This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Thanks to no sleep, Utah dancer Julianne Hough's voice is especially sore and husky.
She's in a car on Saturday morning, being driven to rehearsals in Los Angeles for another all-day practice session for the megahit reality TV series, "Dancing With the Stars."
It's been like that every day for the last several weeks - a nonstop, whirlwind journey to the finals on the top-10 show with her dancing partner, Olympic gold medal skater Apolo Anton Ohno.
If she isn't spending her 10 a.m.-to-10 p.m. days rehearsing with Ohno for the show, which has its season finale Tuesday, she's doing interviews with the likes of talk show hosts Ellen DeGeneres and Larry King while also deflecting tabloid rumors that she's dating Ohno.
"It's a full-time thing," she told The Salt Lake Tribune in a phone interview about her busy schedule leading up to their final performance today and Tuesday's results show. "It's not even time consuming - it's life consuming. It never stops."
Hough and Ohno, along with celebrities Laila Ali (a boxer like her father Muhammad) and former N'Sync singer Joey Fatone, are in the finals of "Dancing With the Stars." Now in its fourth season, the surprise ABC hit is the second-highest rated reality show on television behind "American Idol."
Hough, who at 18 already has climbed to the top of the ballroom dancing pyramid by winning just about every international competition there is, has taken a ballroom beginner in Ohno and turned him into a cha-cha-ing champion. (Ohno, coincidentally, is moving to Utah to train in speed skating).
"A lot of people think athletes do have the advantage, and they do," Hough said about her partner. "But Apolo brought a lot of bad habits he learned from [speed skating]. He picks up the steps quickly, but I have to take each step and mold his body and make him do it 25 times."
Hough, on the other hand, has spent nearly her entire childhood in the world of ballroom dancing as well as singing and acting.
At the age of 10, in the midst of her parent's divorce, Hough was sent to London and studied for five years with the best performing arts and ballroom dancing coaches in England. Her older brother Derek, who now is performing the lead in the musical "Footloose" in London, also was there training.
"[Moving] was a very hard thing for her," said Orem dancing instructor Kim DelGrosso, who helped train Hough, and whose own daughter, Ashley, starred on the show. "She wanted to make an apartment in our closet, and she didn't want to leave."
After becoming the International Latin Youth Champion, the Junior Blackpool World Latin Champion and United States National Latin Youth Champion, Hough "shocked the ballroom world," as DelGrosso described it, and dropped out to come back to Utah to be a normal teen.
"She was yearning for a simpler, normal life where she said, 'I want to go to the prom, and the football game and do the things that other teenagers do,' " said her father, Bruce Hough, a businessman and former chairman of the Utah Republican Party.
So Hough returned to Utah, graduated from Alta High School and immediately left for Los Angeles last September to make it in Hollywood as an actress and singer.
She appeared in a couple of commercials, said her father, a walk-on in the CBS drama "Cold Case" and the failed ABC game show "Show Me the Money" with William Shatner.
When one of the dancers on the "Dancing With the Stars" touring show injured her arm, Hough was brought in as a replacement and eventually called to be on the television series. She is the fourth ballroom dancer from Utah to appear on the show as one of the professional dancers.
Now, she has gone farther in the competition than the local dancers before her, thanks in part to a sparkling chemistry between her and Ohno and their dedication to winning the contest.
And no, as some tabloid rumors have suggested, Hough does not have eyes for her partner. Despite the postponement of her wedding to her boyfriend, a Brigham Young University student, Hough said there is no truth to the rumors that she and Ohno are dating.
"Because we did push back the wedding, everybody's thinking, 'They [Hough and Ohno] must be together.' That's definitely not the case," she said, laughing. "We [she and her fiancé] have been away since September, and everything has been so hectic. We really want to be together before we get married."
Until then, Hough will be rehearsing night and day for tonight's performance. After that, she goes on another national tour for "Dancing With the Stars."
"I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I was 14 years old," she said about her roller-coaster ride growing up. "I just wanted to follow my dreams."
* "DANCING WITH THE STARS" airs its last two shows of the season tonight at 7 and Tuesday at 8 p.m. on KTVX Channel 4.