Every weekday leading up to the big premiere we’ll be putting the spotlight on one of the Season 24 couples by introducing the celebrity to readers who may not be familiar with their work and sharing our personal thoughts on the pairing!
Our star of the day is Fifth Harmony's own Normani Kordei!
Normani was born on May 31, 1996, and grew up in New Orleans and Houston. She began recording music at the age of 13, and auditioned for Season 2 of The X Factor USA in 2012. During the second round of auditions, the judges placed her into a group with four other girls to advance to the next stage of the competition.
The group eventually settled on the name "Fifth Harmony" and went on to finish the competition in third place.
Soon after The X Factor, Fifth Harmony began releasing original music of their own...
...and have now been doing so for several years!
Recently, one member, Camila Cabello, split from the group, but Normani and the other remaining members have resolved to continue to perform and work on new music together. However, it should be noted that all of them are currently working on projects outside of Fifth Harmony as well. For example, Normani has appeared in a few music videos for other artists.
Normani's partner for Dancing With the Stars is Valentin Chmerkovskiy. Val is a Ukranian-born dancer who later moved to the U.S. and later ended up being part of the first American dance team to win a world junior championship title. In 2011, Val joined the cast of Dancing With the Stars and has now completed eleven seasons as a pro dancer on the show, winning two of them with Rumer Willis and Laurie Hernandez, respectively.
Some highlight's of Val's time on DWTS so far include:
Oh, and between his time competiting in ballroom competitions and joining DWTS, Val also had a brief rap career. (I couldn't resist. XD)
@TheBentleyNinja: It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a celebrity on this show as popular as Normani. I think the only other celebrity in recent seasons that I can compare her to fan-wise preseason is Janel Parrish. And I think Normani is probably more relevant than most contestants, who are usually either past their most famous years or just don’t have much of a fan base in general. And from the looks of it, it seems like Normani is one of the more popular members of Fifth Harmony, which will be great for her once when we get deep into the season. I am personally not a fan of Fifth Harmony, but I do kind of like like that song Worth It by them. And that’s pretty much all my knowledge about Normani and her band.
I’ve really come to appreciate Val’s choreography a lot in recent seasons, and he is probably my favorite male pro this season, so I think Normani is in good hands with him. Sure, Val usually does get partners who are finale material right off the bat, but you know what? He is really good at what he does, and I really like to see the progression of his partners every season. I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but I honestly don’t understand a lot of the hate that is thrown towards Val. But like him or not, Val and Normani are dancing together, and I think they will do really well. I think they could even take home the Mirrorball Trophy!
@dwstdreams: Believe it or not, I am not the biggest Fifth Harmony fan, and at first I was a little apprehensive towards Normani. After watching their sound bites, I am IN LOVE. I am so excited for this partnership!!!
Normani seems very hardworking and hungry to win. She seems respectful to Val and very articulate. She also has dance experience so I think she knows how to take criticism and apply corrections. In addition to this, Normani is always very aware with her body when dancing, which is a key factor in this competition.
Being on The X Factor allows Normani to have an edge over some of the other contestants because she is used to live performance and the pressure of competitions. She also has an active fan base which should get her and Val lots of votes.
Val seems eager to teach her and I think this is overall going to be a great partnership. The more inspired Val is than better and more creative his routines are. His dances are a by product of his love. Val often gets paired with the younger stars just starting their careers and I love the mentoring role he takes on. The stronger their connect is the better they will do. Love and family is everything to Val and that shows during the season.
The only thing I think will hurt her is her schedule. It worries me that she is doing a WORLD tour in ASIA while training for the show. It is going to be very hard for her to get training time which is a disadvantage. However, I still think she does have a chance to win.
@juliadelbel: I was familiar with some of Fifth Harmony's music and their passionate fanbase, but before Normani joined DWTS I didn't know any of their names or most other details of the group.
Dreams and Bentley already touched on a lot of stuff I'm thinking, so I'll mostly focus on what they didn't bring up, but as Dreams mentioned Normani is going to be touring Asia for part of this season and I'm thinking that may end up pushing the limit of contestant travel. (Until next season when we get an astronaut contestant who has a space mission during the timespan of the show. XD) She and Val are going to be making several huge time jumps back and forth and will probably experience some jet lag, and I'm seriously concerned how that will affect their season.
The travel thing seems to be this couple's main roadblock right now. Normani already has a lot of very passionate supporters who will probably take her far if they vote for her (being vocal but not actually voting tends to be a problem for stars with young fanbases). She's also lucky to have Val, who also has a lot of fans who vote for him no matter what every season (and as Bentley touched on, Val tends to get celebrities with dance experience pretty much every season and while it's getting pretty annoying I don't mind so much this time since Normani obviously requested him).
However, at some point pre-DWTS fanbases won't be enough to get a couple the win, which means they're going to have to win over a decent portion of the general audience. Can they do it? So far they seem to have a FANTASTIC dynamic and in my opinion Normani seems very nice, but some others are calling her "too sassy" and claiming she has attitude problems. I'm not really sure where that's coming from (and if it's racism then shame on all those people) but if that ends up being how the general public views her she and Val may not make it to the end.
At this point, I do think think they'll be well liked (what they also have working in their favor is the fact that Normani's ringer-ness probably won't be as noticeable in this particular group of celebrities as much as it usually would, so the bulk of the "dance experience" backlash will probably go to others) and while I don't currently have a prediction as to which spot in the top three they'll come in, I believe they're the couple most likely to make the Finals right now.
MONDAY: This man has mastered poetry, guitar, and, of course, football, but how will this free agent fare on the dance floor?
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