Laurie Hernandez danced to Katy Perry’s music on “DWTS” and it was perfection

Laurie Hernandez has been doing spectacularly on this season’s Dancing with the Stars. She’s a total joy to watch for not only her incredible enthusiasm and charisma, but her athleticism makes her a serious contender for becoming this season’s champion.

Not to mention, her choices in music have been totally on point.

All of these factors combined in last night’s DWTS episode as Hernandez and her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, performed an awesome Pasodoble-style dance (and totally nailed it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tivrR6jIlNw?feature=oembed

They swayed and moved beautifully to Katy Perry’s inspirational song, Rise. The song was the anthem for the 2016 Olympics, which is obviously an absolutely perfect choice for Hernandez.

The exhilarating lyrics we hear while seeing Hernandez absolutely annihilate her routine combined with the video that reminds us of everything the tough Olympian had to endure in order to make her dreams come true.

She and her partner definitely went through an immense challenge this week in preparing for their difficult routine. The pressure of last week’s perfect scores combined with that fact that this type of dance is completely new to her definitely wore on Hernandez, who has some moments of really brave and vulnerable honesty in the behind-the-scenes video.

Because she’s such an incredibly strong person on the inside and out, she was able to overcome those challenges, dig deep, and really push herself to perform an absolutely spectacular (not to mention totally impressive) routine.

She ended up earning her a very solid 25 out of 30 points, which is an amazing score for an amazing woman. Seeing her ~rise~ is making us feel (yet again) totally inspired by her.