It was a Wicked: For Good night in the Dancing With the Stars ballroom as Olympian Jordan Chiles and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives‘ Whitney Leavitt earned the first tens of the season!
Popular:
Pro-dancer Mark Ballas and MomToker performed a quickstep made them even more popular with the judges. Due to the lineup of performances, Whitney and Mark were the first couple to receive 10s during season 34.
After much praise from the judges and Wicked’s director, Jon Chu, they received three 10s and a 9 from Derek, giving the couple a total of 39/40 for their dance to Popular from Wicked.
Whitney told Us Weekly she was “intimidated” by quickstep. “I’m very grateful,” gushed Whitney, “but [it] also feels like a big reward.”
“Mark and I worked really hard on that dance. That’s the most intimidating dance I’ve done so far. When we finished that last pose, I felt like I could breathe.”
Ballas was equally pleased that his choreography yielded the highest score of the night. “I was very proud. This one was a hustle,” Ballas told Us. “It’s a lot of work [and] a lot of detail went into this. I just always say, like, ‘As long as you finish and you feel like you did the best and it felt good, that’s the goal.’ It’s nothing worse than finishing and being like, ‘Dang it, I could have done better.’”
“It meant a lot. I feel like I’ve envisioned this [side] of Whitney, and I feel like she’s coming to light on this stage,” she said on Tuesday. “And so, hearing that, it meant a lot. [It was] so good.”
For Good:
‘Wicked Night’ proved to be another tearjerker … we were still recovering from ‘Dedication Night,’ for the record.
Jordan and Ezra closed the show with an incredible rumba to the show-stopping song by Steven Schwartz, “For Good.”
Again, Derek gave the couple 9/10 while they got 10s elsewhere across the board.
During an interview immediately after the show with Extra, Jordan explained how she’s become calmer during each live show, with Ezra by her side.
That’s when director Jon Chu joined Jordan and Ezra’s interview. Ezra was everything but calm as the man who brought Wicked to the big screen complimented their partnership and his ‘out of the box’ choreography.
