'DWTS' ' Jenna Johnson on Dancing in a 'Celebrity-Packed' Ballroom with Karamo Brown: 'An OMG Moment'

Jenna Johnsonis back for her fifth season as a pro dancer onDancing with the Stars— and is partnered withQueer Eye‘sKaramo Brown. Every week, Jenna will give readers an inside look at their journey thus far: the challenges, the laughs they share and what it’s going to take to win!

Karamo and I were both recovering frombeing super sick this past week, and we also had the jive, which is the fastest, most energetic, most cardio-like dance out of all of them. Getting the jive so early on in the competition was a battle in itself, and if anyone noticed, we were the only couple to get jive this week. Overall, I was so happy and really proud of Karamo and how he tried to attack this week. He nailed our routine every single time we did it in rehearsals, and in our live show there was a tiny little mishap, but no one would have noticed because he kept going, and he was smiling and he kept his character up the whole time, so I was thoroughly proud of his performance.

Courtesy Jenna Johnson

It was also movie night this week and we hadRocketman; it was an awesome night to pay tribute to Elton John and I think Karamo really related to the whole situation.

We also got a video message from Taron Egerton, who played Elton John in the movieRocketmanand I probably watched that video he sent us 400 times because I’m obsessed with Taron and his accent, so it was a great week.

I think the judges are particularly hard on Karamo – I’m not entirely sure why, but my hope is that it’s because they see so much massive potential in him and they want him to do well. So of course we will take their critiques. They all mentioned the little timing error and mishap, so this week I’m going to focus on him being incredibly clean, us being super synchronized and aiming to get his routine perfectly from top to bottom.

While this was the first week I ever saw Karamo show his nerves, I really do think that Karamo has done a good job of containing his nerves. When you take into consideration the fact that we had to do the jive, and so many of his celebrity friends were front row watching, I don’t blame him at all. I just wish America got to see our dress rehearsal when Karamo absolutely destroyed the dance every single time and got everything perfect. I can also understand why Karamo would be disappointed, because he knew this dance and he was executing it perfectly. Things like this happen, but it’s what allows us to grow.

This coming week I just want to make sure that Karamo feels his absolute best during the dance. I want him to be super confident, and I think he is going to be really motivated after Monday. We had some hard critiques and we didn’t get the best of scores, but I think this is going to be great motivation going into this week to come back and work even harder and to do a great dance that the judges are going tolove.

Two fun things happened this week that I want to share with my PEOPLE blog fam. Karamo’s mom is in town and she came to a lot of our rehearsals. She has this thick Jamaican accent; she is adorable and was giving us critiques. She wanted our arms to be better. It was the sweetest thing ever. Also, we’re pretty obsessed with [my husband] Val Chmerkovskiy and [his celebrity partner] Sailor Brinkley-Cook – they’re our little sweeties, so we had a lot of fun bonding this week, especially because we weren’t traveling for the first time. Val and Sailor are the best. Hopefully soon we’ll have time to do a little double date with the four of us.

Dancing with the Starsairs Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.

source: people.com