What our TV performers can learn from ‘Dancing with the Stars’

PITTSBURGH Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward performs with his partner Kym Johnson on “Dancing with the Stars. ” AP

For a long time, we were asking our cable program supplier why they had not brought the very popular US TV show, “Dancing with the Stars,” to local screens. Well, we can stop nagging – the hit celebrity tilt can now be viewed Saturday and Sunday nights at 7:30 p.m. on Star World.

We caught the current season’s premiere telecast and saw how hard the celebrity contestants and their dancer-choreographer partners had rehearsed to prep themselves for the high-stakes competition. Although some of the participants weren’t as stellar as the show’s title promised, they did in fact dance their butts off to please, impress, delight and even excite viewers and jurors alike.

Rigorous work ethic

We hope that our homegrown stars can learn valuable lessons from the American luminaries’ dedication and rigorous work ethic. When most local celebrities dance on TV, they rehearse for only a few hours and consider their dance number to be performance-ready.

It isn’t.

In fact, some dancing “stars” even have to have dancers positioned in front for them to copy as the number is being performed. So much for giving the audience their very best!

On “Dancing with the Stars,” it’s clear that the celebrity contestants devote not just a couple of hours but many days each week to rehearsing, to avoid being booted and voted out.

CHAZ Bono, right, and his partner Lacey Schwimmer perform on the celebrity dance competition series “Dancing with the Stars.”

Now, we don’t expect our local luminaries to be as professional and driven, but if they could do even a third of what their US counterparts are putting into their numbers, it would be a great improvement over their current “pwede na” practice.

Most importantly, it would show that our stars and starlets really respect the viewers and the latter’s right to expect and get the best that their “idols,” who profess to love them to bits, can deliver. “Hindi pwede ang pwede na.”

If our celebrities can genuinely make that their new mantra as performers, it would be a quantum leap for the notoriously self-satisfied denizens of the local performing scene.

All our stars and starlets need to do is to watch shows like “Dancing with the Stars,” which vivify what true professionalism in performance should be about. All of the celebrity contestants give their numbers their very best, even if it “kills” them – and that’s a great attitude and work ethic for our homegrown stars to imbibe and emulate.

Demanding challenge

Some years ago, we caught an even more rigorous and demanding celebrity challenge that required stars and starlets to train really hard so they could pass muster as high-wire circus aerialists!

It took six months for them to get themselves to the level of expertise required, so they wouldn’t end up with broken necks – but, the spunky and determined stars prevailed! Their high-wire acts were truly convincing and even spectacular, and our admiration for them knew no bounds.

So, we aren’t surprised that the celebrity contestants on “Dancing with the Stars” are doing so well. Is there a fly in this show biz ointment? Yes, the tilt’s jurors are an idiosyncratic caution, with their accents and subjective comments and notions. Well, we guess they’re part of the show’s spectacle, too!