'Dance War' is exhausting, thrilling for 2 Utahns

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 17, 2008 | by Tad Walch Deseret Morning News

OREM -- The two Utahns competing on ABC's "Dance War" surrendered their cell phones when they arrived on the set of the reality show in January.

For six weeks, Zack Wilson of Saratoga Springs and Mariel Sarangay of Sandy have been able to use their phones just twice a week for 10 minutes, and those rare calls are made on speaker phone and monitored by the show's handlers so family members can't share any information about how the public is reacting to the show.

Wilson, Sarangay and the other seven remaining contestants can't watch television without approval. Even their Web access is restricted.

"We're very sequestered," Wilson said during a recent short phone interview arranged by ABC public relations. "We're cut off from everything. They don't want us thinking about feedback. The goal is to create a great performance every Monday night."

The finale airs Monday, when results of a national vote will determine which team won. The champions will get a contract to go on tour as the opening act for a major performing artist and will be part of a new song-and-dance group.

Only one of the Utahns can win. Sarangay and Wilson, who a year ago was a member of Brigham Young University's Young Ambassadors song-and-dance troupe, are on opposite teams.

ABC also will use the "Dance War" finale to reveal the cast for the next season of "Dancing with the Stars."

"Dance War" is a spin-off of that major hit, featuring two of that show's judges as team leaders on "Dance War," Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba.

Tonioli selected Wilson as one of six members of Team Bruno. Inaba chose Sarangay to be among the original six on Team Carrie Ann.

Sarangay, 19, was known as Jessica Sarangay while she attended Sandy's Altera Elementary School, Crescent View Middle School and Alta High School. She moved to California in August to enroll at the Hollywood Pop Academy, but she left the school when she won a spot on "Dance War."

Since the show is a combination of "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars," contestants must both sing and dance, but Sarangay had no previous dance experience. Inaba said she picked her to give her team a strong song base.

Some fans of the show have criticized Sarangay because she went to California with money her grandmother had saved for her own cancer treatments.

"Some people see it as I've taken the money from my grandmother, but we understand the cancer is not going to leave her no matter what treatment she gets," Sarangay said. "Her cancer has come back a number of times, and this time it has spread to her bones and is terminal.

"She's tired of fighting it, and she told me that giving me the money was a way for her to help me to begin my life and career as hers comes to an end."

The show's forced seclusion has been hard on Sarangay, who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the emotional turmoil of the past year. When she struggled with choreography during practice one week, Inaba gave her a phone and told her to call her grandmother. Sarangay's tears and the conversation were part of the next "Dance War" episode. The call helped. So has the decision to change her first name.

"Mariel is my stage name," she said. "It puts me in a different mood. It comes from my mom's name, Marie Elizabeth. I always carry my dad's name with me, but I wanted to do something to carry her name, too. It also lets me do things I wouldn't normally do, because on stage you have to do things bigger than life."

Wilson's strength is his dancing, but Tonioli challenged him during the last episode to be a sexier dancer, which made the strait- laced, returned LDS missionary uncomfortable.

"Bruno wants me to bring a little more sexiness to my dancing," Wilson said on air. "I don't even like saying that word. (For this dance) I have to have an edge. I have to be the bad guy who parents don't want their daughters to date."

Wilson said the 15-hour days the teams spend learning new song- and-dance routines are grueling.

"This is probably the most physically straining thing I've ever done," he said, "But it's also the most rewarding thing I've ever done."

At 26, Wilson had been preparing to give up his dream of being a professional performer and pursue dentistry. He hoped "Dance War" could lead to a career as a country singer, "but I also love dancing, and there isn't too much dancing in country."

Sarangay wants to sing, too, but she said songwriting is the most fulfilling thing she does.

"I want my music to be heard and respected," she said. "There's a lot I'm not good at saying in conversation that comes out better when I put it in a song. If everybody in the world could hear my music, that would be my dream."

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com