Dancing With the Stars pro Jenna Johnson is blogging exclusively with Us Weekly about her quest to take home the season 27 Mirrorball Trophy with partner Joe Amabile! Check back each week for her latest update on the competition.
This week’s rehearsals were so much fun. Joe and I had a lot of momentum just from the previous week. He was super determined, excited and motivated. It was a little stressful because we didn’t get Jordan [Kimball] until Friday, so I technically only had two days to teach him the full routine before we had to camera block on Sunday. That was a little hard especially because he’s not a dancer and he’s never done the show before, unlike the rest of the celebs. It was a challenge but he was up for it and he learned the dance in one day. He was being such a trooper about everything and I was super proud of him.
When Jordan joined us, the energy was hilarious. He and Joe have such good chemistry. They have the best time together. They would giggle, Jordan was showing him facial expressions from modeling. We laughed the whole time. It was so much fun. I think Jordan brought out this confidence in Joe. It was cute and I saw a shift in Joe throughout the week. I could see that he felt like he knew a little bit more than Jordan just because he’d been through this process. I could see Joe was trying to help Jordan with some steps and counts.
Joe was actually the person who chose our song, “I’m Too Sexy.” This is his favorite song. We knew that we needed to do a Latin song. He said, “I feel like this is the magical song for us.” So we did it. I think it fit both of them perfectly.
Creatively, I wanted to go a little out of the box. I think everyone expected us to just do modeling. I didn’t think that would be exiting enough so we decided to be mechanics. I think the whole concept and set up was super fun. For the outfits, I pulled some reference photos of sexy mechanic looks. I knew I wanted overalls, and a denim look and a greased up wife beater.
It was so much fun having Val [Chmerkovskiy] and Gleb [Savchenko] in our routine. I think they added a little extra something and I think it helped keep Jordan and Joe a bit more calm and secure out on the floor, knowing that there were two other guys out there. I don’t know what they were doing in the back, on the car. I didn’t tell them to do anything and then I turned around one day, and they had created a full scene back there. I was like, ‘Great, do your thing. Keep doing that!’
The judges’ critiques, I think they were accurate. We went up against a lot of strong trios. I with that Joe could catch a break, and just for once, get praised. But we know it’s a competition. He knows that he’s one of the weakest dancers here so we’re up for critiques and were gonna take them into every week and do our best to get better and better.
I’m super excited for Disney week. This will be my first Disney week as a pro and I can’t wait. It’s literally the most magical week of the season and it’s gonna be fun. Our dance is going to be lighthearted, childish and super playful.
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
