Dancing with the Stars eliminee Danielle Fishel has admitted what "bothers" her about her elimination from the ABC reality dancing competition.
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Danielle and her pro partner Pasha Pashkov danced a contemporary routine to "Dream On" by Aerosmith for "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Night" last week on Dancing with the Stars' 34th season.
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Although Danielle had given the performance her best effort, she and Pasha landed close to the bottom of the judges' leaderboard, and they were sent packing at the end of the broadcast.
Danielle then took to Instagram on Friday, November 7, claiming that her personal back story for the dance was unfortunately edited out of the episode.
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In the Instagram clip, Danielle told her followers on her "Danielle with Stars" podcast that once producers cleared "Dream On" for her to use on the show, Pasha searched for deeper meaning behind his choreography.
"Pasha asked me, 'What story do you want to tell? What does this song mean to you?' Contemporary is a very personal dance. It's usually about something. It's got some emotion," Danielle explained.
"And I said, 'I know the song like the back of my hand, but I'm going to listen to it again and see what speaks to me.'"
Danielle recalled listening to the song "quite a few times" over and over again.
"And I wrote to Pasha, I said, 'Okay, our story is about the impossible standards placed on women both from society and from ourselves. If we pursue work outside the home and have a family, we're told that we should be with our kids more,'" the Boy Meets World star said.
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The actress continued, "If we stay home, we're told we don't work and are uninteresting. If we're too thin, we're told to eat a burger and if we gain weight, we're told to get off the couch. When we get Botox or fillers, we're accused of not aging gracefully, and when we age naturally, we're called old and ugly."
Danielle added, "We are somehow always too much and never enough at the same time, and the only cure for it is to live life your way, living out your dreams."
Danielle also shared how being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024 made her realize that "life is short" and so people should never take life for granted.
"We never know when we're living our last day or dancing our last dance. And he right away wrote, 'Love it!' And then [on performance night], when we were on the ballroom floor and I was listening to my package," Danielle recalled.
"And I was like, 'None of that was even mentioned! Like, none of my story was even in the package.' And we don't have any -- those are just things that are completely out of our control."
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Danielle wrote in the comments of her Instagram post how she was upset that the meaning behind her dance never resonated with viewers due to part of her package ending up on the cutting room floor.
"That's the part that bothers me the most," Danielle wrote.
"Pasha's entire choreography was built around the idea that he would represent the noise, the judgements, the criticism, and expectations and as the dance evolved I would learn to stop fighting it and instead learn to live with it and rise above it."
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She concluded, "Because you can't stop or change it but you can adjust how you respond or react."
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Danielle and Pasha were eliminated from Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday, November 4 after scoring 34 out of 40 possible points from judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, Derek Hough and guest judge Flavor Flav.