“She can do more than hold a tune. She’s amazing, and she sings in rehearsals every day,” Maher’s dancing partner Alan Bersten revealed to TooFab exclusively.
Olympian Ilona Maher is a woman of many talents, rugby, dancing and now … singing?!
Since posting a short TikTok to her 3.1 million followers of her singing a snippet of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, fans of the Dancing with the Stars’ celebrity have been praising her vocal talents.
However, Maher remained modest when talking to TooFab exclusively backstage after the 500th episode of Dancing with the Stars about the idea of forging a singing career, following positive feedback from her followers.
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“Guys, I posted one video. Yes, I can hold a tune,” Ilona said, before her pro dancing partner Alan Bersten insisted she is better than that.
“She can do more than hold a tune. She’s amazing, and she sings in rehearsals every day,” he inserted.
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TooFab suggested The Masked Singer could be the next move for the beloved star.
“Maybe. Maybe. I get stage fright, so we’ll see if I can do it. I’ll think about it,” she said.
“But you wear a mask. No one will know it’s you,” Alan reminded her, before also suggesting an American Idol audition.
However, Ilona thought about a different route instead.
“Or I just launch a studio album. And I take out the middleman,” Ilona said.
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Ilona and Alan performed a Quickstep inspired by Jordan Fisher and Lindsay Arnold’s performance in Season 25 to “Chuck Berry” by Pharrell Williams for the 500th episode. Judge Carrie Ann Inaba was left speechless, calling Ilona’s lines “beautiful.”
“We definitely put in some work. And we’re safe. And we are here. We’re here in the semi-final. Now I get to learn two more dances,” Ilona told TooFab backstage, after receiving her first 10 for the season, with a total score of 28.
“Quick Step is revered a lot of the times as the hardest dance. And Ilona really just tackled this challenge, pun very much intended,” added Alan. “She was incredible this whole week of rehearsals. You can see that she wants to be here and it resonated in that dance. That was insane. I’m so proud of her.”
The pair — who have formed a friendship that has become loved by DWTS fans online — kicked off their dance with their own personal handshake.
“Before every single dance [we do it]. We don’t when we’re not rehearsing, but it is just like random times we just do it. But before every single dance. When we perform every time we do it,” Alan said, before performing the handshake for TooFab and hinting that there’s also a not-so-family friendly sound that goes along with it.
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To celebrate the 500th episode, the couples had to perform an “Instant Salsa,” where they almost crash landed “three times” according to judge Bruno Tonioli.
“It was hard, because we did that lift, I think we only figured it out fully yesterday to throw me off there. Thankfully, it was at the end of our dance,” Ilona said.
“Honestly, we didn’t spend a lot of time on the salsa. For some reason I thought, ‘We’re not getting the salsa.’ But the actual salsa dancing, she crushed. And the lift wasn’t even that bad. I’ve never seen a couple do the same lift to each other,” Alan said.
Despite a couple of mishaps, the pair still scored 8s all around for the performance.
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Along with feeling relieved about making it through to the semi-finals next week, Alan said they’re also feeling “powerful,” while Ilona hopes to feel as “prepared” as she did this week.
“I think we’re going to try to really get in the studio and just feel like we did this week. Because we had two weeks to prepare this week, so now I think we really want to feel that same way,” she told TooFab — before Alan interjected with, “powerfully prepared.”
Dancing With the Stars will return for the semi-finals on Tuesday, Nov. 19, on ABC.
