I'll Never Change My Name

by Valentin Chmerkovskiy

  As soon as I arrived, I understood immediately what a big deal the show would be. For the time and place, the budget was huge, more than had been spent on any series previously. I could see that the entire network was behind the show, which had the potential of being a game changer in the limited world of Ukrainian television. I took meetings with execs, who were all really jazzed about the project. They had brought in consultants from all over the world. They would devote the resources, they assured me, to make the program look sleek and professional.

  Then I visited the TV studio where the show would be shot. I remember my conversation with Maks from that day.

  “Hey, bro,” I started out, giving him our traditional greeting. “You know when kids pretend to be an astronaut, and they use a cardboard box for a spaceship?”

  “Yeah?” he asked, wondering what I was getting at.

  “Well, the soundstage where Dancing with the Stars is shot, that’s like fucking NASA. This place in Kiev, the TV studio here is like the cardboard box.”

  The infrastructure wasn’t even worthy of being in the same conversation, it was so poor. But I noticed something else, too, on that visit. All the executive producers at the network were young, in their midtwenties, but when they opened their mouths they sounded as if they were eighty years old. I met a few of the girls they were considering casting on the show, and they came off as mature beyond their years, too. A young woman would speak to me in Russian, and even if I didn’t follow everything that she was saying, I could see depth in her eyes and detect a wisdom in her words. It felt crazy to me, because obviously they were young, but it helped me to understand that people grew up fast in Eastern Europe.

  This was before civil war kicked the stuffing out of much of the country, but in some ways, even back then Ukraine felt as though it had slipped down from second world status to borderline third world. I noticed that the billboards featured not celebrities but rather large pictures of ugly politicians. On the other hand, big American stars like George Clooney were featured all the time, doing product endorsements on TV commercials translated into Russian. Seeing George do it gave me an idea, providing the logic for encouraging Maks to participate in the Ukrainian Bachelor.

  “Listen, you’ll be a superstar here,” I told my brother. “Unlike Clooney you can speak Russian, and they won’t even have to translate you. We’re talking about a financial opportunity and an opportunity to increase your visibility in a whole different market. [Yes, we really do talk like that to each other occasionally.] It’s far enough from America that no one back there will give a fuck if it’s a fail. And even if it turns out not to be the best look for you, you’re still appearing on far and away the biggest TV show in the country.”

  Maks didn’t even have to say anything for me to summon up the cynical expression that was probably crossing his face at that moment. I shifted my argument into overdrive.

  “You’re handsome as fuck! You are the bachelor, dude! What better storyline could there be? Here comes a son of the great Ukrainian nation, who went to America and found fortune and fame but couldn’t find love. Now the only love that he wants, the someone he dreams and yearns for, is a Ukrainian princess. He wants to make her his international queen.”

  Talk about a fairy tale. How could anyone say no to that? In the end, I convinced him. He did the show and blew up as big as it was humanly possible to blow big in Ukraine, a humongous star, Prince Charming, a local boy made good. The show did smashingly well, too, at one point managing the feat of beating out a broadcast of a EuroCup game, Ukraine versus France, the first time any Ukrainian show had received higher ratings than soccer.

  A couple of times, I flew out to see Maks on the set of Ukraine Bachelor. My first impression was that he spoke Russian much better than me. My mind was blown seeing him with the lineup of twenty-five Eastern European women. They appeared to me to be hard women ready to eat my poor brother alive. I didn’t think I would have liked to meet any one of them in a dark alley, much less the whole platoon. All I could do was mentally wish him the best of luck.

  The Holostyak producers seemed to be willing to spend money, and the show filmed all over the world, in the Canary Islands, in Paris, and in Italy. There were scenes with Maks arriving to pick up a girl for a date in a vintage 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

  My brother had plenty of insecurities about women, but he also possessed a simplicity and honesty on the direct opposite end of the romantic spectrum from the fake figure presented by The Bachelor, which practically shouts “douchebag.” Hey! I want to find love on television as millions of people watch! Let me go on TV and pick the love of my life from a group of twenty-five women! And let’s all pretend that this whole business is the most natural thing in the world!

