NEWSKym Johnson's DWTS Diary: Week 4 — Preparing for the Premiere!
Sept. 15 2009, Published 2:56 p.m. ET
Dancing with the Stars pro Kym Johnson has teamed up with OK! to update you every week on the triumphs and travails as she attempts to turn her celeb partner Donny Osmond into a ballroom champion!
Hi, everyone! Welcome to Week 4 of my OK! blog. It’s the last week before the DWTS premiere and Donny and I are very excited. We’re polishing the routines now in the final stages of getting ready. We’ve been in our own little bubble for four weeks now. Donny can’t wait to have the first show out of the way and see how we fare in the competition with all the others.
My latest tool to teach Donny? I bought a touch light that can be stuck on a wall — you press it and it comes on. So I stuck one of those on his chest and I kept telling him that he has to make sure his light is shining up, always, not down, because he tends to hunch his shoulders. It’s helping his dance posture. Donny totally gets it -- he said, “I have to make my light shine up!” We’re still having so much fun in rehearsals.
When I was in Las Vegas rehearsing with Donny, I saw a life-sized cutout of one of our DWTS competitors, martial arts expert Chuck Liddell, and got my picture taken with it at the mall in Planet Hollywood. I’ve been thinking of taking it into rehearsals and putting it in front of Donny for inspiration because we’re performing right after Chuck on the DWTS premiere. And you know he’s going to attack the show in a competitive way, like he does with his sport.
On Thursday, we went to D23 Expo, a huge Disney fan event at the Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif. My fellow DWTS pros Cheryl Burke and Derek Hough performed a professional cha cha number first, so we had to follow them. We were like, great, thanks! But it ended up being fine. Donny and I did a little jive, which I choreographed and it went really well. It was our first performance in front of people and the crowd loved Donny. He feels more confident now! Donny has a lot of fans and at D23, they all enjoyed seeing a little clip of Donny when he was 6 or 7, which was really cute. Donny hasn’t even really changed; he’s got such a baby face!
Want OK! each day? Sign up here!
I flew to Los Angeles for the day on Saturday to meet with the wardrobe department to see the final touches being put on our DWTS costumes. As my blog photo shows, I spent some time in the workroom with all of the talented DWTS people who decorate our dresses. It’s such a process! It starts with an idea I have in my head and Randall Christensen, who does an incredible job designing the clothes, creates it.
And this Saturday, while Donny is doing his Las Vegas show, I’ll go to L.A. again to start my spray tanning for DWTS. It’s going to probably be a two-day affair this time because I’ve been in the studio rehearsing with Donny for weeks and I’m quite pale. For those of you who are curious about how I get that golden glow, St. Tropez sets up a room at the studio where we shoot DWTS. And it’s really quite funny -- all of us pro dancers have times when we’ll go and we all line up outside the door and one-by-one we go in and the tanning expert sprays every single girl—some of the men, too!
Well, I’m off for more rehearsal! Tune in to ABC Monday to see Donny and me on DWTS!
