by Derek Hough
Vulnerability does not take away your strength.
Hearing my father cry was scary at first—he was “the Man.” But it also made me see that someone who was a strong leader could still feel and express feelings of hurt. It gave me permission to be vulnerable in my life. It allowed me to open up, and in some ways, it changed my definition of masculinity. You don’t have to be stoic; you don’t have to always take it on the chin. A real man is never afraid to express what’s in his heart and soul. In my mind, that’s the definition of strength, and I learned it from my father.
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REFLECTING ON DEREK
“Being present for Derek’s creative process is a true privilege. To see his energy and enthusiasm surrounding each idea is something very special. I found Derek’s excitement toward creating movement to be absolutely infectious.”
—MERYL DAVIS
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5
YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME
BLACKPOOL DANCE FESTIVAL in England is the Super Bowl of ballroom dancing. It’s been going on for eighty years, and to compete there—even in the junior preteen division—you have to be at the top of your game. Rick decided Autumn and I were ready for it. It was the first time I would be traveling out of the country—five thousand miles from home. I couldn’t wait to get on that plane. My mom would tell me stories about some of her family in Idaho who never left their hometown, and I assured her that would never be me. The idea of traveling was one of my biggest motivators for staying with dance—pretty funny for a kid who had been afraid to sleep away from his own bed for so many years. My dad came over with us; he was an experienced traveler, and he wanted to be there for my first time out of the country.
Our first stop was London, where there were a few competitions leading up to Blackpool. I had never seen this level of competition before. I was so excited by the energy and the feeling of being around all these amazing dancers. I wasn’t overwhelmed, just a little embarrassed. Everyone looked so polished, and they all smelled like fancy cologne. Comparatively, I looked and felt like the poor kid on the block. I didn’t own the proper costume (white tie, black jacket, and black trousers), so I’d rented one from a wedding store before we left home. It was baggy in all the wrong places, and I didn’t have the right shoes.
Watching the dancers get ready backstage, we realized we were also completely unprepared. They’d put water or castor oil on the floor and rub the soles of their shoes in it. Then they’d scratch the soles with a wire brush, roughening up the suede to prevent slipping. As we stepped out for the first round, Autumn spit in the middle of the dance floor and rubbed her feet in it. She encouraged me to do the same, so I did—hoping that not too many people were watching. I remember thinking, Yeah, we are definitely from out of town.
When we got to Blackpool, it was even more posh than the London competitions. The Blackpool Tower Ballroom is enormous and dates back to 1894—so it was like stepping back in time. There is a mile-high vaulted ceiling, walls decorated with murals, and two tiers of balconies for the audience to sit and watch. The dance floor is made up of thirty thousand blocks of mahogany, oak, and walnut assembled in an intricate pattern.
I had never seen anything like it. There were thousands of people from all over the globe dancing, and I could feel the adrenaline kick in. I was meant to be here. I was meant to be in this world. I closed my eyes and pictured myself accepting the trophy as the crowd went wild. But our competitors were fierce: their moves were razor sharp, and we struggled to keep up. We did all the dances, then there was a break where we waited for our number to be called. It wasn’t, and that was it. We were knocked out in the first round.
I was in shock: everyone was so good and we were out of their league. At Center Stage, I was the big man on campus. Here? A has-been by round 1. It took me down a notch and made me think hard and long about why I wasn’t living up to my potential. I knew I had it in me, but I also knew I had a lot more work to do. I knew training in a studio in Orem was probably not going to get me to that level. Looking around the ballroom, I saw my future. All I had to do was fight for it and make it happen.
But I can’t say the trip was a total wash—while I was in England, I met a girl (big surprise!). Her name was Jade Main, and she was a pretty little blonde with blue eyes from Birmingham, England. In between rounds, we hung out on the jungle gym in the building. I chased her around and when I caught her, I leaned in and gave her a kiss. I swear, violins started playing in my head! I was always this little kid with a huge imagination, trying to live in a movie. I had just seen Titanic, so I romanticized the entire encounter. I pictured myself in the role of the scruffy American boy; Jade was the noble British girl. And of course, in my mind, ours would be the love of a lifetime.
Because I convinced myself of this, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her. My dad was anxious to go to Scotland the next day and show me the sights. I bawled for the entire drive there.
“She’s the love of my life!” I said.
“Derek,” my father sighed. “You’re eleven years old. Trust me. You’re going to meet a lot of other girls.”
“You don’t understand!” I sobbed. “She’s the one.”
He took me to Edinburgh Castle and even gave me my first taste of haggis (a pudding made with a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver). I didn’t even find that cool; I was beside myself and being so melodramatic. Looking back on it, I can’t tell you why I felt so strongly. I was a kid; I was in another country; she was a cute girl. All my emotions got tangled up and blown out of proportion.
