After getting one week off from the competition, the performers pulled out all the stops on Dancing With the Stars’ Soul Train Night.
Fittingly, Rosie Perez, who got her start on the musical variety series Soul Train, was the guest judge during the Monday, October 7, episode.
“In the spirit of a true Soul Train dancer, I’m looking for the boogie,” Perez, 60, said at the beginning of the night. She saw some of that elusive quality in the first dancer of the evening: Phaedra Parks, who performed a Quickstep with her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy.
“People can be taught how to dance, but people cannot be taught how to boogie, and you know how to boogie,” Perez told Parks, 50.
Joey Graziadei also got the stamp of approval from Perez, who told him he “know[s] how to boogie” and has “amazing” amounts of “sex appeal.” The Bachelor alum’s Jive with partner Jenna Johnson earned him the first nines of the season from both Perez and Carrie Ann Inaba.
While Parks and Graziadei, 29, were praised for their natural instincts, Inaba, 56, complimented Ilona Maher for learning as she goes.
“You have improved so much,” Inaba told the rugby player. “I see the transformation right in front of my eyes. This was beautiful.”
In addition to soul, the evening had plenty of heart as well. Eric Roberts dedicated his and partner Britt Stewart’s Foxtrot to his wife, Eliza Roberts, and ended the performance by bringing her onstage and sharing a kiss with her. Eric, 68, wasn’t the only one who seemed a bit smitten on Monday night.
“You are so cute, you are so cute, you are so cute,” Perez told Stephen Nedoroscik after his Quickstep with Rylee Arnold. “A little stiff, but you are so cute.”
Things went from cute to caliente when Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko performed their Rumba to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.”
“It’s definitely a huge bonus that Gleb and I have such great chemistry. We are gonna use that to our advantage,” Nader, 28, told cameras. “This dance is gonna be so sexy that my whole family watching back home has to turn their TV off.”
After the performance, judge Derek Hough playfully decreed, “That dance made me pregnant.”
Another duo’s chemistry also got the judges’ attention.
“One of the sexiest Viennese Waltz[es] I’ve ever seen,” Bruno Tonioli told Jenn Tran and her partner, Sasha Farber. “You were like a vixen out there.”
Cohost Julianne Hough added that the pair are giving Nader and Savchenko, 41, a “run for their money.”
Not everyone received such positive feedback. Dwight Howard and Daniella Karagach admitted to being under rehearsed during their intro package, but that didn’t stop the judges from voicing their disappointment with their Cha Cha. Tonioli, 68, told Howard, 38, to “work on [his] technique” while Inaba said the performance was “hard to watch.”
“You were trying to trick us with all the [facial] expressions,” she said. “Keep the joy, [but] a little more rehearsal.”
The night ended on a high note with Chandler Kinney and her partner, Brandon Armstrong, who received nines from all four judges, the highest score of the evening. Tonioli told Kinney, 24, that she has “huge star quality” and compared her to the season 16 runner-up, Zendaya.
“We have another Zendaya there,” Tonioli said.
Although no one was eliminated during the episode, the duos’ Soul Train Night scores and fan votes will be combined with their Hair Metal Night scores from the Tuesday, October 8, episode to determine which two duos will be sent home this week in another double elimination.
Keep scrolling to see all the scores from Dancing With the Stars’ Soul Train Night: