Sharna Burgess Felt Derek Hough Was ‘Annoyed’ on ‘DWTS,’ Reacts to Jan Drama

Former Dancing With the Stars pro Sharna Burgess has notes on season 34’s Halloween Night.

“Derek [Hough] told Jan [Ravnik] that he has had a great first season, then I wrote, ‘Wait, is Derek annoyed at something?’” Burgess, 40, said on the Thursday, October 30, episode of her “In the 4th Chair” podcast. “Is something going on? I don’t know what I missed there.”

Ravnik, 30, and celebrity partner Jen Affleck performed a contemporary routine to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” during the Tuesday, October 28, live show, earning a score of 32 out of 40. In his judge’s critique, Hough, 40, praised the routine and Ravnik’s stint as a first-time pro despite online criticism.

“I think it was the tension [of being] on time and people not feeling that they didn’t have enough time,” Burgess said, theorizing that Hough was perhaps upset that he didn’t have time to properly give Ravnik and Affleck, 26, feedback before the next segment was slated to begin during the live broadcast. “Maybe they were making time for the dance-off? He was trying to get as much out as he possibly could.”

Burgess also believes that Ravnik had a successful DWTS debut despite the discourse to the contrary.

“I feel like Jan has had a great first season,” Burgess, who won season 28 of the competition, said. “I think he’s learning how to teach a non-dancer how to dance. It is so very different to teaching people [who are] already studying dance and working on those things. You don’t realize just how much you have to teach from the tips of the toes to the tip of the head.”

Burgess also acknowledged that Ravnik, like most of the show’s pro dancers, faced “a lot of pressure” to put an entire dance routine together in a week.

“It’s a lot of pressure to create it, to teach it, to clean it [and] all those things,” Burgess said. “So, I think he did a really good job at handling it. I think he’s probably learned a lot on how to teach absolute beginners in the realm of Dancing With the Stars because it is its own pocket and its own bubble.”

She continued, “I do think he’s going to be an asset to the show in the seasons to come once he’s really understood that [teaching style] and truly gets a big grasp of the ballroom technique and how to teach it and execute it.”

Burgess further pointed out that as DWTS pros, they aren’t “teaching the stuff you’ve been taught your whole life.”

“I wasn’t going in and teaching a girl how to do the ‘girl steps.’ I suddenly had to go in and teach the man how to do the ‘man steps,’ how to be a man, [which] was something that, in my career, I had barely paid attention to,” she stated. “I have different steps. It is a different type of moment. … He has to learn how to lead, and I’m learning how to follow. They are different skill sets.”

Despite the challenges of teaching a newbie how to dance, Burgess thought Ravnik’s lyrical choreography was “stunning” in itself.

“I thought the choreography was fantastic, and Jan had her doing some stuff that we haven’t seen celebrities necessarily do,” she said. “He has a beautiful way of connecting movements to one another. The flow of things like that in his choreography was stunning, but I just think her execution of it wasn’t necessarily as finished as it should have been.”

Ravnik has since spoken out about the criticism of his first dances in the DWTS ballroom.

“I mean, look, everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a right to have an opinion,” he exclusively told Us Weekly after Tuesday’s live show. “Haters going to hate and whoever loves us, loves us. What am I going to do? You can’t change their mind. Everyone can have opinions, either I respect or don’t respect. If they want to stay relevant in that way, yeah, let them hate.”

Dancing With the Stars premieres on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, with new episodes streaming the next day on Hulu.

Prove your DWTS fandom with Us Weekly and Bracketology.tv! Compete against other fans and Us editors in the Bracketology DWTS fantasy league this season to predict which pairs will make it to the finale for season 34. Get access to exclusive content, stats and a chance to win prizes. Join the league for free today!