyes. Actually one eye was blue and the other was green, which was a rare thing and rendered her gaze absolutely magnetic. She didn’t look at a person, she looked into a person. At first, I found
it almost overwhelming.
“Yo, wait, stop,” I wanted to call out. Hold on a second, just hold up one second, please! I felt as though I had let somebody into the living room of my apartment, and immediately they start going through my closets. Yes, sure, okay, but one step at a time!
We bonded over love of family. She had a new son and a beautiful circle of friends and relatives. She told me that she grew tremendously on the show, that there were times, a couple of dances, where she was in heaven with the feeling of receiving the ecstatic gift of dance. At that moment in her life, outside of her son, her husband, and her family, Dancing with the Stars was the highlight.
ALL THE PROS ON DANCING WITH THE STARS CHOREOGRAPHED the routines that the judges then commented upon and scored. I’ve always felt choreography to be the hidden element of the show, with a lot of the truest artistry going on out of sight of the prime-time cameras. Choreography is the fuel, some of it high-octane rocket fuel, some of it regular unleaded. Everybody talks about sleek, beautiful race cars, but not many comment on the quality of gasoline that makes them go.
I have zero performance anxiety heading into a dance routine. Obviously there can be butterflies and all that, but I’ve been dancing for so long, and have competed so often, that I know I’m at my best when onstage. I believe in myself when I’m performing, with a confidence that arises not from cockiness as much as from exhaustive preparation.
But my insecurities come out in spades whenever I choreograph, and stage fright attacks me every time. I’m not quite sure why this happens. I’ve been directed all my life, primarily by Maks but also by other coaches, as well as by assorted other teachers and producers, so that serving as a director on my own can be intimidating. It is as if I were facing an army of ghosts from my past, all the people who have put me where I am today, standing silently by and judging my work.
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