Taking the Lead: Lessons From a Life in Motion (18 page)

When I went on
Dancing with the Stars
, I had to abandon that feeling. I couldn’t expect a novice partner to understand the subtle details that it takes to create a dance. At first, it wasn’t just frustrating; it drove me crazy. It was like going back to the basics of movement. I thought to myself, Man, I’m starting from scratch. Even if some of my partners had some dance training, this was a whole new experience. They had me to dance with now, and we had to connect and play off each other.

In the beginning, I struggled as much as they did. There were a lot of tantrums and water bottles being thrown across the floor (I’m talking about me, not them!). When I was choreographing, and it didn’t come together right away, the dance routine felt unbalanced to me, which drove me absolutely insane. But eventually I came to an epiphany: Letting go of perfectionism doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It means surrending to the experience and the journey and allowing things to happen naturally. To be honest with you, it took me a couple of seasons to really feel comfortable enough to embrace being a little rough around the edges. I can see now that that’s what it’s all about, those human moments that the audience can relate to. If we were flawless from day 1, where would the excitement be? The journey of self-discovery is what the show is about—not nailing the steps.

Nicole Scherzinger was almost as big a perfectionist as I was. Not just with her dancing, but her hair, her costumes, the music. She told me stories of how she’d do take after take in a recording studio because she was never satisfied. That’s how she is with everything in her life: she has very high standards. When it came to the week 10 finals, we had a rumba to “Lady in Red,” and she was so focused on the technique, she was having a hard time getting the mood of the dance.

Carrie Ann came in to give her some advice. “You gotta live the dance,” she told her. “Just let go of everything else and be in the moment. Let the edges soften.” I thought Nicole did an amazing job, but the judges were looking for things to nitpick, and she was really upset. “I’ve done that dance better,” she told me backstage.

“It’s over, it’s gone. It’s only there now for us to learn from,” I assured her. We had three more dances to do that night and I needed to get her head back in the game. “Think about it: You’re driving and there’s a giant windshield and a small rearview mirror. Ever wonder why it’s so small? So you can only glance at it once in a while. If you stare and dwell on what’s behind you, you’re gonna crash.” Our next dance, the jive, earned us a perfect 30, and in the end we took home the Mirror Ball. It was a great season and a great lesson for both of us. You can’t get caught up in perfect. It’s not about what the paddle says. If you immerse yourself every single day for three months in this journey, you’re going to grow. You’re going to learn stuff about yourself; you’re going to overcome your obstacle—be it physical or emotional. That’s what’s important.

But I want to be 100 percent honest here: there are days when I’m freaking out and I don’t have the answers. I get frustrated, but I try and see it as a temporary situation and a separate entity from who I am. I step away from it. I’ve learned a ton about myself and how to manage myself and my expectations. There have been days when I’ve said to my partner, “I need you to help me today.” I put them in the teacher role, and they wind up giving me the pep talk: “We can do this, Derek. We can do it.” They’re saying it, they’re doing it, they’re believing it.

Before
DWTS
, my work was instinctual and internal. It was something I could never put into words. But being a teacher forced me to dissect what I was doing and explain it. Some partners I could be really tough with and they’d respond to me. Others would shut down. If I got a little intense with Jennifer Grey, it was counterproductive, because she would block me out. But if I did this to Maria Menounos, she would get a fire in her belly and try harder. I have to learn to adjust myself to cater to each partner’s needs and style of learning. If the look I get from her is deer in the headlights, I know I am on the wrong path. I have to find a way to make them understand. Great teachers strive to get through. My fulfillment comes when the lightbulb goes on and they experience that aha moment. They see not just what I want them to do, but what they’re capable of.

LEADING LESSONS

Free yourself to have bad ideas
.

Whenever I try to think of a brilliant new dance routine, it usually falls flat on its face. It’s crushed by the weight of my own expectations for brilliance. It’s much more fruitful to follow the advice of the songwriter who said, “When you write new songs, write for the trash can.” When I start choreographing a new dance, I don’t care how bad the idea is, and I allow myself to run with it. Challenge yourself to think of five awful, terrible, oh-my-gosh-this-stinks ideas. They get the juices flowing. And when you have those five, at the very least you have creative momentum and, more often than not, some of those ideas have legs. Think about the one thing that’s original to you and no one else. What’s your unique voice? Find that voice and shout with it.

