Derek Hough talks Lifts, Rumba and Jennifer Grey in New TV Guide Blog

We’ve had lots of whiners comments about why Derek didn’t get docked for the lift he did in his rumba with Bindi, and comments about the lack of rumba content – mainly just for Derek although a lot of other couples had the same issues (no surprise there, right?) – and Derek does us a favor and explains what HE was told when preparing for the dance. And he shows, once again, that he’s pretty well connected in Hollywood. 🙂 From TV Guide:

I texted Jennifer immediately afterward and she was like, “Love it! That was great!” Kenny Ortega also texted me and was super pumped about it. I’m glad they both loved it. We really tried to honor the original dance as much as we could. I know some of you were worried that we would be docked for a lift in the rumba since that’s not allowed, but we all had a lot of leeway in our choreography because it was about paying tribute to these iconic dances. We did some rumba in the beginning, but the dance was by no means a rumba! We were all told the rules were going to be loose so we didn’t have to be concerned about that. Now you may be wondering why they didn’t just give us a mambo since that’s the dance in the movie, but I’m kinda glad they gave us the rumba. We got it over with!

This week, we have the Argentine tango. We’re dancing to “Cry Little Sister.” With Bindi, we’ve seen the sweet side of her obviously. This is gonna be the fierce, sexy, strong side of her. I’m excited for everyone to see that. She totally gets into character and I think it’s gonna be good.

I suspected he would rather have had the other song, which makes me very curious about how the songs were handed out. Bindi, as the person with the highest cumulative score, should have had first choice. We’ll have to wait and see how that went down. Or how they portray it went down, in any case.