Maksim Chmerkovskiy publicly pushed back on Carrie Ann Inaba’s criticism of Jenna Johnson after she called a lift in Johnson and Harry Shum Jr.’s week 5 samba on Dancing With the Stars. On Thursday’s episode of The Viall Files, he said Inaba should “get some consistency” after the judge objected to the routine.
The objection came after Inaba told Johnson and Shum that lifts are not allowed in sambas and read the show’s definition of a lift as “any movement during which one of the dancers has both feet off the floor at the same time with the assistance or support of their partner.” She also reacted in the moment with, “A lift?” and said that if the performance had been a halftime show she would have loved it, but as a samba it needed more content.
Johnson and Shum’s routine was a Super Bowl Night samba set to “Yeah!” by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris. Inaba said the pair had completed a lift, while Chmerkovskiy argued that Johnson did not lift Shum and that the actor was instead thrown into a backflip with help from two members of the troupe. He said the rulebook covers a partner lifting a partner, not extra dancers coming in to propel someone into the air.
That distinction is the fight at the center of the dispute. If the move is treated as a partner lift, it falls under the samba restriction. If it is treated as a troupe-assisted aerial move, Chmerkovskiy’s argument is that it belongs to the show’s creative staging, not the ballroom rulebook. He also said the routine lacked samba content, sharpening his complaint that the judging was being applied unevenly.
Peta Murgatroyd agreed with Chmerkovskiy’s view on the podcast, saying she could understand why Johnson would have been confused by the call. Johnson herself had told Julianne Hough that she thought a lift meant “when you lifted your partner,” a point that matched the disagreement at the heart of the scoring. The issue is now less about one step in one dance than about where the line gets drawn when the troupe helps create the effect.
