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Tonight the women get their groove with all six taking the dance floor for their first dances. Coming out of the gate, Marissa and Tony (pictured here) are among our favorites. We’ve loved Marissa since we saw her make her Broadway debut in Hairspray and her sitcom debut in Stacked. For tonight’s show I’m giving a go at live blogging, so the blog is updating as each dance completes. If it works well tonight I may do this all season.

Here we go with the dances, in the order of performance:

  • Actress Shannon and Derek led off the pack tonight with a cha-cha. He choreographed for her fantastically. She looked comfortable and seemed to execute the moves great. I’m a fan of Derek (yup, he’s way cute), so I hope this keeps up so he stays on the show for a good long while.
  • Tennis pro Monica was up next with Jonathan doing a foxtrot. She looked good. She was so nervous in her training reel, but she came out and did a respectable foxtrot. She needs to loosen up just a little bit, every now and then she stiffened up. On the whole she played a good character and she had a nice elegance. Hooray for Jonathan getting a good partner. He’s my favorite male pro so I hope he goes far too. (I don’t agree with the scores, 5 across the board… boo on the judges).
  • Hairspray Tony winner Marissa hit the floor with Tony for a cha-cha. I loved her training reel… she’s soooo excited and bubbly. It’s infectious! Their dance was fab to watch. The cha-cha was perfect for her energy. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think there were a couple of times she might have lost her way in the dance, but her showmanship pulled it off for me. And I agree with the judges that there wasn’t enough cha-cha in there. Still, I’m a fan… Go Marissa go!
  • Actress and Elvis’ widow Priscilla got her foxtrot on with Louis. Priscilla looks beyond nervous and has since she walked down the stairs during the introductions last night… to the degree that she doesn’t look very happy to be there. The dance itself looked great. She moved well, pretty fluidly. Unfortunately she never looked like she was into it. As good of a job as she did, she should have looked a lot more engaged. Bruno thought she was in character, I thought she looked kinda bored. More character is needed to make the dances fully work. I thought the judges, with all 8s, scored too high here.
  • Kristi and Mark did the foxtrot and it was fantastic! She had everything that Priscilla didn’t. The dance was beautiful and Kristi was so into the dance with her body language and attitude. A stunning first week dance and, unless Marlee comes out with something amazing. The is the best dance of the night. As much as I’m for Marissa, Kristi is going to be hard to beat at the rate she’s going. (Very glad to see she scored over Priscilla too).
  • Marlee and Fabian went for the cha-cha. Her training reel was great to watch, seeing how she takes her dancing cues since in many cases she won’t hear any of the music (she says she can sometimes hear some parts of the music). She did great with the dance. I thought the choreography was not as strong though. I think Fabian could have had her doing slightly more interesting things. Marlee moves great and I hope as the weeks go forward she gets better material to work with. Kristi still has the best dance of the night; Marlee gets second place.

For the night, Marissa got all my votes because I want her to have a place going forward.

Overall, I thought the women were stronger than the men. Only Priscilla lacked for me tonight whereas with the men Adam and Penn were both clunkers.

The extra bonus in tonight’s show was actually in the commercials. There was a great Mamma Mia preview in the first break. Hopefully there will be more. I didn’t care much for the book of the stage show, but the movie is looking good. As I’ve written before, it’ll worth the admission price to see Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnon sing ABBA, but the more I see of the film the more it looks like it might be pretty good.

Since week one was a two-night event, here’s Monday night’s look at the men:

Dancing with the Stars kicked off tonight with the pros dancing to “Let Me Entertain You” and that was a great start. Everyone looked fantastic, the dance was hot and set things in motion for season 6. Among the men, Mario has my early vote for someone to go far because of his R&B performing background.

Tonight (Monday) the six men performed for the first time. Here’s my rundown on the dances (in the order the were presented):

  • Magician Penn and Kym were up first with a cha-cha. It was okay as the first dance out of the gate. Penn attacked it with gusto and it was fun. The footwork was a mess. Sadly he reminded me of Master P in the footwork department. Hopefully he’ll find a way to be lighter on his feet because the performance was certainly enjoyable.
  • NFL’er Jason was up next. He and Edyta make a striking couple and their foxtrot was solid. He looked comfortable on the dance floor and seemed to have a good time… and for a guy his size he moved very well. My one complaint is he spent too much time talking about having to defend his masculinity. We could have done without that.
  • Latin actor/hunk Cristian did the cha-cha with Cheryl. It was better than Penn’s as Cristian and Cheryl and solid chemistry and he acted the part well, but he was too hunched up (I completely agreed with the judges on that one). Interestingly, the scores were way higher than Penn’s (21 for them, 16 for Penn).
  • Adam and Julianne did a fox trot and boy was it mixed. When he was holding her, Adam came across as stiff. But when they were dancing holding only one hand or separated completely, he seemed much more comfortable. If he can relax a lot… and I mean a lot, he might have a run on this show. This was the worst dance of the night.
  • Mario and Karina (pictured above) sizzled with their cha-cha. This guy knows how to move. The chemistry was great and I’m looking forward to seeing how these two move through the season. It was possibly the best first week dance ever … and definitely the dance of the night!
  • Steve and Anna finished up with a fox trot. Steve performed the dance well and seemed pretty smooth. I think he will be the Jerry Springer for this season and do great in the ballroom segments. He will charm the audience and no doubt get better as the season progresses.

Tonight my votes are going to be split up between Mario and Jason with one for Cristian because he’s so hot.

There is no elimination this week, so everyone gets the chance to show off and dance again for week 2. But, next week is also a double elimination with one man and one women out of the running for the mirror ball!

Here’s the intro from the show tonight. Get to the one minute mark and check out the hot group pro dance!