Dancing with the Stars began its tour at Seattle on Tuesday, but one show favorite wasn’t able to make it to the show. Cheryl Burke, a two-time winner in the celebrity dance competition, wasn’t present at the show’s opening night and on the Thursday show in Sacramento , due to her abdominal pains. TV Guide went on to interview the 23-year-old professional dancer, who said that she was “cramping and in pain” during the rehearsals and “couldn’t even stand up straight.” She then headed to the hospital, where she was told that she may have a case of appendicitis. On Wednesday, Burke headed home to San Francisco to meet her family physician whose diagnosis was good.
“She does not have appendicitis,” Susan Madore, Burke’s publicist, confirmed to the Associated Press. “They told her to take it easy for a couple of days.”
Burke’s absence was indeed felt during the Dancing with the Stars tour, as the program had to be rearranged. Choreographer Louis van Amstel even deemed her sudden absence as a disaster. In fact, some numbers were removed, while partners were changed. Tuesday also saw a new dress rehearsal for a made over show.
“We had a couple of moments when we ran onto the floor at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong direction,” Karina Smirnoff, who filled in to dance with Drew Lachey, Cheryl Burke’s celebrity partner and season 2 winner, revealed.
However, despite the sudden changes, the show went smoothly with Cheetah Girl and Dancing with the Stars season 5 alum Sabrina Bryan giving an impressive performance despite having Derek Hough as her new partner. Hough was also filling in for another ailing dancer, Mark Ballas, who unfortunately had to cancel out on the show for the rest of the Christmas season as he dislocated his left arm.
“At first it was weird to do the new numbers with someone else,” Bryan, who is dating Ballas, said of her new partner. “And when Derek and I do the cha cha [the most memorable number she did with Ballas], it’s just hard.”