“This is me,” I said, sweeping my arm around at the garishly decorated surroundings. “This is where we came from and this is how we celebrate thirty years! From dancing at the Paradise, to the paparazzi flashing photos, showing love for the kid from the five boroughs, I couldn’t be more proud to come back to my roots with the new friends I’ve made throughout my years. Now I got fancy friends in this city who are club owners and promoters and athletes and celebrities and actresses and . . . and . . . meteorologists! And whoever else is in the room! But I’m coming back as a little gangster with my own family and we’re celebrating. Let’s get this party lit! Raise a glass to mother Brooklyn!”
Uh-huh. Well, I told you I was drunk.
The food was incredible, the drinks were too many, and the Hollywood imports were jaw-droppingly obsessed with the whole scene. They had never seen anything like it before. I was so excited that I took shots with everybody, to the point where I blacked out three hours into the party and woke up the next morning in bed at home in Manhattan. I had a little trouble recalling specifics of the night before, but I knew I had spent it in the one city I loved most, surrounded by people I adored, people I’d taught, and people I’d learned from. Happy thirtieth birthday, Valya!
GINGER AND I WENT ON TO HAVE AN AWESOME SEASON ON Dancing with the Stars. I saw her blossom as a dancer, but more than that she changed physically, coming out of her post-pregnancy softness to get toned and fit. It was hard work for a young mother with her first child, especially for someone on television all the time.
Every day Ginger appeared on a morning show in front of millions of people, and that could feel intimidating if she was insecure about how she looked. But she had that new-mother glow, and she was actually more beautiful now than she’d ever been.
On Dancing with the Stars, I put her all in lace for an Argentine tango that was just about the sexiest thing she had ever done. The effect was not merely about the aesthetic, but about the confidence she had gained on the show, with the sultry moves of the tango showcasing her newfound poise. Across the course of the season the audience witnessed Ginger’s growth and progression, step by step, episode by episode, dance by dance.
I wanted more than anything to give Ginger the best possible experience on Dancing with the Stars. Of course, with a new baby she was already having the best time of her life. So I asked myself how I could celebrate her recent motherhood. How could I enhance her peak moment through dance?
For “Most Memorable Year” theme night, I did a contemporary with her that told the story of her most memorable year—the year that she met Ben. Her husband, by the way, was excited and supportive throughout Ginger’s season. I tried to involve him whenever possible, because when he was comfortable she could relax and concentrate on the performance. I choreographed a dance that symbolized their meeting and his proposal. We finished with her standing in front of me, both of us reaching around to lock fingers over her belly. The camera zoomed in, the symbolism was obvious and tight, and the routine turned out to be as beautiful as Ginger and Ben’s love story.
“At the end of the day, the most important thing to me is family,” she said in the preroutine video package, sounding much like me. “My son, my husband, everything that I’ve come to know as home. When I do this dance, it will absolutely be a career highlight, because now it’s like my career and my personal life are coming together. To be able to tell the story through dance—it’s going to be the most beautiful moment of the season for me.”
The soundtrack was “Home,” by Phillip Phillips, a favorite of Ginger’s. Ben had once given her the framed sheet music as a present. “We hung it in our first home,” Ginger said. To set the scene, I put my hair up in a top-knot, and we both danced barefoot, wearing casual, lounging-around-the-house clothes.
Baby Adrian was in the audience, all of three months old at this point, wearing little headphone-like ear protectors to shield his tender ears from the noise. After the routine, I had him brought up to the Skybox, where dancers assembled for the comment session from the judges. A production assistant surprised Ginger by giving her the infant, in a scene straight out of The Lion King: “Here. Is. Your. Baby!”
The poor kid started crying hysterically. No one could get him to stop. I was making faces at Adrian to distract him, but he kept wailing, and I started laughing.
“Oh my God,” Ginger muttered to me. “The show is going to kill me for suggesting this!”
The producers in the control booth were frantic. “How do we get this #$%@& baby to stop crying?”
It was a special moment, so authentic, so genuine, so lighthearted. That season with Ginger was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have any romance drama, any husband drama, any drama at all. In terms of my partner it was the most stress-free time I’d ever had.
Ginger and I made it to the finals on Dancing with the Stars that season, winding up in third place. We had a lot of injuries. The process was hard, but it was also beautiful, both for her and for me.
What could be better? In fact, I knew very well what could be better: winning a Mirrorball for dear Ginger Zee, and knocking down a second trophy for myself just for the sake of self-validation. Could I do it again, or was it a fluke?
Laurie
I realize that I left you hanging somewhat, introducing you to my Season 23 dance partner, Laurie Hernandez, but never really detailing what happened to us on the show. Heading in to tape our first meeting segment, I walked through the entrance into the gym where she trained, and I remember I had to take my shoes off to head out onto the mats. She turned around and saw me, her face lighting up as she pranced—there was no other word for it—up to me.
The expression she wore made me understand why her nickname was “the Human Emoji.” She didn’t just smile, she beamed. She appeared to be a miniature powerhouse, an atomic bomb stuffed into a U.S.A. leotard.
