Maksim Chmerkovskiy took aim at Carrie Ann Inaba after her week 5 lift critique of Jenna Johnson and Harry Shum Jr. on Dancing With the Stars, turning a judging note into a public split over what counts as a lift. His comments on The Viall Files arrived after Johnson’s samba drew the ruling, and he said the judgment should be applied with more consistency.
On Tuesday, Inaba said Johnson included a lift in Shum’s Super Bowl Night samba to “Yeah!” by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris. She also read the definition of a lift as “any movement during which one of the dancers has both feet off the floor at the same time with the assistance or support of their partner.”
Jenna Johnson’s reply
Johnson answered the critique after the routine by telling Julianne Hough that she thought a lift meant “when you lifted your partner, but totally hear Carrie Ann. I will take it, sure.” That exchange matters because it shows the routine was not just judged on style; it was already being argued over in real time, before Chmerkovskiy brought the dispute back into the public conversation on Thursday’s episode.
Chmerkovskiy said the rulebook Inaba cited did not fit the move in question. “She goes and starts reading off the rulebook, but then that same rulebook that's applicable in ballroom with lifts is only applicable to a couple dancing. You're not talking about extra background dancers running out,” he said. He added, “A lift is a lift if a partner lifted his partner.”
Troupe-assisted backflip
Chmerkovskiy drew a sharper line between a partner lift and the move that happened in the routine. He said, “If you're going to have [the] troupe run out and throw someone in the air, that's not a lift.” In the same discussion, he said Johnson and Shum played into Usher’s type of “movement quality,” but added that the samba itself did not carry enough samba content.
The routine’s assisted backflip by two troupe members is the hinge point in the dispute. Inaba said lifts are not allowed in sambas, while Chmerkovskiy said the aerial moment should not be treated the same way as a couple-based ballroom lift. That difference is the practical issue for Dancing With the Stars: if troupe-assisted moves are folded into the lift call, the judging standard stops being about only the dancing pair.
Consistency on Dancing With the Stars
Peta Murgatroyd said she agreed with Chmerkovskiy’s assessment on The Viall Files, putting another pro dancer behind the challenge to Inaba’s ruling. Chmerkovskiy’s bluntest line was, “The point is: Carrie Ann, get some consistency.”
That is the cleanest reading of the moment. Inaba drew a line on Tuesday; Chmerkovskiy pushed back on Thursday; and Johnson already signaled she heard the critique. Until Inaba speaks again, the argument sits where ballroom disputes usually end up: not in the choreography, but in how the rules are enforced from one routine to the next.
