By week four, Dancing With the Stars contestants are beginning to shake out in terms of finalist potential, long run promise, and likely fodder. This week’s Cirque du Soleil theme set the stage for a few season-best performances, though wide range in terms of content-heavy material.
1. Laurie Hernandez and Val Chmerkovskiy picked up the season’s first perfect score with this jazz to “The Way You Make Me Feel” from Michael Jackson ONE. While the score was earned by her performance, even more content would have been welcome, because Laurie’s musical precision and obvious feeling of the rhythm is an absolute joy.
Without reference available to the Cirque show’s staging, it is worth noting — as Val did post-scoring — that some conceptual borrowing (directly or indirectly) comes from the far more sinister original music video, both in general staging and a key moment or two.
2. James Hinchcliffe continues to reveal himself as this season’s dark horse (and potentially Sharna Burgess’s best partner to date) — and an even likelier winner in any season that didn’t include a talented and highly popular Olympian.
It’s disappointing in a sense that this Broadway-inspired quickstep to “The Hollywood Wiz” from Cirque’s Paramour wasn’t a jazz, because we’d love to see what more he could do with that demanding style’s traditional content.
3. Terra Jolé and Sasha Farber’s samba to a selection from O shows the past two good weeks for her in standard styles weren’t flukes; she’s one of the season’s more natural movers, and Sasha remains one of the best go-to pros for demanding traditional content, whatever the physical challenge:
4. Finally, Calvin Johnson continues to showcase some unexpectedly sharp footwork with Lindsay Arnold, this time in a Charleston inspired by Cirque’s Kurios:
