Rumer had also appeared on a few teen TV dramas, but I knew and respected her as a performer when she sang in small underground music clubs around Hollywood, the Sayers Club in particular. The place reminded me of New York, and I used to go there all the time to listen to live music. It really made me feel at home. I saw Prince at the Sayers with a live band, doing an hour and a half set. And it was there I saw Rumer, live and in her element, doing her thing. I thought of her as a real artist, seeking real fulfillment.
Her background was quite opposite from mine in a lot of ways. We might have been similar in sensibility, but we came from completely different worlds. She seemed to be miles beyond me, moving in circles of the coolest kids in Hollywood.
Catching a glimpse of her standing there at the Rockwell, I was struck once again how she could appear alone even in a crowded room. She reminded me of the song “Nature Boy” that was sung by David Bowie in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, about a “very strange enchanted boy.” “Enchanted”—that was how I saw Rumer. I wondered if I was supposed to wake her up or allow her dream to continue.
“Hi, I’m Rumer,” she said, slightly shy, a little awkward. “We’ve met before, I think, remember?”
“Sure, of course I remember—right here in this theater. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Yeah!”
“You two know each other?” someone asked. I could see the romantic melodrama already developing, and I hated it.
“We got acquainted through a mutual friend,” I said curtly, trying to keep it professional. Folks were looking at us, so I took Rumer by the arm and moved her away from the buzz of gossip.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to lower my voice so the sound techs wouldn’t pick up my tone of disbelief.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I thought it’d be fun to do it.”
“Really?” I said again, still unable to hide my surprise.
“Yeah, dude! Honestly, I came to the show in the audience a couple of times, and I really enjoyed it. I’m so excited. I want to learn how to dance.”
“All right,” I said. “Awesome. I’ll teach you how to dance.”
I was silent for a beat, looking into those big brown eyes. Then I snapped out of it. “Okay! Then let’s get started! You know what? I’m going to make this one of the coolest things you’re ever going to do. And you’re going to tell all your cool friends how cool their grandma’s favorite show is.”
During that first-meeting session with Rumer, I managed pretty much to keep my own excitement in check. When I got into the car for the drive home with Maks and Peta, we stayed silent as we eased out into L.A. traffic. Then I let my feelings bubble over.
“Yo! Yoooo! That’s Bruce Willis’s daughter!” I exclaimed, kind of out of nowhere.
“Yes, she is, Valya,” Maks said. He still calls me by my Russian nickname “Valya” once in a while, just as he did when we were growing up in Odessa.
“Demi Moore’s daughter, son!”
“Correct you are again, my friend,” Maks said, laughing.
I’ve never really been starstruck about anybody. “They’re just people” was a philosophy that I tried to hold onto. Bruce and Demi were real Hollywood royalty, not as much for me as for my parents. My mother and father didn’t know much about celebrities, but they knew who Bruce and Demi were. Meeting them, my dad had stars in his eyes, which was funny because he and Bruce Willis look somewhat alike.
Rumer proved to be pumped for the opportunity to accomplish something for herself, to come out from the shadow of her famous parents. Performing on Dancing with the Stars meant she would be venturing beyond the family profession of acting, and she’d be doing something completely different courtesy of none other than me. Even though Rumer had plenty of curiosity, experience, and ambition, underneath it all I saw a person who was really very vulnerable, who didn’t have a lot of confidence.
During our first rehearsal, I assured her this was going to be the greatest experience of her life. She smiled as though she believed me. That statement was tying me down to a very big responsibility, but one that I would embrace wholeheartedly, with undivided focus and unlimited passion.
“Where do you want to be after the season is over?” I asked. “I know you can sing. But I’m going to teach you how to dance. We’re also going to create performances that you can be proud of, a repertoire you’ll be able to present professionally, not just value personally.”
“I love Chicago,” she said quietly.
“The city or the musical?” I joked sarcastically.
“It would be amazing if I could do Chicago, Val,” Rumer said, using the same soft tone.
“Let’s make it happen then,” I answered.
For the next three months, that simply expressed, heartfelt wish of Rumer’s gave me an immediate purpose. Over the weeks we worked together, I discovered what made her special. It was the element of surprise, the fact that while on the surface she was always this child of privilege, in truth she had given up the chance to enjoy the most beautiful things in life, which are the little things. She was no victim by any stretch of the imagination, but she did experience her own share of disappointments and challenges. She could not perform the smallest gesture in public without triggering cascades of media criticism. She had to keep the most innocent actions private, so that they didn’t wind up in the pages of a tabloid.
Rumer did not possess even a hint of arrogance, something that I really appreciated about her. But I knew that, oddly enough, a certain brand of arrogance sometimes protects you when you’re performing. It is a quality that as a dancer you should be able to access at will. Playing a role served as an escape for her, where she could be anything she wanted with little or no outside judgment.
Whatever the case may be, arrogance was not in Rumer’s vocabulary. She was a beautiful person with an impulse to veil her inner light. I wanted the world to see how beautiful and special she was, just on her own, without any affiliations to anyone else in the world. It was as if I was trying to surprise her with herself.