We embraced, a big-brother-little-sister hug that set the tone for our whole subsequent relationship. Her mother, Wanda, was there, and her manager, Sheryl Shade, and the whole atmosphere was one of warmth and family, a vibe I was very familiar with growing up in my own household.
“Hi! How you doing? I’m Val.”
“I know who you are. I’m Laurie Hernandez.”
“Nice to meet you, Laurie,” I said. “I know who you are, too.”
“Well,” she said, looking me straight in the eye, “are you ready to win this thing?”
“Eeey!” I laughed. “I love your ambition. We’re going to do our best.”
My close-but-no-cigar experience with Zendaya flashed through my mind. The small sting of regret from not being able to bring home a win that season still remained with me two years later. We had come in second, within a hairsbreadth of the championship. I felt like I had failed Zendaya as a mentor. This time, I vowed, it would be different. I had to be at the top of my game, because the stakes weren’t just the Mirrorball Trophy. They were bigger than that. Laurie Hernandez was at an age where each little influence could have an enormous impact.
Why couldn’t I work to create more avenues for her? Why not inspire her to give back even more than she had already given? If I did that, I thought, this young woman could change the world. Helping others should be everybody’s foremost responsibility in life, and I realized it was what made me the happiest, was where I found my place.
I looked at Laurie, and told myself, this season I would be better. I was there to guide her, to help her, to lift her up where she belonged—so she could hold up that Mirrorball Trophy.
That day at the gym, I gained another small insight into the life of Laurie Hernandez, courtesy of a scene that I was not sure I was supposed to witness. I passed by the office of Laurie’s long-time gymnastics coach, Maggie, and caught a glimpse of her in tears. She wept in the privacy of her office, but I saw her and understood immediately.
My arrival on the scene represented a rite of passage. One phase of Laurie’s life was ending and another, more adult one, was b
eginning. This woman had been by Laurie’s side for years, and perhaps she felt someone was taking away a precious diamond of a child. The end of an era can be wrenching. I respectfully tried to keep my distance, but I knew the heartache she was probably feeling. I knew the transition wasn’t going to be easy for Laurie, either, despite what she said about loving the show and dreaming about being a contestant.
“I started watching it from the very first season, when I was five,” she told me, making me feel every minute of my age.
“Damn, I’m old,” I said. “And, damn, the show is old, too.”
Just as her coach’s life may have been changing, so too, of course, was Laurie’s. She was leaving the world that she knew behind, a kind of upheaval that I was familiar with, having left the competition world to do Dancing with the Stars. Laurie was coming off the biggest result of her career, an incredible achievement for her and her coach. She came home from the Olympics and immediately went into rehearsal with me. Her commitment to Dancing with the Stars would be only for three months, but its symbolism made the time frame feel more extreme than that.
The afternoon opened the door to an incredible partnership and a lasting friendship. I felt something of a mysterious transition, a passing of the torch. My time wasn’t up for sure, not by any stretch of the imagination. But even though I was only a few years older—okay, I was fourteen years older—Laurie seemed to me like an avatar of a new generation.
I would get a chance to teach somebody, someone ready to learn how to dance correctly, who knew how to take guidance and coaching. I could teach her the things that were taught to me. I never had the chance to be an older brother, but I would get to be one with her. All the experience that I had gained over the course of my thirty years I would now get to share with this sixteen-year-old standing before me, a vision of awesomeness bottled up in a gymnastic outfit.
What I saw in her was not just an athlete, which was what the world saw in her, but a superstar. When I spoke to Laurie I came to understand the depth of her intellect and even wisdom. Not many sixteen-year-old girls thought like her, and her maturity served as a testament to her parents and the way they raised her. I saw an opportunity for me to bring out the best in what already was a pretty awesome kid.
But I never did treat her like a kid. I knew there was a difference between being young and being a child. I wanted her to make sure that she knew the difference, too, that just because she was sixteen didn’t mean she couldn’t have the ambition to change the world. She didn’t have to wait. She could do it now, today, at sixteen, not when she grew up. She didn’t have the excuse some kids use—“When I grow up, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that.” You don’t have to wait to grow up to do any of those things. You could do them right now.
Our backgrounds served as a kind of common denominator, and I was able to relate to her right off the bat. My experience as a national and a world champion in competitive dance, and my pedigree as a high-caliber dance coach, gave my voice authority for her. If I was just another Hollywood kid teaching her how to dance, we probably wouldn’t have had the same relationship.
That first day at the gym she quite literally showed me the ropes. We had a little race up the climbing rope, and I wasn’t even close—she was up and back down while I was still barely halfway up.
“I’m going to blame it on the age difference,” I told her, laughing as I sheepishly dropped back to the floor.
I called Deena Katz immediately. “Thank you so much,” I said. “She’s incredible. I’m grateful for the opportunity and very grateful that you trust me with her.”
At the moment Laurie was a priceless American jewel. My teaching and mentorship style had matured since my Zendaya days, to the point that I was confident I could do Laurie justice.
