I'll Never Change My Name

by Valentin Chmerkovskiy

  I played around and lost her. It was my first lust, my first love, and I was devastated when it ended. My GPA took a further nosedive, I didn’t get enough sleep, and I no longer gave a fuck about dance, the violin, or anything but her. I wrote agonized poems on the subject of lost love. I was Yevgeny Onegin, the title character in Pushkin’s novel who writes a poem to the love of his life before going out and dying in a duel.

  For sure it changed me, being introduced to that type of heavy emotional involvement. I returned to high school as a sadder but wiser man of the world. Saving the money I was making teaching dance and performing with Maks at Brighton Beach nightclubs, I took a train into Manhattan and bought Lilya a ring. Not an engagement ring or anything like that, but I just wanted to give her jewelry, being maybe a little unclear on the concept that you should give a ring to mark the start of a relationship, rather than its end.

  Lilya stood at the beginning of my life as a romantic adult, and sex and lust have woven themselves through my days forever afterward. I want to recount the story of another time when sexual attraction changed the course of my life, but it might take some telling before the lust element finally enters, coming in from offstage at an entirely unexpected time.

  IN 2003, JUST BEFORE MAKS WAS FIRST RECRUITED FOR DANCING with the Stars, I hit a period where I wanted to dance but I didn’t want to compete. With my girlfriend and new dance partner, Sandra Udis, and I had just won the Youth World Latin Dance Championship, one age level up from the Junior Worlds I had won in 2001 with Deena.

  I was ready for a break from the rigors of training. So we developed a two-couple tour: me with Sandy and my brother matched with Elena, a brilliant Moscow-born dancer who had been his partner since the previous year.

  Sandra, a blond-haired, blue-eyed stunner, looked like a Barbie doll next to me as Ken. I was really passionate about us as a couple and felt that we had complementary forms of energy, a well-put-together woman and a man with an overtly masculine look. Sandy was the all-American girl and I was the exotic import.

  At one of our shows, after we finished our fourth dance and before starting our last one, I had to perform a quick costume change, so my brother took the mic to say a few words. People who know my brother know that in his hands a microphone can suddenly transform into a grenade. He had the ability—some might say disability—to pronounce the most ordinary, most politically correct words in ways that never seemed to come out as he intended.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but in the ballroom world the way girls spoke about competition was very different from how boys talked. Whenever people got into a conversation about results, girls used identifying markers that were always from the costumes. “Who came in fourth?” “Oh, it was the girl in the yellow dress.” “Who was third?” “You know, the girl with the pink-vested dress?”

  I saw it all the time, and that’s just how the chatter went. But among guys, the way to list results was merely to mention the first name of the male of the couple. “Maks was second, Joe was third, Mike was fourth, Tommy and Jackie were fifth, and you know Anthony from Ohio? Yeah, he was in sixth.”

  It was assumed that the guys were talking about both members of the couple, and they weren’t trying to disrespect anybody, just keeping the conversation moving. That was just the insolence of the game and how competition results were described. But Maks made the mistake of using that inside-ballroom language in public.

  “It’s a very special moment for our family,” he announced to the audience as I was backstage switching costumes. “Since we’re here, and all of our friends and family are here, I wanted to share something very special that happened last week. Val won Worlds!”

  The room blew up with applause, so even if Maks wanted to go on, he wouldn’t have been heard. He could have continued and said, “Obviously my brother couldn’t do it without Sandra Udis, and the whole Udis family was incredible,” but for a long moment he couldn’t say anything, because he had to wait for all the applause to finish.

  In that interval, Sandy’s mother had just enough time to get infuriated. She was a woman of status in Brooklyn, a person of large personality and larger ambitions. If there is ever such a thing as Real Housewives of Brighton Beach (not a bad idea), she could be the star of the show. Her husband was also a powerful man locally. The whole family, Sandy included, was for better or worse very much a product of the Brighton Beach social hierarchy.