Visualize the success, not the failure
.

This part is tough for us perfectionists. We have a hard time ever seeing ourselves as winners; our heads tend to go to a place of “Nothing is going right.” Don’t get hung up on the minutiae. Say what you want, out loud, over and over again. Sound crazy? It works. Before I go onto the competition floor, sometimes I look in the mirror and say out loud, “I want you to do your very best, and I want you to be passionate and be in the moment.” Giving myself those marching orders often reminds me to focus on the positive instead of getting lost in what might be wrong (but likely is just in my head).

Experience perfection often
.

It’s one thing to set the bar high, another entirely to set it so high you can never reach it. Keep it in a place where it’s not impossible to achieve. You define what perfection is. Maybe today, it’s running all your errands, and tomorrow it’s noticing and appreciating a beautiful sunset. We’re constantly told that no one is perfect; only God is perfect. But when we’re born, we are perfect. I believe that person still exists in all of us. It’s been clouded by experiences; it’s been twisted and turned on its head, but it’s still there. How will you define it and find it? I might think that dancing a technically sound routine—pointed toes, straight legs, sharp turns—is perfect. But someone else might look at that same routine and say that it’s emotionally empty. Sometimes when you’re not at your best is actually when you can be the closest to, and most authentic with, your partner.

An act of true empathy has great power
.

The small act of accepting another’s level of ability can be as valuable as coaching them to rise to yours. I used to have no patience for people who were depressed or upset; I didn’t get why they couldn’t simply snap out of it. I told friends and family, “Get over it.” Now when there are people struggling, instead of just being dismissive, I try to relate on some level. That’s life experience talking. I’ve been down and unable to shake it, so I understand better the challenge of mastering yourself and your emotions. When I’m dancing with my partners, they are completely vulnerable: not only are they being judged on their dancing and how they look in revealing costumes, but they are completely out of their comfort zone. Sometimes the best approach to build their confidence is to put myself in their shoes. What’s going on inside their heads that’s holding them back? Empathy is the power to see and understand what another person is feeling or experiencing. It’s assuring them that they are not alone. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, but you are acknowledging what they are going through. It takes time, focus, and effort—you have to listen. But it creates a place of honest communication and feedback where there was none before. I find when I empathize with my partners, the walls between us come tumbling down.

REFLECTING ON DEREK

“Derek made me believe I could do things I thought weren’t possible. I had no experience in ballroom dancing and it’s so technical, so at first glance the entire experience was overwhelming. But Derek is just such a great teacher. Instead of looking at the big picture and saying, “Wow, that’s impossible, I can’t do that,” he took everything and pieced it together slowly and taught it to me like a puzzle. I focused so intently on getting every piece of that puzzle right. So after all of the hard work, when you pulled out to see the big picture, it was like a little masterpiece. Because he believed that I could do it, it made me believe I could do it. So we were like, “Let’s just hold hands, close our eyes, and just jump off the cliff.”

The most difficult thing he taught me was how to let go. I’m such a perfectionist. My head gets in the way a lot of the time because everything has to be a certain way and perfect. After twelve-hour days for two and a half months, after all the blood, sweat, and tears, he broke through and just taught me how to let go.

What’s so special about Derek is that he doesn’t ask the question Why? he asks, Why not? Creatively, Derek has no walls. He pushes the limits, pushes the boundaries. From one artist to another, he was so wonderful to work with. He was always open to new ideas and new possibilities, and not only as a teacher and partner. I learned and continue to learn about how to really cherish each moment in life and how to love and accept myself. Derek sees the beauty and the possibility in everything. He is magic and I love him, and the best gift is I won a lifelong friend from that whole experience.”

