Taking the Lead: Lessons From a Life in Motion (11 page)

On the break, my other coach, Graham Oswick, came over to me. “Stop doing that,” he said. “It’s enough. It’s not your time to win this. It’s their time.”

That made me furious: he just blatantly told me that I should give up and settle for second best. I went over and found Corky.

“That motherfucker!” he shouted. “Hell no, you’re not giving up! We’re going to intensify it. We’re going to defy him and everyone else.”

I could see he was pretty fired up. “Are you sure?” I asked.

He gave me a little push back onto the floor. “Do it.”

So we went back out there, guns blazing. Heidi and I danced our hearts out and made it into the semifinals. We were doing the jive and she accidentally elbowed me in the face. I tasted blood and realized I had bitten down so hard on my tongue, a piece of it was literally hanging off! Blood was pumping out of my mouth, but I kept on dancing. It was dripping down my face and all over my costume; I looked like something out of a slasher flick.

When we finally finished, Corky grabbed me and raced me upstairs to a little room where I could put my head back. He tried to stop the bleeding and brought me ice to take the swelling down.

I was lying there, trying to hold my tongue together, when I heard a voice at the doorway—a voice with a Liverpudlian accent.

“Derek, stay away from me!” Rachael demanded. “Stay on your side of the floor.”

I managed a weak thumbs-up and she stormed off.

“Can you hang in there?” Corky asked me. I nodded; I was afraid if I spoke my tongue would literally fall off. I changed my blood-soaked shirt and went back to the dance floor. We got to the finals, and I was still bleeding profusely. I didn’t let it stop me. In between each dance, I ran to the corner of the stage to spit out puddles of blood.

We didn’t have long to wait for the results. This time, they announced the winners first: “Couple number 72 from England, Derek Hough and Heidi Clark.” I ran onto the floor. I couldn’t believe it. Injury and all, we’d shown we were a force to be reckoned with. We were rejects no more.

LEADING LESSONS

Rejection is an illusion
.

It’s all in your head. It was never about Rachael; it was always about me. So maybe I didn’t fit her picture of the perfect dance partner. We were no longer a match—so what? At the time, the rejection hurt like hell and I threw myself a big ol’ pity party. But here’s the thing: No one can reject you. No one can dump you. It’s just a decision, and maybe you don’t like it. I was the one believing I was a victim instead of realizing how blessed my life was. If you’re feeling rejected, you’re looking at things all wrong. Just because someone says no, just because someone chooses another person over you, doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. There isn’t one successful person out there who hasn’t racked up his or her share of rejection.

That said, no one likes hearing no. But what are you going to do with that no? Are you going to let it destroy your self-esteem? Or are you going to keep pushing forward, following your passion? Dancers deal with a lot of rejection—I know this now, and I see the rejections as part of my journey. Keep doing what you’re doing and do it well—don’t worry about pleasing anyone but yourself. Sometimes that no can be a wake-up call, a chance for you to reassess, refocus, reboot. I’m grateful Rachael and her family gave me my walking papers. That rejection opened me up to so much more.

Competition shouldn’t be personal
.

All the times I’ve focused on taking someone down, I’ve fallen short. Your motivation for winning has to be in the right place. Years ago, I was in a competition in London, and I really wanted to best this other couple. Why? So I could say I did. All I could think was, I’m gonna beat them. I’m gonna beat them. So I danced hard and frenzied, trying to overpower them. There was no control of my body, no light and shade in my dancing. My coaches pulled me aside: “What the hell was that?” I see now where I went wrong: I made it all about my competitors, when it should have been about my partner and me. I should have seen my competitors not as a target, but as a catalyst to inspire me to be better, stronger, and more in control. Instead, I made it a one-upping contest—and they wound up one-upping me.

Whatever you focus on is your reality
.