  Plus Maks was selling the concept to a totally flat-footed society. America loves The Bachelor because most people get the joke. The U.S. audience watches to get away from everyday woes and laugh and smile and not take things too seriously. Eastern Europeans know how to take things just one way, and that’s extremely seriously. They’re the people at the party who don’t get the joke.

  Maks won over maybe eighty percent of the audience, with the other twenty percent hating him out of pure spite. The show painted my brother as a super-successful entrepreneur and celebrity superstar from America, rolling up to luxury venues in luxury cars. You think Hollywood is the land of make-believe, but this was a whole different kind of fairy tale. Maks looked good in the role of the young prince, which not everybody in the world can pull off. Flying in a private jet, stepping out onto the tarmac—you try that sometime, and see if you can manage not to look like an ass.

  At the same time Maks put across his essentially humble nature, emphasizing total respect for the women involved. Success matched with humility was a killer combination, wholly novel in Ukraine, where financial security was unfortunately synonymous with a certain attitude of entitlement. Fuck everybody! You know who I am? Outta my way—I’ve got money! In the United States there can be a similar attitude, but it’s never as flagrant as in Eastern Europe.

  Maks was something new under the Ukrainian sun, a rich kid (at least on TV) who was also approachable, respectful, and not a total asshole. The combination made him a star among men and women both.

  Until the finale. Then Maks’s choice came down to two girls. One was like a version of Miss Ukraine, super beautiful, charming, and gushingly in love, to the point of being borderline embarrassing when expressing her emotions. The second finalist was a much chillier bitch, a little thinner, a little hotter, a little more put together.

  The options were laid out clearly, the Western-style City Chick versus the All-Ukrainian girl. It wasn’t a reality TV show anymore. Holostyak had become a test of the national character.

  Maks went with Sasha, the City Chick, and the country immediately exploded.

  You cannot imagine the extremity of the reaction. Maks gave me the numbers, which I don’t know if I can believe: Out of a population of forty-five million, twenty-three million watched the show, with the remaining twenty-two million not connected to electricity. On Google’s trending topics in Ukraine, Holostyak ranked number one. It mattered to folks.

  This was in the aftermath of the 2004–2005 Orange Revolution in the country, when confrontation loomed between Ukraine and Mother Russia. But forget about that boring political stuff, let’s talk about Maks and Sasha!

  People were hugely invested in the results and reacted to the outcome with rage in their minds and spittle on their lips. What a fucking piece of shit that Maksim Chmerkovskiy is! What an idiot! Sasha is gonna play him, doesn’t he see that?

  According to the concept of The Bachelor, Sasha was the supposed love of Maks’s life. She lasted with my brother for all of two days.

  He called me with his report. “We landed at LAX and she wasn’t interested in her surroundings at all, never asked me to help her get a job or figure out how she was going to make her way in Los Angeles. She was like, ‘H
ey, I want to get a pair of shoes I really like. Can I get your credit card?’ Of course like a softie I gave her my credit card and pointed her to Rodeo Drive. But I didn’t think that should have been the first thing coming out of her mouth, you know?”

  So the relationship came to an abrupt end. In the aftermath, Maks revealed his strategy to me, which was actually pretty smart. “Look, I knew that any relationship that began on The Bachelor probably wouldn’t last. I figured it would be a lot easier for the public over there to buy the fact that me and this girl Sasha didn’t work out. They would expect that. But the public would go berserk if me and Miss Ukraine didn’t get married and live happily ever after.”

  The logic made sense to me—for once my brother had an actual logical point. Take the loss now to position himself to win later.