—NICOLE SCHERZINGER

LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT

M
Y LATEST
DWTS
dance partner has been a revelation. If you saw any of her performances on the show—or followed her amazing career as a snowboarder—you understand what I mean. Amy Purdy is one of the most courageous, dynamic, unstoppable people I have ever met. I truly run out of adjectives when I try to convey how amazing she is. At the age of nineteen, she lost both of her legs to bacterial meningitis. Her body went into septic shock, and she had a less than 2 percent chance of survival. Her legs had to be amputated below the knee and her spleen removed, and she lost the hearing in her left ear. Two years later, she also needed a kidney transplant; her dad gave her one of his. She told me that within two hours of coming out of her coma, she made two decisions: first, that she was going to survive, and second, that she was going to snowboard. Crazy? Maybe, but it was that drive that saved her life. Seven months after she got her prosthetics, she took up snowboarding and became a world champion. She turned her disability into her ability. When people said it couldn’t be done, she proved them wrong.

Truthfully, Amy was exactly what I needed going into Season 18. After winning two seasons back to back and five Mirror Balls total, I wondered, What else is there for me? I couldn’t imagine what more I could get out of this experience. I love to teach my partners, but I also need to feel like I’m growing and learning in the process as well. Then I met Amy, and she put it all into perspective. She gave my work a new significance, a new depth. She reaffirmed for me all the rules I’ve always tried to live by: Create your own life. Blast through the boundaries. Defy the odds. During one of our first press interviews, I casually told a reporter that my new dance partner was a double amputee. Amy took me aside later and quietly corrected me: “I don’t usually say that. ‘Amputee’ implies that I’ve lost something. I say I have two prosthetic legs. That implies that I’ve gained something.” The subtle change in language made her feel so empowered. I knew she was going to teach me a lot of other important lessons.

Our first time dancing together, I was really a spectator, staring at her prosthetic legs and trying to understand what it must feel like to walk on them. For me, the teaching always starts by aligning myself with what my partner is experiencing. In this case, her experience was nearly impossible for me to imagine. We had a lot of technical obstacles to overcome. This was new for both of us. I was nervous about throwing her around the floor because I knew she had the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games coming up. But she insisted I bring it and never hold back with her. The woman is fearless, and I love watching her face light up when she nails something. Yes, there are moments of frustration. Every dancer who is new to the ballroom feels it. In Amy’s case, she had trouble memorizing the routine. So I tried to make it something she could relate to.

“You know how you memorize your course down the mountain—all the nooks and crannies, dips and turns?” I asked her. “Think of the dance the same way. You’re going down a hill. Be in the moment and focus, then anticipate the next move coming up. If you make a mistake, it’s behind you. Keep moving forward.” Suddenly, she was able to do it. Something clicked. We quickly accomplished more than either of us imagined possible. I also got to travel with her to Sochi. It was a last-minute decision—we needed the rehearsal time before the start of the season. The
DWTS
crew was supposed to come with us and shoot rehearsal footage, but they never made it. I got my visa just fine, but because of everything happening in Ukraine, the officials got more strict about issuing visas, and the crew couldn’t get any. I went over by myself and I had to film all of our rehearsals with a camera on a tripod. We also didn’t have a rehearsal space over there. We rehearsed in the lobby of the hotel, with mirrors that only showed half our bodies. That made it virtually impossible to correct our bottom halves, but we made the most of it. Amy would train in the morning and then she’d travel down on the gondola to where I was at the Olympic Village to rehearse. She raced on Friday and won a bronze medal, then flew back to L.A. on Sunday for the show’s premiere Monday. It was insane. For me, juggling the schedule wasn’t hard because when we weren’t rehearsing, I was just at the hotel or checking out the sights. But Amy was doing two things at once. Her coach and I made sure we coordinated our schedules and had a game plan. I assured him that I was being cautious about her well-being and making sure that we didn’t push too hard. The thing with prosthetic legs is that your pressure points get really sore. Obviously, dancing and using muscles that she hadn’t used before created new pressure points for her. I made it clear that I definitely knew that the first priority was the Paralympic Games. I had to keep an eye on her, too. She would want to continue to practice (because that’s the person she is), but I would stop her and say, “No. I don’t want to go any further. I don’t want to jeopardize this competition for you.” It’s still remarkable to me—an Olympic athlete learning a cha-cha during the biggest week of her life.