You tend to move in the direction of what you’re focused on—especially when it’s bad. I remember when I was about nine years old, staying with my grandma and grandpa at the lake, I was playing with my cousins at this construction site. Not the safest place to play, which I suppose is what attracted me to it. I saw a two-by-four with a nail sticking out of it, and I remember running and thinking, Oh man, wouldn’t it be terrible if I fell on that? A few moments later, it actually happened. I tripped and the nail went straight through my knee. I ended up going to the hospital with a two-by-four stuck to my knee because we were afraid to pull it out. The nail was about a centimeter away from cutting a vital tendon that would have required major surgery. So I was really fortunate in that regard. But I couldn’t help thinking that my focus on this nail created the situation. I’ve learned since then that we all have the power to create our own destiny. On some level, we ask for things that happen to us in our lives. You have to know what you want, then be aware of the thoughts you hold in your mind. Negative ones—fear, anger, jealousy, frustration—will undermine you. If you see the nail tripping you up, it will.

REFLECTING ON DEREK

“Derek was so young when we danced together back in Season 7—I was his third partner. He was finding his way; he hadn’t won his first Mirror Ball yet. He was so different than he is now, in such a sweet and vulnerable way. I don’t think he knew how truly talented he was back then. But he always had this magical ability to make people great. From the tips of my fingers to the bottom of my toes, nothing was ever good enough until it was perfect. Neither of us ever expected to win Season 7. When we did our freestyle, we never ran it through from beginning to end. I was injured; Derek threw out his back. Even in dress rehearsals we barely did it. When it came time to go out and perform, we stood backstage and looked at each other, hoping for the best. It had so many tricks, and we kind of surprised ourselves with how well we nailed it. Fast- forward five years, and I see how many life lessons I’ve learned from my friend Derek. He helped me discover my own champion. He taught me how to dance through chaos, and how to find my own rhythm in my everyday life. I feel like we did a lot of growing and learning together.”

—BROOKE BURKE

THE WORLD IN MY HANDS

A
FTER HEIDI, I
partnered with Aneta Piotrowska. She was a knockout: a beautiful, exotic Polish girl with long dark hair. She was sixteen and I was seventeen, and of course, I had an instant crush on her. I’m not even sure how we first met—probably through recommendations from dance coaches who thought we’d be good together. We started dancing together in 2002 and were partners for more than two years. She was my first foreign partner—before I had been only with English girls. I loved her energy and her cute Polish accent.

Aneta and I were dancing at a qualifying competition in Poland for the World Under 21 Latin Championships. Shirley and Corky decided that we should represent Poland, since it gave us the best chance of making the worlds. It was a calculated political move: the American and UK judges knew who I was, but I needed to catch the eye of the European judges. Representing Poland was the easiest way. To compete, you had to place in the top two of your country. I agreed to it all, although it was definitely weird not to be representing the United States or England, and I barely understood a word of Polish.

In the first round of the first dance, at about nine in the morning, we were doing the cha-cha and getting ready to transition to the samba. We were really into it, what I like to call being “in the zone,” when Aneta accidentally elbowed me in the face with such force that she knocked me out.

I woke up on the floor with Corky leaning over me. “Are you okay? I’m sorry!” Aneta said. There was no time for apologies or for me to even get my bearings. We had already missed an entire samba dance in our heat while I was unconscious, and the rumba was next. I stumbled to my feet and took her hand on the dance floor, but my jaw was swollen and throbbing. The medic injected some numbing cream into it, so as the pain faded I began to drool. I felt like I had just gotten a filling at the dentist. There we were, doing this sexy Latin dance of love, and saliva was dribbling down my chin! As I danced, I noticed the drool flying everywhere—onto Aneta, onto the other couples dancing, onto the dance floor. It would have been pretty hilarious had I not been such a nervous wreck worrying that we would blow it. But when they announced the winner, we came in first—even with my round 1 knockout.

We had a couple of months to get ready for the worlds. We went back to London, our home base to train, and I decided in between practices to lift some weights in the makeshift gym I had set up in our one-car garage. I was nineteen at the time, trying to build up the pecs on one side of my chest. So I stupidly put a heavy weight on one side and it threw the whole dumbbell off-balance. The weight slipped out of my hands and fell. I felt a shooting pain rip through my neck.

When I woke up in the morning I was in bad shape. My neck was stiff and I couldn’t turn it. We weren’t pros, so there was so such thing as a physical therapist or masseuse to fix it. The best I could do was just rub in some Bengay and hope for the best. When we got to the Czech Republic a couple of days later, my neck still had zero mobility. In order to look to the side, I had to move my entire body. As if that weren’t enough to worry about, we were competing against Rachael, who was now teamed up with the Russian guy who had beaten me as a junior. His name was Evgeni Smagin, and he wore his dark hair greased back. The guy just looked slick from head to toe.

