{alltv} 'Dancing With the Stars' finale: Kirstie Alley, Chelsea Kane take opposite approaches to freestyle

Monday, May 23, 2011

{alltv} 'Dancing With the Stars' finale: Kirstie Alley, Chelsea Kane take opposite approaches to freestyle

The freestyle, as "Dancing With the Stars" fans well know, is the make-it-or-break-it moment for every finalist. It can push you on to mirrorball trophy glory (Drew Lachey) -- or it can send you out first thing on Tuesday night (Bristol Palin) before the big moment.

Season 12 should prove no exception. Kirstie Alley, Chelsea Kane and Hines Ward seem at even odds with their respective balances of talent and fan appeal, so the competition may ride on their May 23 freestyles.

Zap2it caught up with the finalists after the semifinals results, and two of them could not be taking more different approaches.

"Oh yeah," says Kane's partner Mark Ballas when asked if he'd already come up with the moves. "We haven't rehearsed, though. I don't want to jinks it, and we don't get our songs until later night, but we've got some ideas."

We're pretty sure he has more than just an idea. Chelsea and Mark have teased the freestyle for weeks now, Chelsea saying that even their most adventurous dances had them "reining it in."

"We're pretty excited," she says. "The nice thing is with this week is that there's one performance left. We no longer have to conserve and be careful, it's one night." (Here we witness Mark telling her there's also a performance during the finale results show.)

"We dance on Tuesday?" she says, laughing. "Alright, never mind everything I just said."

Kirstie and partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, on the other hand, went into the last week of rehearsals with a clean slate.

"We haven't worked any of that out yet," Alley says of her freestyle. "I dunno. We just got word that we were in the finals. He's got the tough job right now, which is to choreograph two -- sort of three -- dances. "

Maks, who's been uncharacteristically quiet all season, simply shook his head when asked if he'd been plotting their freestyle.

"The strategy is survival," he says of his finale game plan. "Survive it, and we're done."