From salsa to ballroom, Dancing With The Stars (DWTS) will see the celebrities perform different dance styles each week. And, 2025 contestant Osher Günsberg has revealed that the celebrities had to learn every dance, whether or not they made it to the end.
Prior to their first performance, the celebrities undergo rigorous training, which involves five weeks of rehearsals lasting up to six hours a day. During this time, they’re taught the moves to all of the dances they may perform throughout the competition.
Osher told Chattr that the experience was mentally exhausting, and said trying to remember all the moves sometimes became overwhelming.
“I trained every day. I mean, the most I could manage is about four hours. But that’s because my brain would get full. It’s not because my body stopped working,” he said.
“It was quite intense physically, don’t get me wrong, but there was a point where I just couldn’t remember any more stuff.
The former The Bachelor host explained that he adopted a strategy to commit each dance to memory.
“You’ve got to be very, very careful when you’re learning new things physically, to not repeat a mistake, because then you’re forming a neural pathway that reinforces that mistake,” he explained.
“So once you start making mistakes, if you’re unable to do it right immediately, you kind of have to go do something else, because what can happen is you can unwittingly program your head to do the wrong thing automatically, but you want it to do the right thing automatically.”
Outside of DWTS rehearsals and performances, Osher’s been working on a graphic novel called So What? What Now?, which delves into improving mental health.
“It’s the exact techniques that I have used to get through some of the most harrowing shit I’ve ever been through,” he said, adding that he used the techniques discussed in the book during his time on DWTS.
“Even to the point of, you know, I’m not as good at doing this Foxtrot as I wish I was, okay, how am I going to be with this emotional feeling that I’ve got? How am I going to get up the next day and go back to the studio? It’s the same techniques that I use to get out there again and give it everything.”
Osher Günsberg had a heavy hand in his performances
The celebrities on Dancing With The Stars are paired with professional dancers, who play a major role in choreographing each performance. However, Osher, who’s partnered with Sriani Argaet, told Chattr that he was keen to get involved in the process, rather than depend completely on his partner.
“I fought really hard to have great music. The initial songs that they gave me were like a string quartet arrangement of a Kanye West song. Like, no one’s gonna know that,” he said.
Osher, who’s had three hip replacements and has collected other ailments along the way of “living a life where you’ve had adventures”, explained that because some moves were hard for him to do perfectly, he wanted to bring a certain energy through the music.
“I can’t move my body very well. So I need the music to be amazing. I need the music to do a lot of heavy lifting for me. I need the first bar to hit — and for people to go, ‘Oh I love this song’ — before they even see me move.
“And thankfully, the people who run the music side of things were open to the ideas that I had. And I got a lot, I reckon I got 85% of what I wanted over the line, which I’m thrilled about.”
Osher added that he used his extensive experience of working in front of a camera in hosting roles — like on The Bachelor, The Masked Singer and Australian Idol — to improve his performances.
“We had all these little tapes up on the side of the wall of the studio to know where the cameras were, so I could understand what was happening. Because I know how that shit works,” he said.
“So I’d be like, there’s a camera here. Can we do a move here that ends with us facing each other? I know the director because we worked on Idol and Mask together and he will love it if we give him something to play with, with this camera here, because it’s got the judges in the background, and sure enough, he took the shot.”
What an icon, we can’t wait to see Osher on the dancefloor!
Dancing with the Stars Australia 2025 premieres on Sunday June 15 at 7pm on Channel 7 and 7Plus.
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