Then Tony and I decided to try and dance the tango in what we call the ballroom, it’s actually the drawing room. So we rolled back the carpet, pushed back the furniture and in this room that’s 250 years old and a house that dates back over 1000 years, Tony and I attempted to do the Tango. When I say attempted, it’s as if I’d forgotten everything he taught me. I knew he was really worried that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. My family watched as he said, “do it again, do it again”. But eventually I did manage to do enough of the Tango so they had an idea of what it was I was going to do and how hard it was. We tried to sleep that night, we had to get up really early, we had almost no sleep at all. We got on an airplane, went to Los Angeles, got off the airplane and went immediately to CBS where we had to do a camera rehearsal, then a costume fitting for the first time. This whole week has just been a blur.
Then Monday came and I had to perform. As upsetting as it was and I was near tears and that morning before I went to rehearsal I was just weeping on the telephone to my sisters in England and just saying “ I can’t do this” and my sisters said, “yes you can. You can do this for Mummy. Mummy was courageous, Mummy survived a concentration camp, Mummy survived all these illnesses, Mummy never ever complained about anything. You can do this and you can do this for her and you can do this for yourself.”
So I went out there on Monday and tried my best, but I literally could not focus. I was distracted, I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept, I was yawning. I didn’t know how I was going to do this. It wasn’t until I got out on the stage and they announced my name and the music started, that suddenly I looked in Tony’s eyes and I have no idea what happened. I was transported. I remember that the dance ended and I was standing before the judges and Carrie Ann was crying and they were saying really nice things to me and Tony was hugging me and Tom was hugging me. I couldn’t even remember what they said to me. I certainly didn’t remember dancing, I didn’t remember one step. I didn’t remember whether I did anything right or wrong.
When they gave me the scores I was completely dumbfounded because I couldn’t possibly have done it that well, not with the minimal amount of training that I’d had. Everyone, the professionals and all the other contestants just came up to me and said, “you were just amazing, you danced as if this is something you’ve done your whole life.” I said “well I didn’t dance it, my mother danced it from within me” Tony looked at me and said “you know what, I wasn’t dancing either. I don’t remember anything about this dance. I’ve danced my whole life and this is the one time where I danced, I looked in your eyes, the music went and I have no memory myself of the dance. I can’t remember anything.” Well, needless to say, we both went home and we were elated. Tony’ s wife Lena was amazing. She said, “that’s the best dance Tony’s ever done in Dancing With The Stars.” I said, “we had a friend with us, I think my mother was with us.” Tony believed that too. I came home and watched it on television and I was stunned, I couldn’t believe it. Everything Tony had taught me, everything that he had tried to get me to do, had just magically happened. I couldn’t believe how my back bend, I couldn’t believe the sharpness of the movements. I looked at it and went “wow.. I have to give full credit to my mother and Tony because I was just transported, I was just the vessel that carried that dance.
