DWTS12 – Mark Ballas Thinks He and Chelsea Kane Are Going To Take Competition To Next Level (Videos)

Mark ballas updated his journal again at USA Today. He’s feeling the “heat” as well as raising his expectations and feeling confident (almost too much so?) going into this third week with their Cha Cha. (Heidi’s Note: Jinx!!)

Can you feel that? It’s definitely getting hot in here.

Just like the heat wave that hit Los Angeles this week, this season is really starting to heat up. After the first elimination, everyone is reminded that this is a competition. Sure, I have fun bonding with Chelsea while teaching her the new choreography for the week, and I’m sure the other couples are enjoying it, too. But at the end of our week, someone goes home. That takes the fun right out of it. The clock is ticking and we have a dance to learn and make perfect. There are less laughs and more stiff brows in rehearsal as we hunker down and see who can get through Tuesday’s elimination.

I say it a lot — maybe even in every journal so far — but Chelsea is doing so great. She’s pretty quick to pick up the choreography and is excellent at bringing her personality out to shine during the performance. I’ve re-watched our Jive from last week several times and she really nailed it. I wouldn’t expect any celebrity partner to be so exact in Week 2. She delivered a performance worthy of Week 8, and only on five total weeks of training. She blew me away and, because of it, I’m going to drastically raise my expectations of her. Buckle up Chelsea, I think we’re going to take this competition to the next level!

This week we have the Cha Cha, which is faster than the Foxtrot (Week 1) and slower than the Jive (Week 2). As I write this we’ve had only two days of rehearsal so far, but I like our progression at this point. Two more days to get it performance-ready, then it’s time to wow everyone on Monday.

Below are a couple of new interviews with Chelsea posted at Zap2it talking about their new dance and how it’s more traditional. It’s about falling in love for the first time. Her and Mark hope it will make the judges happy as well as impressing the young voters.

 

 

Edit to Add: A snippet from Chelsea’s new blog at People.com where Chelsea writes about having met a happy medium on Friday of meeting all the criteria of the next dance while still staying true to Mark’s James Dean personality

That being said, it’s only fitting that my routine of running with renegades would make its return on Dancing with the Stars. Case in point: Mark Ballas, the rebel of the ballroom. After making it through our first elimination (and a massive thank you to anyone who voted). Mark and I hit the studio hard. The challenge? To come up with a cha cha that is still bizarre enough to keep Ballas happy, while keeping Kanenball in the competition.

I was a straight A student in school and I want to prove to the judges that I can make the grade. Therefore, I have been abusing words like “conventional” and “traditional” to make sure that we don’t get penalized again for being too out of the box after last week’s jive. Unfortunately, my teacher’s pet vocabulary is being met with yawns and disapproving looks from my partner and choreographer.

On Friday, we finally reached a happy medium of meeting all the criteria while still staying true to Mark’s James Dean personality. Last week was fun and I was happy to sit in detention for it, but I don’t want to risk getting expelled. However, if this really were school, I would definitely be sent home because my costume, a gold rhinestone bikini, is not appropriate for campus.

Picture above from Mark’s facebook.