Dancing With the Stars competitor AJ McLean is blogging exclusively with Us Weekly about his quest to take home the season 29 mirrorball trophy with partner Cheryl Burke! Check back each week for his latest update on the competition.
It is weekly blog time Let’s break down this week’s rehearsals. The toughest part, I think, this week was really just getting my frame locked in. Cheryl and I always talk about frame. And she constantly has to remind me because I keep forgetting. But if I lock my frame in, it will be much easier to dance, keep up and — as Cheryl says — take care of my partner. As a leading man, you need to be able to take care of the woman, and by having a good frame, that’s exactly what that means.

My daughters lost their minds when they found out Daddy was going to be Aladdin — even though with the new shaved head, I kind of feel like I looked more like the genie, except I wasn’t blue. But the girls loved it and thank you to the network for sending the girls the cutest little Jasmine costumes. So thank you and thank you Disney.
I felt that the judges scores this week were amazing. We’re just we’re keeping a good steady pace with the scores. A 21 is awesome, I was literally over the moon. We just keep going up, and this is just getting more and more exciting. Slow and steady wins the race. Let’s just keep it up!
As for the elimination, I am sad to see Carole Baskin go. She was a very, very sweet, sweet, down to Earth woman. Everybody loved her on set. Obviously there’s one persona that you see on TV, that everybody saw on Tiger King, but to get to spend quality time with her — six feet apart, but still — you do get to know somebody a little bit. I thought she was absolutely the sweetest woman, and she will definitely be missed. I’m just glad that she gets to go back to doing what she’s most passionate about and saving big cats. I wish her all the luck in the world.

The good thing about the type of dance that we’re doing this week is it doesn’t really require as much frame. It’s more loose. So I’m really I’m actually looking very forward to the new dance this week. I can’t say much else, except that this next dance and performance is going to blow your mind. It’s going to be — in my opinion — probably the biggest performance of the season for me.
Thank you to everybody for all the votes. Let’s keep that voting going and let’s keep the Backstreet pride alive. Let’s take this thing all the way to the end.
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
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