“Dancing Star” Miss May: “I now know that anything is possible”

“At the beginning of the journey, I would never have imagined that it would have such a happy ending”says Missy May. On Friday night, the pop singer, who is called Stephanie Wanasek-Stauffer off the stage, won the ORF cult show “Dancing Stars”.

She can’t really understand what exactly happened when the Viennese with professional dance partner Dimitar Mitko Stefanin did the freestyle in front of an average of 767,000 spectators. “I just don’t know my way around.” What the 36-year-old knows, however, is that she “didn’t have time to think about what it means to be on a show like this”. On the Sunday after the first episode, she was called to see if she could imagine taking part. Ballerina Karina Sarkissova left after the start of season 15 for health reasons. On Monday, the ORF received the approval from the BBC – the British broadcaster holds the license for the format – that such a change is also legally possible. For Missy May, that meant learning a rumba at the highest possible level in four days. “From week two I noticed right away: I’m already running out of breath. This is high-performance sport. How am I supposed to do this?”

“I’m desperate too”

The answer to that prayer was Stefanin. He taught her “trick the head. You must only think about the training process, never the end result, or you will despair. And I am also desperate. But Mitko carried me through every week. It sounds totally cheesy now, but we’ve become best friends.” You can only survive as a team. “And it wasn’t just me who was often at the end, he as a professional was sometimes too.” What she keeps is “an unbelievable mental strength that no one can ever take away from me. I now know that anything is possible and it is possible to push your limits at any time. I’ve never felt it like that before.”

Dance will continue to be part of her life. “But in this form it will remain a one-time detour because I really pushed my limits.” For the musical “titanic” she has now accepted her first role at the Baden stage, in which she also has to dance. “And I will invite Mitko to choreograph one or the other show for me.” Incidentally, on June 23, the Viennese can be seen at the Brucknerhaus in Linz, where she sings great musical hits with Mark Seibert and Lukas Perman.