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Sparkle (1)
Last week, you may have noticed I did not post a Dancing with the Stars recap. (At least I hope so...where my faithful recappers at!?) I had the best of reasons: I was actually on a quick plane trip down to Los Angeles to attend the Dancing with the Stars results show, and even better/ I was off to interview one of the front-runners: Chelsea Kane.
Having now spent just that little time backstage and in the audience, I can tell you this: These stars are not kidding when they talk about how bad they want to win. Whatever motivations drive them to start the process, once they start spending 5, 6, and ultimately ten hours a day "training," they have the eye of the tiger, all right.
It was a beautiful, but hot, day in L.A., and I was dressed more for summer in San Francisco, so I was pretty glad to be retrieved by an ABC staffer and Chelsea's agent and brought backstage to wait in a trailer, equipped with a flat screen TV, a feed from what was happening in the studio and, most importantly, air conditioning.
We were supposed to interview Chelsea at 3PM, but it was not a typical dress rehearsal, apparently, and they were running far behind. Chelsea wouldn't be done until 3:30, had a costume consult and hair/make-up at 4, and we really needed to be in our seats by 5:30 for a 6PM start.
Meanwhile, the delay meant we'd be watching the filming of the taped segments from backstage, instead of from our seats. In the end I confess I was glad, because when you attend such a show you end up getting a lot of coaching on clapping and cheering and smiling and clapping and reacting and clapping. I was only doing that for the actual one hour of the show, and my arms (and cheeks) were tired from the clapping and the smiling. Can't imagine how the folks who were doing that for three hours felt!
We watched the James Blunt segment get taped. I think he did one take. And then a helicopter came and picked him up. I'm not kidding. Flew right over where we were landed on the building next door and whisked him away to a gig, just as Chelsea came and got us. This was only two days after hearing about how helicopters swooped in and got Osama bin Laden, so we were all a little bit amused. Chelsea and I agreed that the bar had now been set: If she wanted to be really cool, she would need to start having copters pick her up from gigs.
We settled into Chelsea's trailer, and I asked her some deep and searching questions before heading into the studio to watch the results show live.
Here are some highlights:
For those of you who wonder how Chelsea ended up on DWtS, it's a pretty simple answer: "They asked."
She first came to the set because the Jonas Brothers performed, and from there she became a fan. But she really started hanging around just last season when her Disney Channel-mate Kyle Massey was on the show.
Luckily for Chelsea she's not doing another gig right now, so unlike some of her competitors, she isn't flying back and forth cross-country all week...and she doesn't think she could do it if she couldn't focus on it. She is doing some voiceover work for an animated series, but she can shuffle over in her sweats or rehearsal clothes to do that, so it's a piece of cake.
Now, I had to ask her the sensitive question: How were you this good out of the gate...are you, in fact, a ringer?
Sounds like Chelsea was a musical theatre kid (in Scottsdale, AZ where she grew up), but more of a "Chorus Girl #2" than a big dancer. She invoked the "box step," and I could picture exactly what she meant. Side note: AZ produces some talented kids...Chelsea did theatre with both Jordin Sparks and Emma Stone. At any rate, this is Chelsea's first time doing such intense choreography, and her first time having to partner, so there goes those "ringer" conspiracy theories.
I asked how Chelsea and Mark strategize, if at all, and it sounds like some things just come naturally:
"Our strategy happened without us planning it. We hit it off instantly because we're a lot alike. We like a lot of the same music, underground DJs and bands. We wanted to create dances to
