Peta Murgatroyd Blogs: 'Dancing with the Stars' Competition Is 'Scary and Nerve-Racking'

Peta Murgatroyd is a former Dancing with the Stars champion, winning the coveted mirror-ball trophy in season 14 – only her second season on the series – with Donald Driver. The Australia native will be blogging for PEOPLE.com about competing with Gilles Marini in the current all-star season.

I said before that I didn’t think perfect 30s would come until closer to the end of the season, but I definitely wasn’t surprised this week. Those dances were absolutely incredible, and the couples deserved those points.

I was so sad to see Sabrina [Bryan] and Louis [Van Amstel] go home. It was awful. It was just insane and mind-boggling to think that they – plus Karina [Smirnoff] and Apolo [Ohno], who also had a perfect score – were at the bottom. Sabrina was the last person who I thought would go home. She’s such an amazing, talented dancer. It just shows that you need the fans more than ever this season.

Our dance this week is fusion. It’s to one song, but the rhythm can be danced to two different styles. We have Argentine tango and the samba in one song. It can get a little complicated, but I think the two are actually going to mix quite well together, and I think Gilles [Marini] can definitely do both.

I’m working on getting each dance style distinctly different from the other. I don’t want the judges to think the two dance styles are muddled into each other and they can’t tell which is which when we switch over. So, Gilles will really have to play up both characters. He’ll have to be the sultry, sexy, Argentine tango man trying to seduce me, and then he goes back into the samba, where we’re like a couple having fun dancing together. I need to make those really distinct.

Gilles’s best dance so far has been Bollywood or the rumba. I think they were the two highest marks that we had. He really embraced the characters and went out there with an open heart and open mind and just killed it.

Each week is scary and nerve-racking. It puts a lot more pressure on us, the pros, to make amazing choreography each week, and I think the pros are definitely stepping it up, and each one is coming out with amazing routines. I am just so thankful to be here another week.

We were rehearsing until about 10:00 p.m. at night on Halloween, so we did absolutely nothing to celebrate. I feel bad for Gilles because it’s the first Halloween he hasn’t spent with his family and his children. We really had to get the work done.