“Dancing With the Stars'” longest-tenured professional dancer Cheryl Burke has performed just about every style of ballroom dance there is in her time on the show — and now she has revealed to Heavy what her favorite and least favorite dances are to perform on “Dancing With the Stars.” Her answers make a lot of sense and also taught us something new that we didn’t know about ballroom dance!
Cheryl Loves All the Latin Dances… Except One
In an interview with Heavy, we had to ask out of all the different styles of dance they perform on “Dancing With the Stars,” which ones are Cheryl’s favorite and least favorite. She told us that the Latin dances are definitely her favorites — they were actually her specialty before “Dancing With the Stars.”
“I love all the Latin dances, those are the dances that I specialized in before I did ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ so I competed all over the world in the Latin category,” Cheryl revealed.
She also said she was really excited when the show decided to start adding Argentine tango in season eight — so excited, in fact, that she went to Argentina during the show’s hiatus to learn the dance properly.
“When the show added Argentine tango, I’ve always wanted to learn how to do it, so during the hiatus, when we did two seasons a year, I decided to go to Argentina and be part of this Argentine tango company called ‘Forever Tango’ that was on Broadway. And I learned nothing is manipulated in Argentine tango, it’s very strict. It was really fun,” said Cheryl.
She added that she had been on the show for a while at that point and wasn’t “feeding [her] brain with any new information” anymore, so she was “hungry to learn.”
“I really felt the need and was hungry to learn again because for me, it was just taping and taping and taping and I felt like I wasn’t feeding my brain with any new information, so I love Argentine tango, it is one of my favorite dances. I never competed in it, but I definitely learned how to do it from Argentinians from the show ‘Forever Tango,'” said Cheryl.
But what is her least favorite dance? Well, it’s also a Latin dance… though fans might be surprised to learn that this style is Latin.
Cheryl’s Least Favorite Style is The Jive
Cheryl informed us that in the world of ballroom competitions, the five Latin dances are the cha cha, the samba, the rumba, the paso doble, and the jive, which surprised us. We did not know the jive was a Latin dance and Cheryl even admitted that it has never fit in with the other Latin dances to her.
“I just feel like to put jive as part of the five Latin American dances doesn’t fit for me. I wish someday they could switch that out for Argentine tango,” she said.
She also said that the reason she doesn’t love the jive is that she’s not a “trickster,” which the jive demands at times.
“My least favorite is jive, actually, I really don’t love it. There’s a stylized jive that I do that’s more like west coast swing, and [jive is] all kicks and flicky and jumps and splits. I was never a trickster, I was much more of a grounded, sensual dancer,” said Cheryl.
Indeed. During season 30, Cheryl’s jive with partner Cody Rigsby is one of their lower-scored dances. But on Janet Jackson night on November 8, they’ll get to bust out their first paso doble of the season.
“Dancing With the Stars” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific times on ABC.