  To add insult to injury, Sandy’s mother had a good friend by her side that night, and this friend leaned over to rub a little salt in the wound.

  “So? This Val person, he won the contest all by himself?”

  Because of that acid-tongued friend, what would have been a simple gaffe by my brother turned personal. Even though none of this should have been about a stage parent in the first place, Sandy’s mother seemed embarrassed, because the friend she’d brought along had now witnessed the incident.

  What could I say? We—not just I—had indeed just won the Worlds. A year and a half prior to that, Sandy had been ranked sixth in the United States. After our championship at the Youth level, she rose to be ranked first in the world, due to her talent, of course, but also due to my brother’s coaching and what we were able to accomplish together, the three of us.

  My father’s old ninety-nine-percent-was-due-to-parents rule came into play again. Right away I realized that Maks had fucked up. So while Sandy was still backstage, I rushed out and finished changing on the floor, managing smoothly to snatch the mic away from my brother.

  “You know, hey, guys, yes, Sandy and I won,” I said. “I just want to give a special thanks to our parents.” I gestured vaguely in the direction of my partner’s mom, who still had steam coming out of her ears. “Sandy and I would have never been able to accomplish what we did without our incredible parents. Please give it up for Sandy’s parents and my parents!”

  I tried to remedy the situation as much as I could, but the damage had been done, and there was no going back.

  I turned to Sandy. “Are you cool?”

  “Are you kidding me?” she responded. “I don’t give a fuck.” She knew that this was a simple slip of the tongue, which was very common for my brother, and he obviously didn’t mean anything by it.

  Sandy’s mom really lit into my father, who kept his tone very polite, apologizing again and again. But after saying “I’m very sorry” a few times, an edge crept into his voice.

  “We just took your daughter and we made her into a world champion,” he said, quoting the facts from his perspective. “We did that for your daughter and with your daughter. All you had to do was write the check and show up at the airport. And now you’re giving us a hard time?”

  The woman would not leave it alone. She called the next day to harangue my father some more.

  “What do you want me to do?” my dad asked, becoming exasperated. “Do you want me to apologize a hundred times? Maks made a fucking mistake. He apologized for it. Let’s move on, you know?”

  She didn’t want to move on, and finally my father had had enough.

  “Is this about Sandy being offended, or is it about you being humiliated because your stupid friend was talking shit?”

  Sandy’s mom reported the incident to a friend, who apparently told someone else, who then called and threatened my father. This guy—I don’t know how else I can put it without getting in trouble with the libel lawyers—but he was the type like maybe you didn’t want to ask too many questions about his business.

  Now we were getting death threats for a silly mistake behind the microphone?

  My brother overheard the menacing conversation, and while he and my father would normally never share something like that with me, when we hit our bunk beds that night, the truth came out.

  “Somebody called Pops and was threatening him,” he said.

  “What? Over this Sandy thing?”

  I couldn’t believe it. I leaped out of bed and paced the floor. “Okay,” I muttered, more to myself than t
o Maks. “Okay, we’re done.”

  “What do you mean?” Maks asked. “Who’s done?”

  “Sandy and I,” I said. “We’re finished.”

  In a split second, my reality shifted. This wasn’t a girl that I just danced with. Sandy and I were dating, too. But with zero hesitation I decided on the spot that she and I were over.

  As far as I was concerned, Sandy’s mom preoccupied herself with stroking her own ego, instead of supporting and celebrating her daughter. In my view, as a parent she didn’t deserve to have the trophy in her household, didn’t deserve the accolades, and most of all didn’t deserve our effort.

  The next day I headed out to Brooklyn. My parents counseled against any rash moves. “Are you sure? Don’t worry about us. We’re fine. You don’t have to split with Sandy just for us.”

  “Dad, are you kidding me?” I said, getting up on my teenage high horse. “I am doing it for you. I’m not going to coexist with somebody who is willing to put your life in danger!”

  Keep it moving, I told myself. Always and forever.