On the flight home, I wrote Jade a seven-page note and dotted it with water droplets to look like tears. Hilarious. Of course I never mailed it, but I fantasized that Jade would be waiting and we’d meet again someday. Shortly after we got home, my dad dropped me off at scout camp at Fish Lake, where I worked on my merit badges. While I was learning how to tie knots and make my own shelter out of twigs and twine, I once again thought of my lost love. I made her a necklace out of a jade stone and some leather cord, and vowed I’d give it to her when we were reunited.
The next day, I found out there was a Girl Scout camp not far from ours. It was just the distraction I needed to gain my sanity back. I met this girl, and I swear to you, I have no recollection what she looked like or what her name was. I just remember feeling super excited that I was about to go into a tent and make out with her. She was sixteen—a way older woman—and for some reason, she was into it. So I buried my broken heart and moved on. Funny how that happens.
My first trip to London was an eye-opener. It put me in an environment where everyone was better than me. As humbling as that was, it was also a tremendous motivation. I knew I would have a lot of work to do before I went back. I needed to raise my standards to be able to compete with the best—and eventually, one day, to beat them. The amazing thing was that I never doubted it would happen. I wasn’t being cocky or conceited; I just knew what I could do if I put my mind to it.
LEADING LESSONS
It’s the failures that make us winners.
When you win a competition, you celebrate. You are on cloud nine. But when you lose, you learn. In my case, losing Blackpool that first time was the best thing that ever happened to me. I dug deep down and asked myself what it was that was holding me back from achieving what I knew I was capable of. Failure shows you what’s possible. It makes your desire burn hotter. It builds courage, and in the end, it makes the win that much sweeter. I would rather fail at something than regret never trying. Leaders think of failures as experiments, showing them what works and what doesn’t and how to fix things. We live in a world where failure is thought of as something negative: no one likes the idea of screwing up. But what if you could change that? What if you could see failure as a positive? What if you could embrace failure as part of the process necessary to get what you want? Suddenly, the fear of it disappears. I never went into any competition wanting to fail (just the opposite), but after racking up my share of disap
pointments, I learned that I could deal with it. It hurt and pissed me off at the time, but now I see the value in it. I wouldn’t be where I am today without those failures notched on my belt.
Never be the best in the room.
The champions in life—in every field of endeavor—feel the constant challenge to take the content up a notch. Champions know that if we are not stretching and pushing ourselves to our ultimate capacity and potential as human beings, someone else, somewhere else, is.
A little girl came up to me recently and asked if I had any advice for her on how to be a better dancer. She acted very grown-up for a seven-year-old. She really wanted me to give her some good, concrete tips. So she pulled up a chair at my table, rested her chin in her hands, and stared at me. Talk about pressure! In that moment, I tried to find something more constructive to tell her than just, “Practice hard.” I thought to myself, what was it that helped me improve?
“Are you the best in your class?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Then you have to go into a class where there are people who are better than you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because being around older, more experienced dancers is what pushed me to become better. You need the challenge.”
The kid nodded. It made sense (phew!). People always ask me if I was inspired by Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. Truth be told, I never saw their movies when I was young. The people I emulated were the ones I practiced with and competed against. Going to Blackpool made me see the level that I needed to be at and the people I needed to be around in order for me to take it to that level.
6
MY SECOND PARENTS
ONE DAY, AN odd couple strolled into Center Stage Studio. Their names were Corky and Shirley Ballas, and they definitely stood out. Shirley was very “put together”: hair done up, designer clothing from head to toe, gold jewelry dripping. Corky’s heritage was part Spanish, part Greek, and he had jet-black hair, very strong, prominent features, and slightly wild eyes.
“Are they dancers?” I naively asked one of the older students in my class.
“Dancers? They’re world champions! They’re legends!”
He wasn’t kidding. In the nineties, the Ballases were known as the best of the best in ballroom. Shirley had been a world champ at nineteen with her ex-husband. When Corky came into her life, he was a ballroom beginner. He was from Texas, and his dad, George Ballas, was the inventor of the Weed Eater. It took Corky and Shirley ten years to become champions, but they didn’t rest until they had the title. All the teachers and the studio owners were in awe of them. Once you won a world championship, you usually toured the world teaching and visiting various studios. The Ballases had been going to Provo, Utah, to train the Brigham Young University Latin team since the early nineties, and while visiting, they were approached by Center Stage to teach at the studio for several weeks at a time.
I was skeptical at first, especially because Corky seemed like such a wild card. He was outgoing, silly, and (as his name seemed to imply) very quirky. He delivered his Latin dance class like a Chris Rock stand-up routine, going off on long rants and emphasizing his words with dramatic body movement. When he spoke it was very theatrical. But after just one day, I realized how amazing these two were, both individually and together. They balanced each other perfectly: energy meets elegance, passion meets precision. And they were a whole other level of dancer, with an expertise I had never witnessed before.
So I wiggled my way into the front row of every one of their classes. Corky was hilarious and the coolest guy ever. Shirley was kind of a hard-ass. I say that with the utmost love and admiration, and I know she wears that title with pride. The woman was all about technique, and she never sugarcoated anything. If you screwed up, she told you so: “Derek, that was awful.”
