Dance Off
Alicia A.S. Duque’s weight has always been her biggest issue, while dance has always been her greatest passion.
She first found out about the show while surfing the Web one day late last year.
“It’s a dream come true,” she said.
So you can imagine how excited she was when she learned she was going to be a contestant on the Oxygen Channel’s new dance weight loss competition series, “Dance Your Ass Off.”
The show, which airs Monday nights at 10, features a talented, full-figured group of contestants competing to lose the most weight while performing in a series of weekly dance competitions. The last one remaining wins $100,000.
After the judges score the routines, the contestants weigh in and find out how much weight they’ve lost that week. Then their dance scores and weight losses are combined for an overall score. The contestant with the lowest scores goes home.
So far, Ms. Duque has made it safely through the first three rounds of the show, which was taped earlier this year. The 23 year old started the show at 257 pounds, and is down 12.6 pounds going into tonight’s episode.
The contestants are paired with professional dance partners who train them for their routines, which range from hip hop, ballroom and pole dancing. From there, they show their stuff to a live studio audience and a panel of judges made up of professional dancers Danny Teeson, Lisa Ann Walter and Mayte Garcia.
Ms. Duque said she’s been getting plenty of feedback since “Dance” started, be it from her family, her parents, Sam and Mary Duque, or old friends who have tracked her down on Facebook.
“The whole bunch of them have been very supportive,” said Ms. Duque. “I’m glad to be where I am.”
“As soon as I saw it, I said, ‘Ah, this is for me.’” Ms. Duque said.
In no time, she put together an audition tape, on which she discussed her love of dance and how her lifelong struggles with her weight prevented her from pursuing it full force.
“I never truly thought I could be a good dancer,” said Ms. Duque, who took jazz, tap and hip hop lessons off and onthroughout her life.
The tape also included her dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and doing a Latin dance routine.
Several weeks later, the show’s producers contacted her with the good news.
Ms. Duque isn’t allowed to discuss her ultimate fate on the show, but she could talk about a few things. That meltdown she had in Week 2 was all too real, she’s kept in close touch with her dance partner and she found the judges to be tough but extremely helpful.
“At the end of the day, they pushed me to go harder. So I thanked them,” she said.
All in all, it was an amazing, life changing experience, said Ms. Duque, who recently began teaching fitness classes to children.
“I sit home and watch it now, and it’s amazing to me,” she said. “Going into it, I didn’t know how much I was going to learn about myself. I didn’t know how many issues I had with my weight until I faced them head on. It gave me a whole new outlook.”
“I owe so much to the show,” she continued. “More so than I can mention in words.”
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