Cheryl Burke’s ‘DWTS’ Blog: Jiving With Drew (Exclusive)

“Dancing with the Stars” professional dancer – and two-time mirrorball champion – Cheryl Burke joins AccessHollywood.com as our behind-the-scenes celebrity blogger for Season 18 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

Here is Cheryl’s latest post as she and celebrity partner Drew Carey head into Week 2 of the competition…

Last week I thought Drew did great. I didn’t expect him to come out and really perform like he did. You can tell that he’s a performer. Like I said my first week, I was a little bit nervous.

I didn’t know if he was going to go out there and perform or just go out there and be really nervous. The whole night and day he was rehearsing backstage by himself and he was so cute really trying just to get his steps down so he was able to perform. I think he’s so used to loud crowds because of “The Price Is Right,” that he was able to feed off of their energy.

I actually guest modeled yesterday for “Price Is Right,” which will be airing on Monday, and it was really a surreal experience because “The Price Is Right” is something I used to watch growing up as a kid and to be on the set was pretty surreal.

The crowd – there’s only about 300 people and it looks way bigger than it actually is – but the crowd is just so crazy. It’s like three times as loud as the “Dancing with the Stars” audience and they’re just so happy to be there. Now I see why Drew comes into rehearsal exhausted, because it takes so much out of you. Even me, just standing there smiling and modeling cars and giving away free trips to Argentina and my hometown, San Francisco, that even took a lot of energy from me, so for him to actually have to host two shows a day is pretty insane.

We have the jive this week, which Drew is excited about. It’s a song that he actually picked, which I can’t say yet, but it’s one of his favorite songs, so he’s been really excited about it, but his schedule this week has been so hectic. He’s done two shows a day for “Price Is Right,” from Tuesday-Thursday, and he’s temporarily taking over for Craig Ferguson, which doesn’t air until April 1, but he shot that all day Friday, so, we actually did a night rehearsal from 7-midnight. So he’s been pretty busy and he’s been a little bit stressed out.

Jive is really fast and it’s like three times the steps that he learned for foxtrot, which we had two weeks to learn. Now you really only have 3-4 days to learn this dance, so it’s going to be interesting to see because everyone’s also under the same time pressure, but I feel like in our situation, it’s a little bit different since he has been working his actual day job, but I’m really excited about the jive. So far, it’s coming along great. We were able to do it to slower music. We slowed down the actual tempo last night, so he was able to at least get through it. And for the jive, I just really want him to go out there and have the same type of energy for foxtrot, but really entertain the crowd and make people smile. We’re just trying to get in those hours we’ve lost during the beginning of the week and we tried to make them up through the weekend.

I just want to thank the fans so much. I’ve gotten so much great feedback from everybody. Drew is such a lovable, humble guy and what you see on camera is really him. He’s having the best time of his life — and that was his reason for doing the show. Yeah, it’s a competition, but he really is out there wanting to have fun, and it’s a new challenge for him and he’s definitely sweating a lot more in the jive, and he wants to be able to lose more weight, which I don’t think he needs to lose any more weight, but he’s like, I just want to lose like five extra pounds.

Hopefully, this jive, I’m really putting him to work, so he may have reached his goal by now.

WATCH: Inside Drew Carey’s ‘Dancing’ Rehearsals

— Cheryl Burke