Dancing with the Stars contestant Janel Parrish wasn't thrilled with the judges' criticism of her performance with temporary pro-partner Artem Chigvintsev last week, but she's excited to get back into the swing of things with her original partner Val Chmerkovskiy this week.

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Last week's "Switch-Up" challenge left Parrish and Chigvintsev to dance a racy Burlesque routine which pretty much got panned by the judges even though they had received 33 out of 40 possible points.

"Artem and I were actually really bummed about Julianne Hough and Carrie Ann Inaba's critiques, saying our dance wasn't burlesque, because we thought that we were doing a true burlesque. I guess in a true burlesque it's a lot more cheeky, a little bit more comedic, but we've never done burlesque on the show before and it's never been done with a man," the actress and Pretty Little Liars star wrote in her People blog.

"That kind of throws a wrench in the true burlesque when you do partnering. I think Artem did an amazing job with the choreography, and ultimately we were really happy with the way that it turned out. We were still really happy with 8s."

Chmerkovskiy had been temporarily paired with actress and Back to the Future star Lea Thompson. The two pairs of celebrity and professional pairings had teased up their competitiveness throughout the night's performance show.

"Watching Val perform with Lea Thompson last week, I was a little jealous, I'm not going to lie. But it also made me appreciate him a little bit more, just to step aside and watch him do his thing. I thought he did an amazing routine. It was very creative and just so wonderful. I was really proud of him," Parrish said of the routine that earned a total of 34 points from the judges.

"I also really liked Bethany Mota and Mark Ballas's routine. I thought it was really fun and extremely creative. It was a fun week to dance with somebody else."

However, Parrish admitted she's ready to return to her Dancing with the Stars roots.

"I think we were all really happy to go back to our partners. It's really nice to be back with Val. Switch-up sort of felt like a vacation, and then getting back together to do our routine is like getting back to work," Parrish wrote in her People blog.

"This week we are doing the samba, which so far is the hardest dance I've had to learn. It's very technical and really, really fast. We're learning a dance very quickly, so there's really no time to learn the actual technique of the samba. I think that's the hardest part -- trying to learn the steps and trying to incorporate a whole new feel into it. The samba has a little bit of a bounce to it, so we're trying really hard to work on that."

Parrish and Chmerkovskiy will apparently be dancing a "very traditional" samba during Monday night's 8PM ET/PT Dancing with the Stars broadcast.

"Val and I were talking about how our routines so far have been a little bit more contemporary takes on some of the dances, maybe save for the rumba, but this is going to be a very traditional samba. We're channeling some amazing Latin dances," she hinted.

"Tonight is going to be the hottest night of the week because we have Pitbull judging, and there's going to be some really sexy dances!"


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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