Nancy Kerrigan performs her jazz during Week 5 of "Dancing with the Stars" on April 17, 2017.
Nancy Kerrigan won figure skating bronze and silver at the 1992 and 1994 Olympic Winter Games. Follow along as she blogs for TeamUSA.org each week during her journey on season 24 of “Dancing with the Stars.”
I first went to Disney World when I was 6 years old. It is one of the great memories of my childhood. Since the 1994 Olympics when I worked with Disney, I have been to Disney World with my family multiple times. It is one of our favorite places and we have come to know it well. So Disney Week was an exciting theme for me and one that had my kids looking forward to attending the show.
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But I quickly realized that doing something special to music and scenes that are so well known wasn't going to be quite that easy.
Finding the music was the first hurdle...should we dance to something from “Beauty and the Beast,” “Pocahontas,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin”... you get the picture. There is so much great music to choose from.
After much deliberation, we settled on "How Do You Know" from the movie "Enchanted." The song is accompanied by a production number in Central Park that is one of our family's favorites. So bringing that to life was going to be fun.
To do that we were going to have to include props and additional dancers, which sounded exciting to me...reminded me of some of the things I did in Footloose on Ice, so it was a little more in my comfort zone.
And while all that was going on, it seemed like a couple of other things were playing out, which took some of my attention.
First, my talking about my miscarriages apparently struck a chord with a lot of people. And I am touched that it did. This is a topic that often stays private, even though it is far more prevalent than people realize. So the discussion is healthy and if I helped a few people along the way then that makes me feel great.
Second, I spilled tea on my cell phone, rendering it useless. To get a new one is a huge distraction...ugh...and all my fault!
Third, I guess I also spoke briefly about my own struggle with eating during the whole 1994 Olympics episode (and I was not anorexic as reported in People magazine). That, too, got people's attention because it, too, is one of those silent diseases that is far more widespread than we know...and leads to some tragic health issues which we will attempt to tackle in the documentary I am executive producing for release in 2018. "Why Don't You Lose 5 Pounds" will explore this in an effort to shed light on just how devastating this disease is.
But now back to dancing.
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By Friday (my husband and I took the kids to Disneyland for Brian's birthday in the morning), the number was really taking shape and on Saturday we felt really comfortable with our progress so that on Easter Sunday, other than for some required camera blocking, we didn't have rehearsal!
After what seemed like a long week, Monday morning finally rolled around and my 7 a.m. call time got me to the studio in time for a morning of fitting a red wig, getting my makeup done and costume finalized and, oh yeah, rehearsal for a group opening number.
And what an opening number it was. Loved being part of it. And loved all the costumes for tonight...but then again, it's Disney!!
I didn't dance until eighth though, so I had to stay occupied by watching and practicing...and then the new wrinkle of finding out the results before the end of the show. So it was a little strange to know that we had already advanced to Week 6 before we danced.
But with everything behind us, we got out on the dance floor and once again things came together and we performed what was a really fun jazz number. It was great performing with a group of dancers and perhaps dancing as a character other than myself allowed me to really lose myself in the music.
So Disney Week was a success and now it's on to "boy bands vs. girl bands" and a team competition. Never a dull moment on “Dancing with the Stars”!