Danielle Fishel (7:11)
To be walking away from the show if I could look back and say, oh, you know, I think maybe I got eliminated because I didn't put in the extra work here or because I didn't try hard here or because, you know, some. Some reason, like there's. If there was something I could point to, then maybe I would feel worse. But we did every single thing we possibly could with what we had available to us. Were there songs we wanted that we didn't get, that didn't clear? Sure. Were there theme nights that, you know, didn't necessarily speak to us, but we had to give it our all anyway. Of course, all of those things. I mean, even for example, you know, with tonight's dance, the contemporary, which we were able to do to Dream on by Aerosmith, which was such a dream come true for both of us. Like, Pasha and I just love that song, and it was very, very special to both of us. So we were really excited about that. But we got the song cleared, and we knew we were going to be able to do our contemporary to Dream On. Right away, Pasha was like, what's the story you want to tell? What does this mean to you? You Contemporary is a very personal dance. It's usually about something. It's got some emotion. And he said, what is it about? And I said, I know the song like the back of my hand, but I'm going to listen to it again and see what speaks to me. And I listened to it quite a few times, back to back to back. And I wrote to Pasha, I said, okay, our story is about the impossible standards placed on women, both from society and from ourselves. If we pursue work outside the home and have a family, we're told that we should be with our kids more. If we stay home, we're told we don't work and are uninteresting. If we're too thin, we're told to eat a burger. And if we gain weight, we're told to get off the couch. When we get Botox or fillers, we're accused of not aging gracefully. And when we age naturally, we're called old and ugly. We are somehow always too much and never enough at the same time. And the only cure for it is to live life your way, living out your dreams. Because as my cancer diagnosis pointed out to me last year, life is short, and we never know when we're living Our last day or dancing our last dance. And he right away, like, love wrote, love it. That's it. Great. This is going to help me choreograph the whole thing. And he did. He went and choreographed it. And pasha is a really skilled dancer in all ballroom and latin dances. He doesn't feel as comfortable with contemporary dances and choreography. So he worked with two people that he knows, loves, and trusts that are absolute experts in contemporary, and he worked with them to put together the dance that spoke to exactly what I wrote in my text. The societal pressure and outside noise and judgments and all of that. And then tonight, while we were on the ballroom floor, I was, like, listening to my package, and I was like, none of that was even mentioned. Like, none of my story was. Was even in the package. And we don't have any. You know, those are just things that are completely out of our control. Like, we don't have. We don't get to see the package. We don't get to have notes on the package. We don't get to have. We don't know. We don't know what's in there. So, yeah. Are there things that. That I can look back on and say, like, maybe if those things had been different, the outcome could be different. But I have one thing about this experience that I look back on and think to myself, oh, I regret this moment because I gave it my all. I really, really did. And no one gave it. I mean, pasha gave it his all plus sum. I mean, Pasha is. He is just the hardest working person, and he was working all hours and just doing his absolute best. And so there's nothing. There's nothing I would change about the entire experience. Not one thing. There's nothing I could. There's nothing I could do. And if this is where the journey ends, and it is. I'm really. I'm really proud. I'm really proud. I look back on every week as. As like a special individual, unique little moment in time that I'll remember forever. On top of having the contemporary dance this week, it was also team dance week. And if there was ever a time to have to be eliminated in the competition, I think after that, team dance is the time to do it. You saw us all celebrating after the dance ended. Every single second of that dance was hard earned. You know, we only had a total of seven hours as a group to put that together, and our. So our pros had to choreograph it and teach it to us, and we had to nail it in seven hours. And that's not Seven hours, even in one day. That's seven hours broken up into two days. It was two different rehearsal times. And then, of course, we had our camera blocking. And then today, we were able to kind of like, all right, we've got 10 minutes. Let's try to rehearse some moments. And yeah, I mean, it was such a fun week watching the pros work and watching them trust and respect each other and collaborate and truly, all week, best idea wins. Any. Anyone who had an idea, anyone who had a suggestion of the pros. The celebs were. Were not necessarily lobbing suggestions, but we were comfortable to say, like, this doesn't feel right. Is there something else we could do here? Or. Or just even just asking all the questions, like, what are we supposed to be doing when we do this? But it was such a great week. And truly, like, right up until the last second, I was like. There was, like, right before we started, where I was like, oh, my gosh, my brain is, like, melting, and I couldn't get this one part. And I was like, we need to start again. And we started again. And. And then I really feel like we killed it. I mean, it was just so much fun. And because we only had seven hours and because there were so many different moving parts, and because then you're dealing with all the cameras and where are the cameras going to be and what are you supposed to do? And we can't see each other and know Alfonso's having to run out. He's, like, off on the side, and then he has to run out. And we had to, you know, have our backs to Alfonso for that part, the celeb part, where the pros aren't allowed to be on the floor with us. And everyone, all the pros asked Whitney. They were like, who's going to count? I just. Someone needs to count so that we can make sure we're all together, because nobody cares if you're counting as long as you all look together like, yeah, go ahead, count it out so you know you're on the right counts. And Whitney was like, I know the counts. I will count. And so Whitney took it on herself to be the leader there for all of us to make sure we were all on. And she did that at the request of our pros. And, you know, Whitney is. Gosh, I can say so many wonderful things about every single person on this cast. Whitney is the first person to say, I can do this. Do you want me to do this? Can I take on this? Can I take this on? Can I? How can I help. What can I do? And I'm gonna start crying again. And this past week, that was really.