  I met up with Sandy, and telling her we were breaking up was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I remember we were in Brighton Beach outside of her luxury apartment building. I had come out with two of my friends, Eugene and Andrei. They waited across the street, just kind of looking out, because there were really scary people in the Russian immigrant community of Brighton Beach. I felt as though I had to have some backup.

  “Listen, Sandy, I love you,” I said, one eye on my boys and the other on the front door of her house, in case her father charged out. “I would never want to make you feel bad, and I know you still have to listen to your parents, but the truth is I just can’t deal with your mom anymore. It’s not right, and it may not be fair . . .”

  Then I shrugged my shoulders and pronounced a phrase just then coming into vogue. “But it is what it is.”

  Though Sandy told me she understood, I might have broken her heart right there. She was kind, sweet, and vulnerable, but strong in her own way. And she actually might have saved a life afterward, because a little birdie informed me that even though emotions still ran high in Brighton Beach against the upstart Chmerkovskiy family, Sandy insisted to her parents that nothing bad should happen to me.

  “I’ll run away and never talk to you guys ever again,” she warned them. At least to her, the situation seemed just that serious, just that intense.

  After things settled down somewhat, Sandy’s mom called me to plead for her daughter’s reinstatement as my partner.

  “Come on,” she said. “You know I was just joking and that nothing was ever going to happen.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a little man who was trying to man up. “It’s over.”

  LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR FOOT DOWN, I DIDN’T think about what was going to happen afterward. Having just won the Youth Worlds with Sandy, I was at the peak of my competitive career, except now I no longer had a partner. Blackpool was coming up, and skipping it wasn’t an option. I had to find another person to dance with, and I had to do it quickly.

  Julianne Hough, one of the best dancers in the world at my age level, might have been a candidate if she hadn’t quit competing a year before to concentrate on a potential music career. Even though Julianne was currently (and famously) saying no to ballroom, I still felt there might be a little wiggle room, and maybe I could reach out and convince her to partner with me.

  Julianne and her longtime partner Mark Ballas were awesome and incredible, and she had quit kind of suddenly. I had a hunch that you don’t break it off at age seventeen with someone like Mark and then never dance again. That’s just not the way things happened. Ballroom was like the mob: the only way out was in a casket.

  So Julianne was on my radar as someone to fill the void left by Sandy.

  A whole day had already passed, and I didn’t really have a moment to waste. I turned to my most trusted ally.

  “Hey, Maks,” I said. “What do you think? I want to dance with Julianne.”

  “Yeah, great,” he said. “Only maybe you forgot, but Julianne’s not dancing.”

  “Maybe she will for me. Let’s reach out and see what happens.”

  It didn’t take long for me to find her number. In the meantime I had all these local girls, great dancers who were ranked second in America, or third, fifth, or whatever, and they were hitting me up for a chance to be my partner. I didn’t pay anybody apart from Julianne any mind. Why beat around the bush when I knew exactly what I wanted?

  In situations like these, one thing that was popular in the ballroom world was holding tryouts. The candidates and I would perform some basic steps, do some choreography together, and then maybe have a coach come in to judge if we were aesthetically a compatible fit, if we harmonized, if we looked good together. I found the whole business loathsome and humiliating for the girl. I didn’t like it, and maybe I was wrong, maybe I was overanalyzing, which I always did and always do.

  Every time I split up with a partner the situation already had reached the level of the catastrophic, so that it was a very painful process, literally like a divorce. After splitting with Sandy, I was feeling cored out and emotionally exhausted. How was I going to go through yet another heartbreak? And who the fuck did I think I was, to have one girl after another come in and try out, only to have them hear, “No, sorry—next!” These were people’s lives I was dealing with. Who was I, the fucking Bachelor?