  Season 12 of Dancing with the Stars aired live in the States just as Holostyak was being broadcast on STB in Ukraine. Maks killed it on Dancing with the Stars that season, pairing with actress Kirstie Alley and finishing as runner-up, his best showing up until that point. The show peaked, too, with one episode watched by over thirty million people, a record.

  As a kind of anticlimax, my superstar brother was required by contract to return to Kiev and make an appearance on a last, follow-up episode of Holostyak.

  “You want to come with me?” he asked. It was characteristic of the Chmerkovskiy brothers to enlist backup when entering dicey situations. Plus I still owed him for having my back during the Julianne disaster.

  We flew into Kiev to be met with the biggest media clusterfuck I’ve ever encountered. I couldn’t believe it. We collected our baggage, stepped out the airport door, and ran into a solid wall of cameras. Later on I would enjoy my fair share of celebrity, and experienced emerging from a theater, say, to find tons of screaming fans greeting me. This was on a whole different level, this was David Beckham meets Barack Obama meets the resurrection of the living Elvis.

  The Bachelor returns . . . to be greeted by utter pandemonium!

  When it came to fashion, swagger, and demeanor, Maks and I were the real American deal. Ukraine had seen modern American style before, of course, but mostly secondhand, on television. And the country had also seen its share of Russian style, which was sort of a bootleg American vibe crossed with vodka-infused tackiness.

  What Ukraine hadn’t seen was us. In Maks the country saw the epitome of cool, someone they could idolize. Without too much patting ourselves on the back, I have to say we came off as from Brooklyn, successfully assimilated, and authentically American all the way.

  My brother did the follow-up show and had me come on as a guest. The shooting day stretched to twelve hours, filming in an unair-conditioned room somewhere in the Ukrainian boondocks, with no union rules and no lunch breaks. It was already evening when we finally finished up, just in time to hit the after-party.

  My brother and I and one of the Holostyak producers rode to the nightclub and climbed out of the limo. Immediately we were gang rushed by a horde of female fans. I remember the moment well, with them tottering toward us on stiletto heels, managing to look silly and dangerous at the same time.

  “Omigod, omigod,” they called out. “Can we have a picture?”

  People started to pour out from the front doors of the club. In an instant, the scene spiraled out of control. One of the female fans wrapped herself around my brother, something like a tongue around a lollipop. In the background I saw a big dude rumble forward, summoned from inside by the bouncers. He turned out to be the tongue’s boyfriend.

  As if it were going down in cinematic slow-motion, I witnessed the confrontation happen. The boyfriend steamed up to Maks, said, “I know you” in Russian, then—boom!—punched my brother in the face.

  I reacted on pure impulse, before I could think. Bam! I slugged the dude with a right hook I’d been perfecting in Brooklyn boxing gyms since I was a teenager. He crumpled to the ground.

  By the time my brother recovered and turned around, his assailant was already laid out, with me on top of him. My adrenaline spiked into the stratosphere and the hand I had punched him with was already swelling up like a balloon. I didn’t want to continue the battle, because instinct told me to put a quick end to the whole situation. The fight had gone down like nothing in the movies. Nobody won.

  “Don’t hit him again,” Maks hissed.

  Then the cameras swooped in, with the Kiev equivalent of paparazzi exploding flashbulbs in our faces. The next day, a picture of me pinning the boyfriend down was splashed all over the Ukrainian newspapers. The caption read, “The Chmerkovskiy brothers, just over from America for a day, in a brawl.”

  In the spirit of my habitual Val-ian overanalysis, I’d say my relationship with Maks shifted right there, at least in my own mind. Now we’re even, I remember thinking. You’ve looked out for me and had my back my whole life. Now, when the shit hit the fan, I did not hesitate, I did not think twice. It was as if I was at last ready to say to Maks, “Yo, I’m never going to stop caring about you or loving you or doing things for you, but it will never again come from a place of owing you, or of ‘look how much my brother’s done for me.’ Now I’ve done just as much for you as you’ve done for me.”

