Mark Ballas On Dancing With the Stars, Kicking Butt(s), and Being a Happy Quitter

Yesterday brought the long-awaited announcement of the celebrity lineup for Season 21 of Dancing With The Stars. The lineup includes Nick Carter, Chaka Khan, Bindi Irwin, and Paula Deen, among others. It’s sure to be an interesting season.

To whet your appetite for the new season, I chatted with fan favorite Mark Ballas, who recently gave up smoking and is eager to teach others how to follow in his footsteps.

Congrats on the new season of DWTS! What should we be looking out for this season?

Definitely creativity and pushing the envelope. It feels like you’re watching a new show because every season gets bigger and better and feels grander and more sophisticated. The production value will go up again because we keep pushing the boundaries creatively. Our producers and the dancers care about our fans and want to keep them entertained. It’s a different challenge every season and while the competition stays the same, the entertainment and production value keep evolving and keep the show going strong.

I understand that you’re finally smoke-free. Huge congratulations! Can you talk about your struggle to stop smoking and what it involved? Any tips for others with the same struggle?

Thank you! Perseverance, focus, it involved a lot of patience as well, like understanding it’s going to be difficult. You know it’s going to take time and working with NicoDerm CQ on the campaigns was really helpful. And, my favorite part of it now is I get to inspire others and be a part of other people’s quits. You know it’s not easy – no one should go into a quit thinking it’s going to be easy. It’s like any other goal you want, whether it’s that you want to change your body this year, you want to work out, you want to diet and be healthy, you want to accomplish a new goal, or you want to take up an instrument. No matter what it is you have to practice, you have to focus…and that’s the same thing here. This is really the perfect time to focus on quitting if you’re a smoker. We call it SELFtember because September is a new season, a time to focus on yourself, get into new routines, and gear up for new challenges. I encourage everyone to go online and share their #SELFtember quit story.

How did smoking impact your life as a dancer?

For the longest time it didn’t, and when I started to feel like it did, I had to do something about it. You know, when you’re younger you feel like you’re invincible and it’s not going to bother you, but it definitely started to catch up to me in my later 20s and that was the time when I was like, “enough’s enough.”

Can you talk about the support network you had while trying to quit?

Yeah, I had tremendous support from my family and friends, of course. Really, every smoker has a reason for why they want to quit. I’ve been able to talk to other people and really hear people’s stories. They can have confidence without feeling like, “oh, I just can’t do this. I can’t do it.” There are people out there in the same boat and you know you can do this. Just focus on wanting to do it.

You’re a third generation smoker and started young, can you tell us about what it was like to be raised by women and also what it was like to grow up in a houseful of smokers?

It was normal for me. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and at the time I honestly didn’t think anything of it. My mom smoked and my grandma smoked. It wasn’t until later I was like, “you cannot do this.” All three generations have quit smoking now – myself, my mom, and my grandma.

Any tips for women who’d love to start dancing or are considering dancing as a workout?

You never know unless you try. There’s not much advice I can give to you except go out there and just try it. Go enjoy yourself out there and have a good time.

I told my sister I’d be interviewing you and I think she had the most intriguing question ever: What’s it like to be judged constantly and so publicly for what you do professionally?

I’m used to it by now. My biggest motto is as long as you feel like you did your absolute best when you walked off the floor, that’s when the scores and the judging and comments don’t matter. As long as you feel like you did your best and you know that you did a good job and you did your part…that’s a really an amazing accomplishment. You have to be happy with who you are and what you’re doing and continue to keep pushing the boundaries, stay confident, and do the best you can.

Along those lines, how do you not lose your cool when you’re in the public eye constantly?

I think you just have to be yourself. Just be who you are and be confident in that. Yeah, there are paparazzi and cameras and all that, but at the end of the day all that doesn’t matter. As long as you have your loved ones, you love what you do, you’re happy with your art and sharing it with the world, I think people appreciate that and will be inspired.