  As far as ballroom couples went, I believed in arranged marriages. Find the person that you want, get in the room together, and say, “Hey, are you into doing this?” To me, “love” was always a verb. Love just didn’t magically happen—I had to make it happen. No angel would descend from heaven and present herself as my perfect partner. My job was making the perfect couple, to find a way to love that person, cherish her, and help her shine.

  With Sandy, that had been the case, too. She wasn’t on my level when we started, but she inspired me, and that was enough. Our mutual effort took care of the rest, and we worked and worked until she was the number one dancer in her age group.

  “I’m not going out there, you know, trying out girls like I’m shopping for shoes,” I told Maks, tearing into a rant. “I know what I want. I want to dance with Julianne. No offense to anybody, but I don’t want to fucking hear from anyone else. I don’t want to waste my time, I don’t want to waste their time, and I don’t want to get their hopes up and then shut them down.”

  “Well, maybe you should talk to—” he began.

  “No one! I don’t care. I want to dance with her. I don’t care that she quit. I don’t care about anything. We’re reaching out and we’re dancing with Julianne. Boom! That’s it!”

  “Okay, okay,” Maks said, accustomed to seeing me go off in that manner.

  I finally called Julianne. “Hey, it’s Val.”

  Everyone knew everyone in the small world of competitive ballroom, so I didn’t have to give more than my first name. “Oh, hi! Wow! My God, how are you?”

  “You know, I have no idea what you’re doing right now,” I said. “I don’t know where you are with dance and everything, but I’d love to compete with you. I’d love to dance with you.”

  “You know, Val, I haven’t competed in some time, and to be honest I’m pursuing my music right now. I’m in L.A. and actually finishing up an album.”

  We went back and forth a few times, but Julianne wouldn’t budge. She was out of the world of ballroom competition. I was disappointed but tried to put the best face on it. “All right, cool,” I mumbled halfheartedly. “Well, you know, it was worth a try. Good luck out there. Keep on killing it. And thanks for taking the call.”

  I added one more “cool” for flavor and hung up. That was on a Thursday. On Friday, I got a call back from Julianne.

  “I’ve reconsidered and you know, for these last eight months, I’ve been thinking about ballroom a lot. I definitely miss dancing, and miss competing, and to be honest, all th
ose times I was thinking about it, the only person I could ever see myself coming back to competition with was you.”

  I was overjoyed. “Whoa! Holy shit! That’s awesome!”

  “The only thing is, I might need a couple of days before I could fly out,” Julianne said. “I could probably be in New Jersey by Monday.”

  It was coming up on the weekend, so I told her Monday would be fine. Suddenly the recent events in my life made sense. Thanks, Maks. Thanks for taking that microphone and almost getting our father killed and busting up my partnership with Sandy, because now I was going to dance with the one woman in the world who represented everything I wanted in a partner.

  Or so I thought.

  THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD MY FATHER AND BROTHER WERE getting bombarded with calls from John Kimmins, president of the World Federation of Ballroom Dancers, the umbrella organization for ballroom dance in America.

  “Val absolutely has to do a tryout with Lera,” John said. He meant Valeriya Kozharinova, whom everyone called Lera. Here we are, back in the world of Russian nicknames.

  I knew Lera. I had actually considered taking her on as a partner before I went with Sandy. I’d had a little crush on Sandy at the time, and though I knew this girl Valeriya was awesome, I’d heard little hints that she could also be very, shall we say, dramatic.

  Back then I had a friend who danced with her. When we hung out I would see him getting constant texts from Lera: “Where are you? Who’re you with?” Calling, texting, reaching out.

  “Man, she seems like a little a lot,” I remember commenting at the time.

  So I went with Sandy and never regretted it. Now I tried politely to put off Mr. Kimmins, sending the message that I had already settled on a partner. There was another side of the triangle: Julianne’s brother, Derek, had recently split with his partner, too, and was seriously seeking to dance with Lera.

  Kimmins would not take no for an answer. “You’ve got to have Val take a trial with Valeriya,” he told both my parents and my brother, during multiple calls over the course of the weekend.