Bindi Irwin got a little help from one of Derek Hough’s former Dancing with the Stars partners while preparing for next Monday’s show. It’s Famous Dances Week on DWTS , and Bindi has inspired Derek so much that he’s going to do something that he doesn’t normally do during his routines: a lift!
Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough will be recreating the famous “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” dance scene from the movie Dirty Dancing . The final dance sequence is one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history, so Bindi and Derek are probably feeling the pressure to do Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s beloved dance justice. The DWTS producers asked Bindi and Derek to recreate the movie dance sequence as closely as possible for their rumba, so this means that Derek will have to do that difficult lift.
Bindi Irwin likes to use animals to describe her dance moves, so she’ll probably be thinking of an eagle when she leaps up into the air and soars high up over Derek Hough’s head. However, it sounds like Bindi Irwin’s pro partner might be a bit nervous about the move.
“The tough part is the lift, of course,” Derek wrote in his blog. “I don’t normally do lifts and I never really have done those on the show. And this is a really difficult lift to do. We try every day and we’ve gotten really close.”
Jennifer Grey on famous “Dirty Dancing” lift: “Never rehearsed it, never done it since” http://t.co/AMpyh7vVUq pic.twitter.com/2ivuV3EaV3
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 16, 2015
Baby and Johnny don’t successfully execute the lift until their final dance, so maybe Dancing with the Stars viewers won’t get to see Bindi Irwin and her pro partner pulling it off in their pre-dance rehearsal package. Their rumba will be more like the scene in the Dirty Dancing movie if fans have to wait until the live show to see the lift.
Luckily, Bindi Irwin is getting a little help from someone who is a pro when it comes to the oft-imitated Dirty Dancing lift. In his blog, Derek revealed that actress Jennifer Grey actually stopped by rehearsals this Thursday to give her former dance partner and Bindi a few quick and dirty Dirty Dancing tips. Derek and Jennifer actually won Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars , and they didn’t even have to do the “Time of My Life” routine to waltz away with the mirrorball trophy. However, they did pay tribute to Patrick Swayze and Dirty Dancing by performing a Viennese Waltz to “These Arms of Mine.”
“I guess it was easy to give us Dirty Dancing because of my connection to Jennifer, but I think there are actually a lot of parallels between the movie and Bindi,” Derek revealed. “Baby’s 17 in the movie and so is Bindi. Baby wants to change the world. That’s Bindi. Even Bindi’s laughs when she gets goofy are so Jennifer. She’s my Baby Bindi!”
Bindi Irwin’s competition is getting tougher on Dancing with the Stars , so nailing an iconic dance could be just what she needs to jump back to the head of the pack this week. Bindi only got one ten last week, while Alexa PenaVega earned the first perfect score of the season. Alexa’s husband, Carlos PenaVega, was a close second with three tens of his own. Derek helped Alexa get that perfect score during Switch-Up week, but he says that he doesn’t feel “weird” about getting a perfect score with someone else’s regular partner — he actually wanted to help Alexa PenaVega improve, and he’s happy that he accomplished this.
“It was important that whoever I got last week, I gave them my all. I had a very clear goal to get Alexa’s confidence level up and I think we did that,” Derek wrote. “And in my eyes, Bindi always gets a perfect score!”
Bindi Irwin isn’t just competing with the other DWTS celebrities — now she’s competing with herself. During a Dancing with the Stars: All-Access interview, Bindi is informed that her tribute to her late father, Crocodile Hunter star Steve Irwin, has become the most-watched DWTS dance on YouTube with almost 7.5 million views. It’s probably going to be pretty tough for Bindi to top that.
Do you think Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough will do Dirty Dance justice next Monday night? You can relive the magic of the movie scene below.
[Images courtesy of ABC/YouTube]