First-night JITTERS
Kerre’s heart misses a beat when she thinks of having to leave her beloved dance competition
If it’s Monday and you’re reading this magazine, I will find out tonight whether I’ll be packing up my dancing shoes and tulle petticoats and leaving the dance floor, or whether I’ll be girding my loins for another week’s training.
I really, really hope I’m not the first off Dancing with the Stars. None of us wants to be the first and yet one of us has to be. We’ve all – contestants and professional dancers – put in so many hours of practice, desperately trying to learn in four weeks how to master an art that takes many people a lifetime, and now it’s a bit like how I used to feel before I ran my marathons.
You’ve invested so much time, sweat, pain and mental exhaustion that the only thing worse than running the marathon is NOT running it. I would be so brassed off if I sprained an ankle in the days before the competition and had to bow out.
My dance partner Jared and I are putting in four to five hours of training a day, then there’s the television requirements of costume fittings and rehearsals for cameras, as well as publicity obligations, so they’re big days.
I don’t know how my fellow contestants with families are managing to juggle all their commitments. I feel grateful that my little family is up at our place in the Hokianga so I can devote all my time to training without feeling guilty.
I have come a long way and Jared reminds me of that when I despair that I’ll never get the steps right. I know what they are. I understand that it’s left, check, right kick and turn, but every single time, I lead with the right and everything unravels.
Talking to the other contestants, we all get so infuriated that we’re such numpties. Our professional dancers have the patience of saints. But we’re all getting so much out of an experience that is far beyond our individual comfort zones.
I have been a fan of DWTS for years, ever since Candy Lane and Alison Leonard and the like were judges. I loved the show. The glitz, the glamour, the music and seeing people who had never danced in their lives transformed into elegant, graceful creatures, gliding across the floor in perfect unison with their partners.
I’m not there yet. We have a foxtrot, but it’s imperfect. Or rather, I’m imperfect. Jared has choreographed it beautifully and if I get it half right on the night, it should look lovely.
My cha-cha I am confidently expecting to be an abject disaster. The moment the music starts, all the hours and hours Jared has spent drilling the simple routine into my memory goes completely out of my brain and I dance to the beat of my own drum. Out of time, out of step and with arms flailing wildly in the air. It’s dancing but not as any professional would recognise it. Still, it would be arrogant to think I can possibly be slick and smooth, and step-perfect, given men and women spend years honing their craft.
I have had four weeks evolving from lumpen non-dancer into someone who can perform four different dance routines. I am 15 years older than the next oldest contestant. I am carrying my lockdown lard, which is slowing me down.
If I make it through, all credit will go to my gorgeous, patient, long-suffering dance partner.
And if I make it through, I will be absolutely thrilled. In between the self-flagellation, self-doubt and actual physical pain, I’m having the time of my life. And I don’t want the party to end yet.
I dance to the beat of my own drum. Out of time, out of step and with arms flailing wildly in the air