I turned to Aneta. “This is so not good,” I told her. “They are like the ultimate,
ultimate
couple. They’re going to beat us.”

Aneta looked very upset, so I guess something inside me said, “Derek, man up!” My neck was messed up and I was about to get my ass kicked by my archnemesis and my ex. It couldn’t get much worse than that. But we were at the worlds, in this huge arena with everyone cheering. We had made it this far, and I was proud of how hard we worked. “You know, let’s just have an awesome time.”

And that was it: I took all this pressure off us. We danced our butts off and I forgot to worry about my neck or Rachael and Evgeni. I was just living in the moment, pulling my energy from the roaring crowd. They were going crazy for their Czech Republic representatives, but I didn’t care. I used their energy to fuel mine. There was such a joy and freedom to my dancing that day. I gave myself permission to just let it all go, and my dancing felt pure and unbridled. We got to the finale—I somehow hung in there—and my neck was so tight and throbbing, I could barely turn it to see where Aneta was. It was kind of like dancing with blinders on; I had tunnel vision. Yet on we danced, till the judges called time. I had made it; we had made it. All I wanted now was a huge ice pack and a nap.

They read the names out from sixth place to first. We were standing backstage behind a huge curtain, and Rachael and Evgeni were right next to us. Swell. I thought maybe we stood a chance of coming in fourth. But they didn’t call us. “This is crazy!” I whispered to Aneta. “We’re top three?” Then they called a German couple. We were in the top two!

Rachael smiled at me. “Oh, Derek! Great job!” she said. What she really meant was, “We’re going to take first place and you can have our sloppy seconds.” Then we heard, “In second place, from England . . .” Rachael’s face went white as a ghost. She and Evgeni were second! That left only one place for us . . .

“Derek Hough and Aneta Piotrovska are world champions!”

I started screaming, “What? What?” and jumping up and down. So much for my neck pain. This wasn’t real; it couldn’t be! I ran out from behind the curtain, pumping my fists in the air. I caught a glimpse of Rachael’s face. She was beyond pissed.

“We did it! We did it!” I yelled. The rest happened in slow motion: I ran out and jumped off the stage, not realizing there were about fourteen steps between the stage and the floor. While I was midair, I remember thinking, “I’m wearing these Cuban heels. This isn’t gonna be good.” Then I hit the floor and my legs buckled. I fell into a roll, then stood straight up—as if I meant to do it all along. I limped over to Aneta to collect our trophy and we hugged. I didn’t give a crap about anything else. Not my neck or my knees or Rachael fuming as they snapped pictures of all of us. It was an amazing moment, a total high.

The next day, we were driving back to Poland to catch a flight to London. I was barely paying attention when we decided to stop at Auschwitz, the Holocaust death camp. I hadn’t learned a thing about the Holocaust in school, so I had no idea what this place was. I remember it was raining, and the sky was filled with dark storm clouds. We walked through the chambers, viewing the collections of personal effects that had belonged to the people who were killed here. There were piles and piles of shoes, glasses, prayer books. We surveyed the rooms in silence. What could you say? The pain these people had to endure was unfathomable. Why? What had they done? Nothing. The numbers were devastating: millions of innocent people killed, torn from their families, treated like animals, not human beings.

I realized in that moment how lucky I was. I wanted to drop to my knees and thank the universe for everything I had: my family, the Ballases, my life in London. My win felt so insignificant at this moment. The experience definitely planted a seed in my mind: life is so precious, you can’t waste a single moment of it on frivolous thoughts or actions.

Years later, my dad gave me a book to read:
Man’s Search for Meaning
, by Viktor Frankl. I thought it would be depressing given the subject matter, but it wasn’t. Frankl believed that you should identify a purpose in life to feel positively about, then actively imagine that outcome. It was how so many people survived the ordeal of the concentration camps. He made it his mission to inspire his fellow prisoners and keep them focused: together, they composed speeches, reconstructed lost manuscripts, pushed away any thoughts of suicide. They clung fervently to the hope of what the future held—despite the odds, despite the fact that everything around them was bleak.