Before the first show of the season, Rumer understandably had jitters. During the pause before the storm in the green room—or, on Dancing with the Stars, the Red Room—I spoke a few sentences of encouragement.
“You know what?” I said. “We’re not going to care about the judges. We’re not going to care about this audience. The only thing we’re going to prioritize over the next minute and a half is ourselves and our loved ones. Let’s perform with gratitude, let’s perform with love.”
She and I went out, danced, and stole the night. It was very clear that the audience felt our intensity. Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and two of Rumer’s sisters, Tallulah and Scout, were seated near the front rows. Amid all the applause when we finished our routine, I saw brave, bad, Die Hard Bruce Willis with a tear rolling down his cheek. Dad was crying out of pride. Seeing her family celebrating Rumer’s accomplishment was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve had on the show. It was as if the family was coming together, and coming together because of her.
That was a secret about what I did, how I motivated myself, and how I approached life in general. During a performance, I never worried about the judges, audience, or viewers. I tried to keep my focus firmly on the foreground, never on the larger picture—because my partner and those closest to her represented the biggest picture of all.
Challenge after challenge, dance-off after dance-off, as the season went on Rumer and I survived, killing it, getting high scores from the judges. The clever producers had her dance to “Rumor Has It” by Adele. She did a Swan Lake–based routine that absolutely killed it, and also exposed me in an all-white tutu costume that judge Bruno Tonioli had personally requested. He even signed my jockstrap, which I never wore again.
Success feeds confidence which feeds success, and I remember thinking that we were being lifted by a tide of good feeling. Rumer had a great capacity to work harder, the closer we got to our goal.
In the final
e, we took home the Mirrorball Trophy as the best dancers of Season 20. It was a jewel encrusted, all gold, tenth anniversary edition of the Mirrorball. It was the most expensive trophy to date, but for me, the value of it wasn’t in the material, but because it was my first, and I got to win it with Rumer Willis.
Rumer’s performance brought Bruce and Demi together with their children, celebrating as a family. It was difficult to reach people who have seen it all and felt it all, to create a lifetime memory for a family that already enjoyed ten lifetimes of memories. That single tear from an action movie star meant more to me than any Mirrorball Trophy.
Later that year, after our time on Dancing with the Stars ended, Rumer called me to announce excitedly that she would be making her Broadway debut in her dream role, Roxie Hart in the hit musical Chicago. Oh, how beautiful life can be sometimes.
Part 4
A Journey in Life
Rising Stars
Just like the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, in our family we had what we called the Pickles and Milk Era of the mid-90s—where if I swung open the refrigerator door all I saw inside were pickles and milk. I guess it could’ve been worse—I could’ve been lactose intolerant.
A few months after arriving in the States, we had moved into low-income housing in Brooklyn, and the struggle for money was a daily grind. At the time we weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood having a hard time making ends meet. Being poor and hustling was an immigrant’s rite of passage—at least, that’s how I looked at it, even at a young age. We did what we had to in order to survive, to assimilate, and, one day, to thrive. The mood was stressed-out and intense.
I’m not sure all my current peers can relate to waking up in the morning and hearing endless talk about money, money, always money. My parents never argued about anything else. They clearly loved each other. We all loved each other. But there was a huge elephant in the room at all times, and that was lack of money.
There was love everywhere in our household, mostly unconditional—except, of course, when it came to my report card. Then love came with one condition: I had to get straight As. But no matter how well I did in school, or how rich we were in “love currency,” in reality there was still no money. And yes, money isn’t everything, but when you don’t have any, it becomes paramount.
This awareness we had as kids, my brother and I, gave rise to a heavy sense of accountability. We knew that our parents were going through tough times and we couldn’t bear it. We couldn’t stand seeing them struggle, sacrificing their own happiness, their own needs, and sometimes even their own sanity for my brother and me to have whatever we needed. In those circumstances, you tend to grow up quickly, accepting a responsibility that not all kids that age have to embrace.
My brother and I would speak at night in whispers, top bunk to bottom bunk.
“Blyat, it sucks that they have to work so hard,” Maks would say, speaking about our parents. “You know how to dance. You and I, Valya, we need to start working. Why not?”
No one needed to tell me twice. I was twelve going on twenty-five, overflowing with energy and curiosity, always seeking adventure. I was ready to contribute. I was ready to get my hands dirty, or in my case, get my dancing shoes dirty. I knew my brother was podrabatyval (Russian for “hustling” or “moonlighting”) in Brighton Beach restaurants on the weekends, dancing with his partner for $25 a night. I wanted to be part of it. I, too, wanted to perform and get paid, using my skills to take some of the pressure off my parents and help us all make a living.
I mean, shit, I could do it by dancing! How much fun was that? It wasn’t like I had to wash dishes or lift bricks. I got to do what I love and get paid for it. I completely disregarded the fact that a twelve-year-old had no business spending late nights in crowded, smoky, mob-owned joints that reeked of vodka and herring. Good thing the owners of these Russian nightclubs chose not to believe that child labor laws applied to them.