That day Wanda Hernandez invited me to their house for dinner. I met Laurie’s father and her siblings. The Hernandez family did not live in a fancy house, nor the kind of huge mansion that you see in some Jersey communities. They were a blue-collar family from the suburbs.
I recognized the atmosphere right away. It felt familiar. I was a Chmerkovskiy in a Hernandez household, but it felt like I was home, eating not the most lavish five-star dinner, but a meal that was indescribably finer, because it was so clearly served with love. By the time we were finished and sitting contentedly over our cafés con leche, they knew they had the right guy, and I knew I had just completely lucked out with my partner.
One of my first events with Laurie was a promo shoot the next day at a high-end photography studio in Manhattan. The single aspect of Dancing with the Stars that floored all of my partners was the costumes. It didn’t matter what kind of celebrity they were, the costumes got them every time. When the stars see that stuffed-full rack from Dancing with the Stars, oh, man, the glittery stuff and the rhinestone dresses, they got a hint of what they were in for.
I could just imagine what the moment was like for a sixteen-year-old girl, one who had deprived herself of a normal life for the last decade, chasing the single-minded dream of an Olympic gold medal. The friendships she didn’t get to develop, the movies she didn’t go to, all the cake and candy she didn’t eat—every awesome childhood thing under the sun, Laurie had sacrificed for her goal. She broke her wrists and legs. She was constantly sore all over and in pain, just to be able to earn the reward of standing up straight and proud as her national anthem was played for the world to hear.
So for her, that costume rack was the first tiny taste of those rewards that she had labored for over the course of eleven years. It was a beautiful moment. She was a kid in a candy store. I helped her choose the dress that would be appropriate for the photo shoot, made sure the shoes fit, cut off the excess material to make sure the soles would be slick for the picture. I ran around like a butler in a palace. I knew first impressions were vital, and I always felt like I was a kind of ambassador for the show. I wanted the family to understand that their daughter was in the best of hands.
“Do you want some food?” I asked, then turned to Wanda. “Are you okay? Would you like something to drink?” I told her about my mom carting me around to rehearsals and lessons, knowing the stories would sound familiar. They were getting to know me now.
I spoke to the stylists. “What about the makeup? Can we make it a little brighter, a little younger?”
I was there every step of the way. When we entered into our rehearsal period, Laurie was on a national gymnastics tour, so I would fly around the country to meet her and grab a few minutes of practice time. Once again, I was immersed in the old routine of rehearsing in hallways, green rooms, the wings of an auditorium.
Remember what I told you about the Dancing with the Stars audience being tuned in to the dancers’ growth across a season, rather than their expertise? It was that way with Laurie. We started out on the first episode with a cha-cha to “American Girl,” the perfect song for who she was at that moment in her life. Although we tied for first on that premiere episode, for the first three weeks the judges never marked us higher than a score of 8.
The fourth week had a Cirque du Soleil theme, and Laurie and I did a jazz dance to Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel,” with acrobats performing around and behind us. The effect was spectacular, and that show was a turning point. The judges gave us perfect 10s, the highest score for any couple on the show. Laurie had always been a favorite to win the season—coming off her Olympic gold, how could she not be?—but from that routine onward she and I took our place as the front-runners. We never looked back.
I was sad for her, though, because Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte was in the cast that season, and the scandal about his behavior in Rio swirled in the media. The season featured other strange moments, such as rapper Vanilla Ice doing a number MC’d by Texas governor Rick Perry. We had it all on Dancing with the Stars.
It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, because nothing could stop Laurie and me. For the last four episodes—from “Halloween Night” and “Showst
oppers Night,” to the semifinals and the finals—we were marked with perfect scores twenty-four times and earned only two 9s. Laurie had to find room on her shelves for a Mirrorball Trophy to go along with all the Olympic medals and gymnastic awards.
I wound up with much more than a second trophy. In that wonderful whirlwind of a season, Laurie taught me that like love, inspiration was a two-way street. Sometimes experience can batter you into changing, but sometimes it can lift you up and transform you with a sense of joy, rather than agony.
“I just want to thank everyone for their support and riding along this crazy roller coaster of my life,” Laurie said after winning. Then she continued, with words after my own heart: “My goal is just to inspire others as I go on with my journey.”
Laurie and I took our place among couples with the highest averages on Dancing with the Stars, and were ranked in the top twenty at least, behind my brother, who led the pack in his championship season with Meryl Davis.
But who’s counting?
Harmony
In the spring of 2017, leading up to Season 24 of Dancing with the Stars, I felt for the first time that a case of burnout was sneaking up on me. For one thing, I had done eleven seasons in a row and was now committed to doing a twelfth.
Like college students who “step out” for a year in the midst of their educations, pros on the show take seasons off all the time. Sometimes they’re just not hired that year, and sometimes they step out by their own choice. When you don’t see the best of the professionals on our show, most likely they’ve been asked to participate but decided they needed a season off, because they were burned out or just wanted to pursue other opportunities.
That wasn’t me. Over the course of the six years since I had signed on as a pro dancer, I had never stopped out. I pursued my other opportunities during the midseason breaks while still banging out the shows, simply because I loved it.
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