Donald Driver and Peta Murgatroyd advanced to the semi-finals of the 2012 season of Dancing With The Stars on May 8th. How did the celebrity couple get there? By dancing their darling little tushies off, that’s how. The dance pro might be training a star for the first time, but the football player from the Green Bay Packers is such a devoted athlete and natural talent that she has been able to teach him professional level dance moves in no time at all. By the time they did their three-way jive dance with Karina Smirnoff, the ballroom got steamy hot.
Donald and Peta did a crisp and stylish Tango in the first round. “Nice powerful start to the night…” was the comment the host (Tom Bergeron) made. Len Goodman said he set the standard high. Bruno Tonioli loved the aggression, disdain, and power in the dance. Saying, “Len was right…” he gave his approval. Carrie Ann Inaba loved the dance and asked the star to bring more subtle drama to his dance to keep himself in the competition. Giving Peta Murgatroyd a license to push him this week, the dance pro challenged the Superbowl champ. The 9 – 9 – 9 scores were solid for the first round.
Their second dance was a Jive and their guest dancer that completed the dance trio was last season’s Mirror Ball Trophy winning pro Karina Smirnoff. Donald and the girls simply tore up the floor. Len jumped out of his seat, pointed his finger, and yelled, “Fun, fun, fun!” Bruno said keeping up the timing in a trio [dance] is hard to do but noted the football player handled the two fire cracker dancers well. Carrie Ann was so cute yelling out, “I loved your threesome!” The hint of naughty was there — but intended in the nicest way of all. Their scores? 10 – 9 – 10… just missing the perfect three-way mother of all scores the celebrity dancers could ever want. [Thank you, Len… not.]
But Len complimented him in Dance Center on the second night of the week — Tuesday the 8th. The boys teased her for using hardly any fabric for clothing and him for falling down all the time, laughing. They said football players who have to tackle him should just compliment him instead. If they do, he’s likely to giggle and hit the ground rolling.
Ultimately, the Green Bay Packer was able to move forward to the semi-finals round. Bottom line, the sexy dance routine with Karina Smirnoff (a former playboy model and Mirrorball Trophy winner herself) was hot.
Who else went there with him that night — and which of the competing celebrity couples were sent home?
Find out the answers by reading the DWTS recap from May 7 – 8, 2012.