In their defense, half the time I don’t think they realized I was twelve, perhaps assuming I was just a young-looking adult. How were the club owners supposed to know how old I was, anyway? I was giving off so much swag at such a young age—it was unbelievable, LOL! I tried my best to look older than I was. I slicked my hair back, wore a leather jacket (with no shirt underneath, obviously), and donned a pair of sleek black dance pants.
My patent-leather dance shoes had been donated to me by a fellow student in my dance class. They might have been secondhand, broken down, and worn out, but I cleaned and polished them with elbow grease, restaurant napkins, and spit, perching on the edge of my bunk bed and working away like some tiny shoemaker’s apprentice. By the time I finished with those damned kicks, they shined brighter than the mirrorballs that hung over the nightclub dance floors. I loved this shit.
When I joined Maks in Brighton Beach, I could have billed myself as “Lil’ Tony Manero,” except this wasn’t a Saturday Night Fever gig, but rather more like Strictly Ballroom meets Eastern Promises. Most of our jobs were forty-five-minute, two-couple shows at Russian restaurants that called themselves Paradise, or Odessa, or National.
Yes, Paradise. The irony could not have been more perfectly executed. A live band executed to perfection Russian songs along with incredible versions of Italian pop songs (Russians love Italian music). The decor was downright tacky, and if you ever blundered into the place in daylight the shabbiness showed around the edges.
Despite all this, or maybe because of it, Paradise truly was a paradise to me. I realized only looking back that I was experiencing what true happiness really is. They say happiness is when you love what you do. And I agree, but it goes further—happiness is doing what you love with people you love the most. And at a young age I was in paradise, making $25 a night, working alongside my best friend, my brother. Those were some of the greatest times of my life, even though they had no business being so.
Even though a nightclub might not have been a Broadway showcase, I was still racking up priceless experience. I learned how to perform in any circumstance, how to dodge, weave, and politic my way through an intimidating environment, and how to deal with a rude audience or even a pair of split pants. Talk about wardrobe malfunctions! I had plenty of those.
Nights at Paradise and the other clubs also taught me something truly important: the vital lesson of earning. Those hard-won dollars—grimy bills smeared with sea salt and tobacco—went straight into the communal Chmerkovskiy family pot. This was more valuable to me than any thousand-buck payday I’d pull down later in life. What a miracle! I could hardly believe it. I was able to take my place among the earners of the world. The Paradise is long closed now, but brief as it was, my experience there paid off in residuals that I would always carry with me.
Knocking down $25 a night and $75 for a three-gig weekend, I found that I could buy my first Nintendo Game Boy with my own money. That meant I finally got to “flex”—show off a bit—in school and start to fit in.
To be honest, I was already growing out of my obsession with Nintendo, but I did what I had to do to attract the attention of Vanessa. Who’s Vanessa, you ask? Just the most beautiful girl in the world who happened to sit next to me in fifth grade. Expertise at the game console was the key to popularity at P.S. 216. I could not get over Vanessa’s eyes, which in my young lovesick mind appeared to glisten brighter than a million stars on the darkest night. Girls were definitely becoming a main motivator in my life, mixed up in a swirl of chivalry and romance. I couldn’t resist trying to win Vanessa over.
Seventy-five bucks might have been a nice enough payday for a twelve-year-old trying to impress a fifth-grade crush, but it certainly wasn’t enough for my seventeen-year-old brother.
On the brink of adulthood, Maks was feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated. He worked hard and hustled constantly, but wound up confused and uncertain. What kind of man did my brother want to be? What could he bring to the family table, figuratively and literally? Was his destiny limited to hustling at Paradise and doing low-
paying teaching gigs assisting at the local dance school?
By this time my father had finally landed a well-paying job, making $80,000 a year as a computer programmer, which was all the more impressive given that he had never set hands on a computer before he came to America. I figured we had our family situation all set. More than that, I thought we were “holy shit rich.”
There would finally be bread in the house along with the pickles and milk, perhaps even a treasured delicacy that was more precious than gold—Nutella. The chocolate-hazelnut spread had become a marker of wealth to me. My friends all seemed to be drowning in it, but Nutella-on-demand would elude our household for many more years.
But even without Nutella, our family’s prospects were looking sweeter than ever. I could focus on my grand plan for life, which was to do well in school, play the violin, dance, then get better and better at basketball until I could enter the NBA as the only fiddle-playing point guard in the league. I wish I could tell you this was solely a childish dream of mine, but in truth I held on to the ambition until only a few years ago. You will see me at a celebrity all-star game soon.
Regardless, I was happy, everybody in the family seemed happy apart from Maks, and the constant, worried chatter about money did slowly subside.
One Saturday my brother sat sullen-faced in our kitchen, eating borscht and complaining. He was upset about being underpaid and undervalued at a dance studio in the neighborhood, where he was “assisting” the studio owner in teaching students.
“‘Assisting,’” Maks groused in Russian. “That means I do most of the work and get compensated the least.”
This being the weekend, my father was in the kitchen washing dishes, a chore he found therapeutic and meditative. As the saying goes, “No woman ever shot a man doing dishes,” and my mom certainly didn’t mind her husband receiving some Palmolive therapy every now and then. She worked elsewhere in the apartment, cleaning, while I pretended to be studying, sitting on the couch not too far from the kitchen.
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