Or she would make you do it over, and over, and over—a dozen or more times if necessary—till she was satisfied. Sometimes my head would pound and my legs would ache, but she kept pushing me and taunting me: “No, not like that. That’s rubbish!” There was just no filter on her—what was in her head came out of her mouth. When we first met, I was a kid with only about six months’ dance experience under my belt, and she scared me a little. Still, I really wanted to make her happy. So I worked harder than I ever had before, just trying to coax a single word out of Shirley: “Good.”
Corky, as I said, was different: a fireball of energy and a real jokester. I was the youngest in Corky’s class and I think he got a kick out of me—the short little blond boy trying to best all the adults in his class. One day, I came into Studio 5 and there were these plastic baseball bats on the floor. No one was around, so Corky started hitting one baseball bat on the ground with a single-time beat. I grabbed two other bats and started doing syncopated times and layering more beats over that. We were just sitting there, smiling and laughing, creating something really cool out of nothing. No drum set, no sticks, just picking up whatever was lying around and setting it into motion. I loved it. I felt inspired. Here was someone who not only shared my creativity but could teach me even more.
The Ballases will tell you that they remember me back then as “the little blue-eyed boy with shiny penny loafers.” They saw in me a restlessness, a burning for knowledge. I was quick on my feet, though not the most technically proficient dancer in the studio. What I needed was direction, guidance, clarity.
I felt so excited every day to come in to learn from them—and I wanted to make that perfectly clear. So on the second day of class, I waited at their car and presented them with a drawing I had done and signed with a flourish. Shirley hung it on the studio wall. The next day, I came with a shiny apple. Some of their classes were age restricted, but they allowed me to attend all of them. It didn’t matter; I could outdance 95 percent of the teenagers and young adults there. The studio was the only place I wanted to be. I even slept there as I grappled with the news of my parents’ divorce. When I was going through my darker days—skipping school, blowing off dance class—it was Corky and Shirley who noticed and asked where I’d been. They had gone away for six weeks to perform out of state, and when they returned, there was no one waiting at their car with a gift or greeting.
The other teachers told them I had been missing classes, cutting school, and getting into all sorts of mischief. Shirley knew it would take a hell of a lot to keep me away from her classes, and she was worried. When she heard what was happening in my home life, she understood and knew she had to intervene. I was lost, and heading down a slippery slope. There seemed only one solution: “Come live with us in England, study dance, compete, and see the world.” I wanted to rush home at that moment and pack my bags. I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity. How many eleven-year-olds from Utah get to go live in England and travel the world? I didn’t even have to think about it. I was ready to leave right then and there. But we still had to convince my parents. I don’t know how excited they were for me to live so far away from home, but Shirley told them it would be for the best. “He’s got promise,” she said. “And he’ll be a good companion for our son, Mark.”
Had my parents still been married, I’m sure the answer would have been no. But since everything at home was so unstable, this seemed a good temporary solution. Clearly, I was not dealing well with the divorce and needed something to take my mind off it. They agreed it would be a good thing for me to get away until the dust settled.
So I recommitted myself to my dancing. I swore up and down to Shirley that there would be no more shenanigans. I’d buckle down, stop acting like a brat, and get over myself. Shirley expected me to play by her rules. Of course, that was all before I got to know her son, Mark Ballas, and we became partners in crime.
Mark is now one of my DWTS compadres and one of my best friends. I consider him a brother. We’ve known each other for fifteen years and we’ve been on eleven seasons together. But when we first met, we hated each other. Total oil and water. I thought he was a s
tuck-up, royal pain in the ass. We were in Studio 2 at Center Stage, which had a ballet room you are not supposed to even walk into wearing tennis sneakers. Apparently, Mark never got the memo. He just zipped right in there on his K2 Fatty inline skates. He was the spitting image of his dad, a mini Corky, and a year younger than I was—about ten at the time. But he had such a sense of entitlement!
“You can’t wear those blades in here,” I told him.
He smirked and continued scuffing up the floor, as if no one could touch him.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Get out of here with those!”
Again, it was as if I were talking to a brick wall. Given who his parents were, I thought it best not to take it any further—although I would have loved to have mopped the floor up with him!
Mark and I were different. He was really into rock and heavy metal music—bands like Nirvana and Korn.
“You know that that’s the devil’s music, right?” I asked him. I guess some of my Mormon upbringing had stuck. I even got Shirley to snap one of his Green Day CDs in half.
He thought I was an idiot. We were opposite in so many ways. When we first started hanging out, he came back to my place and I showed him my drums. It was the first time he had played an instrument, and he got really into it, banging away. I had this smelly fart spray in my pocket and thought it would be a really funny joke if I sprayed it near him. He thought I sprayed it on him and freaked. He was hopping mad and started beating me over the head with the drumsticks.
