Three judges, three 7s. Jenna Dewan and Val Chmerkovskiy’s samba to Toto’s “Africa” on Yacht Rock night of Dancing with the Stars season 35 scored 21 out of 30, one week after the pair had shared the top of the leaderboard. Bruno Tonioli called it a “sizzling tropical treat.” Carrie Ann Inaba was cooler: she flagged a stumble, asked the couple to slow down and said Dewan was “pushing too hard” and needed to “relax.”
The clip doing the rounds is the show’s own upload, titled “Jenna Dewan and Val Chmerkovskiy’s Yacht Rock Samba.” The routine aired in week 3, a night that ended with singer Taylor Hanson and his partner Britt Stewart going home once the judges’ marks were combined with the viewer vote.
Why a trained dancer is the one to watch
Dewan is not a typical celebrity contestant. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1980, she started out as a backup dancer for Janet Jackson, appearing in the “All for You” video and tour in 2001, and later worked with Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott. She broke through as Nora Clark opposite Channing Tatum in Step Up in 2006, a film that turns 20 this year, hosted the first two seasons of World of Dance in 2017 and 2018, and now plays Bailey Nune on ABC’s The Rookie.
That résumé cuts both ways. Before the premiere she called ballroom “totally different” from the dance she knew. After week 3 she named the trap directly: “there’s a certain sense of expectation for somebody who has a dance background from coming onto the show.”
Her partner brings his own record. Chmerkovskiy, born in Odesa in 1986 and a 14-time US national Latin champion, has won the mirrorball three times, with Rumer Willis in season 20, Laurie Hernandez in season 23 and Xochitl Gomez in season 32. Last season he and Alix Earle finished runners-up to Robert Irwin and Witney Carson.
The song is a small phenomenon in its own right. David Paich and Jeff Porcaro wrote “Africa” for Toto IV in 1982, and by February 1983 it was the No. 1 single in the US. Memes revived it in the late 2010s; Weezer covered it in 2018, a solar-powered sound installation began looping it in the Namib desert in January 2019, it passed a billion Spotify plays in 2021, and its video crossed a billion YouTube views in June 2024. On a soft-rock theme night, someone was always going to dance to it.
The routine, judged on its own terms
Start with the arithmetic. Three marks of 7 out of 10 give 21 of a possible 30, or 70% of the available points. That put the couple level with Tatyana Ali and Jan Ravnik and with Ezra Frech and Daniella Karagach in joint fourth among 13 couples, 3 points behind the night’s leaders, Amber Glenn with Pasha Pashkov and Harry Shum Jr. with Jenna Johnson, on 24 each. Respectable, but a step down from sharing first place in week 2.
The three critiques point at one problem from different angles. Inaba’s stumble note and her request to slow down, Derek Hough’s remark that he could not wait to see the pair in a slow dance, and Tonioli’s praise for Dewan’s drive all describe energy running ahead of control. The couple had half-predicted it: before the show they worried about losing the “magic” of their first two routines and said the goal was simply “having fun.”
In fairness to them, an all-7s card is a consistent one. No judge marked them down sharply, and one stumble in a quick Latin routine cost them points, not their place in the competition. The harder issue is the one Dewan raised herself: a professional-grade background moves the bar, so a score that would thrill a novice reads as a dip for her.
The correction the judges asked for came on the schedule. For week 4, Mariah Carey night on Tuesday, October 6, the pair were set to dance a rumba to “My All,” which Chmerkovskiy called “obviously very challenging.” His reasoning matched Inaba’s notes almost word for word: “It’s harder to be slow because that means you need to be more in control.”
Further reading
- Wikipedia: Dancing with the Stars (American TV series) season 35
- Wikipedia: Jenna Dewan
- Wikipedia: Val Chmerkovskiy
- Wikipedia: Africa (Toto song)
Image: Kevin Paul, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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