Adam Taylor/ABCEditor's Note: Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes is hitting the dance floor for season 18 of Dancing With the Stars and she's blogging about her experience exclusively for E! Online.
Oooh, hunni here we go! This week we're doing a salsa. It's Party Anthem, so we're doing Nelly's "It's Getting Hot in Here," and you better believe it, we love Nelly. I think that was one of the hottest party anthems of all time and it still sounds good. If you play it in a club, everybody still gets up and bounces to it.
Oh and we are shaking it, hunni! I'm sweating, I'm telling you. I've almost got an afro, my hair has curled completely up! Well we definitely want to portray the party scene, and we also want to touch on the technical of salsa, so there will be a lot of sexy moves and we definitely want to get up and make the crowd feel it, so that's the plan.
And for all my amazing fans who don't know, the foxtrot is very classy, and it's a lot slower than a salsa. A salsa is a lot of moves in the legs and the arms, and you work up a big ol' sweat. The foxtrot's real classy, there's not a whole lot of sweating in that dance. It's a lot of technical footwork. But this week I want this salsa to give us a big T-E-N!
It was really amazing to finally get nines last week. I wanted to get at least one, so I super exceeded my own expectation and got FOUR! Woohoo! We'd love to improve – if we can get a ten that would be excellent. If we get nines again, we'd love that as well.
And Imma be honest, Tony and I were kind of surprised to be in the bottom three last week, because I feel we bring something that the other dancers don't bring. I think we bring a lot of excitement and a lot of fun, and the show needs that! I feel like we can make it to the finals. Ooh I can taste it! I want to be there and Tony wants to be there, so I'm hoping that the fans will vote us in (vote, vote, vote!) and keep us there because we want to be there.
While we're at it, let's clear the air: A lot of my fans were worried that Tony and I were on the rocks last week, but and we were all good there. We got right back together the next day and apologized and moved on, and I think we're in a much better place this week. It was hard for us then, but we're in a better place now.
And I can't tell you how much fun it was to play Cruella last week! (See? I finally kicked the habit of calling her Caroola!) Once I read up on her and saw some clips online, I loved it. I think she's a diva, hunni! I think she has a big personality, and I'm not mad at that. As you know, I display that from time to time myself, so I actually liked it.
But this week we're working our butts off, and I'm so excited because we're in Atlanta, Georgia this week doing rehearsals in my hometown, which was really, really great! I hadn't been home in weeks, and it was really good to just come home and sleep in my own bed and go into my own closet. So while we're out in Atlanta I'm taking Tony to different places out here. We went to a salsa club here last night to try and catch some salsa moves and I'm going to take him out to get some soul food. We're not in LA, so that's a great change!
Ooh, hunni the salsa club was amazing! It was a big Latin night out here, and we decided to go, and it was awesome. We saw a lot of moves that I will not be doing. My moves are nowhere near their moves. I mean, they are really working it out. You talk about sweating, oh my god! I don't know. It takes a lot to do salsa. You are moving your arms, and your hips, and your feet, and I mean you are really working it. and you know, Tony can do any dance in the world, so going to the Latin club was like right up his alley. He loved it!
And Tony's in for a surprise. We haven't gone yet, but we're gonna go to a soul food restaurant here in Atlanta. I think he'll love it! We have one soul food place that everybody kinda knows, Gladys Knight, and Gladys Knight was on Dancing with the Stars, so I think we may pop in there.
To My Fans... Until next time, hunnis! And don't forget to vote, vote, VOTE!
Dancing With the Stars airs Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC.
(As told to Leanne Aguilera)