Dancing Mya: Wants to See Her Partner's, Um, Ruler

Singer-actress talks about an old foot injury, doing a Viennese waltz and hunky Dmitry Chaplin

By Marc Malkin Aug 28, 2009 12:00 AMTags
Mya, Chicago CastBrian Ach/WireImage.com

Mya has good reason to worry about getting injured on Dancing With the Stars.

"I fractured my foot last year," the 29-year-old singer-actress tells me. "My doctor said I'm fully healed because it's the bone. But now I have to make sure my tendons are strong enough...But I was pretraining before this, just doing cardio and stretching, so we'll see how it goes."

Fortunately, so far so good.

In fact, popular opinion says she's going to go far in season nine. But you might be surprised by what she thinks about all that chatter, not mention what she'd like her partner to do to her...

"High expectations are really intimidating," she said. "This is such a different kind of dance. It's not like the [music] videos."

Her first dance with partner Dmitry Chaplin is a Viennese waltz.

"It's very discouraging," Mya said with a laugh. "It looks wonderful; it looks easy. But it really isn't. There's so much to think about at once, and then not stepping on your partner's feet!"

Mya praises Chaplin for being so "so nice and so patient," but she suspects he'll eventually "bring out his ruler to slap me."

She added with a giggle, "I wouldn't mind him hitting me with the ruler."

Oh?

"I'm going to keep all that to myself," she said. "I don't want to make my dance partner uncomfortable."

We don't think he'll mind one bit.

(You're going to hearing much more from Mya right here once the competition begins on ABC on Sept. 21. I'll be chatting with her every week to give you exclusive behind-the-scenes scoop you will not find anywhere else!)

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Check out last year's competition over at our Dancing With the Stars: Season Eight photo gallery.