  And that was a proud moment.

  I grew up around people who were hustling all the time to provide for me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to return the favor, to give back as good as I had received. Maks had been such an immense force in my life. I was a product of his teaching, so my return on his investment in me was my winning dance competitions. I might have been the racehorse, but I wouldn’t have a stable, I wouldn’t have food, I wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for his teaching.

  Somewhere in my brain I had formulated the definition of the alpha man as someone who paid his debt to whoever helped him along on the road of life. If he can’t pay them back personally, he pays it forward in his attitude toward others. I always felt the impulse to even up the scales.

  That single episode, with me coming in and protecting Maks for a change, might have been the moment when he finally understood an essential truth. He could hear himself say the same words that I have always had running through my own mind: I have a brother who would go to the mat for me, I have a brother who’s looking out for me, I have a brother who will be there.

  Put it on my tab, Maks.

  Leaving

  I can nail down the exact moment it happened, when I decided to leave the competitive dance world, where for over a decade I had found my home, my inspiration, and really my whole reason for being. I was in Blackpool, England, in 2011, for the British Open Latin Dance Championship, right in the middle of a samba. The field had been winnowed from hundreds down to the top forty-eight, with my partner Daria “Dasha” Chesnokova and me cruising toward the finals.

  We had danced a couple of rounds now, and I was getting into my groove. At that point in my career, I was no longer the dark horse, the up-and-comer. Instead, I was a recognized favorite. The scorekeepers—called “scrutineers”—had tallied the points for each round, and the standings were already clear.

  In a huge competition such as Blackpool, the judges didn’t necessarily assess every single couple out on the floor. How could they? Within the space of a few minutes, it would be impossible to focus on every dancer. No, what happened was the team of judges understood which favorites were likely to pass through to the next round. Dasha and I knew that when the round of forty-eight couples was judged and the number of couples halved to the top twenty-four, we would be among those still standing.

  I was dancing and we were killing it. In the samba, a moving dance, dancers travel counterclockwise and the traffic on the floor just flows. By contrast, the paso doble is more of a march, while the cha-cha and the jive are more stationary—we would choose our position and remain in a fairly limited area.

  In movement dances like the samba or the waltz the dancers are like the cars in a NASCAR race, with couples constantly maneuvering around in a crowd. We were
on the inside track and covered up, hidden from the judges and spectators by a screen of other dancers. No one except the other dancers could really see us, but it didn’t matter, because Dasha and I had probably been marked as favorites before we even started dancing.

  But then my pride kicked in. Favorite or not, I didn’t want to be lost in the crowd. I wanted to connect to the audience and feel the inspiration flow from them to me. I’d been in the same position before, traffic-wise. The situation can lend an airless feeling to the proceedings. If I wasn’t creating beautiful art for the audience to see and the judges to mark, why was I there?

  I was dancing a promenade run into a volta, another volta and then a slow volta, whereby my partner and I would wind up facing each other. And during that precise combination I remember thinking “promenade run,” and then, immediately, came a second thought. “What the fuck am I doing?” That was the question posed in my mind. “What is this movement and why am I doing it?” It suddenly occurred to me that I had been performing the same movement for more than fifteen years, fine tuning this same step, and beyond that dancing the same five Latin dances, in the same order, chachasambarumbapasodoblejive.

  It was odd and at the same time meaningful to me that I would manage to have a conversation with myself while in the middle of a competition. It meant that I wasn’t in the moment, wasn’t connecting with my partner, and wasn’t connected to the opportunity—the Blackpool Dance Festival! The dance world’s most celebrated event! In the grandest terms, I wasn’t connecting to the universe. I was only connecting with myself.

  “What are you doing?” my interior voice asked. “Why are you doing this again? Why?”

  The question “Why?” hung in my mind and wouldn’t go away.

  My answer? “I’m pursuing this for reasons of pride only.”