Carrie Ann Inaba: The Accidental Diplomat Regulating Global Emotions One 8-Count at a Time
Carrie Ann Inaba and the Global Choreography of Soft Power
By Marisol “Lucky” Vega, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker
It is 3:17 a.m. in Singapore, the hour when even the durian vendors are asleep, yet a WhatsApp group of Filipino choreographers is dissecting last night’s Dancing with the Stars finale with the solemnity of a G-7 summit. The subject: whether Carrie Ann Inaba’s score of 9 for a rumba was geopolitical sabotage or merely the unconscious bias of a judge who once danced backup for Madonna. Half a world away, a German cultural-studies professor live-tweets the same moment in English, Japanese, and the Esperanto he swears will rebound any day now. Somewhere in this planetary spin cycle, Inaba herself—Hawai‘i-born, raised in California, trained in Tokyo, spiritually headquartered in Los Angeles—has become the soft-power equivalent of a mid-sized central bank: regulating flows of sentiment, capital, and glitter across time zones.
To the uninitiated, she is the nice judge who cries on cue and deducts points for lifts. To the rest of us—those who read the footnotes—she is the accidental avatar of globalization’s weirdest pas de deux: American pop culture absorbing Asian discipline, repackaging it, and selling it back to the world with better lighting. Consider the résumé: Inaba’s choreographic fingerprints are on tours for Ricky Martin (Latin heartthrob), BoA (K-pop pioneer), and a Japanese shampoo commercial that convinced millions of East Asians their split ends were a moral failing. That is soft power in a follicle.
Meanwhile, governments spend fortunes on panda diplomacy and Olympic opening ceremonies. Inaba merely has to wave a paddle marked “8” and the Jakarta stock exchange notices: the company that manufactures the show’s confetti cannons sees its shares tick up 0.3 percent. Analysts call this “aspirational contagion.” The rest of us call it Tuesday.
The cynic’s read is irresistible: while the UN Security Council deadlocks over grain exports, the planet’s real negotiations happen in a Disney-owned studio where spray-tanned celebrities perform samba under chandeliers. The show airs in 170 countries, which is 23 more than have ratified the International Criminal Court. Coincidence? Ask the Croatian viewer who named her rescue dog “Carrie” because the judge’s critiques taught her more English than Duolingo ever did. Soft power, like vodka, works fastest when you don’t taste it.
And yet, there is something almost touching—like a Hallmark card soaked in battery acid—about the way Inaba’s micro-expressions travel. When she winces at a misaligned hip, teenagers from Lagos to Lima adjust their TikTok routines in real time. A single tear sliding down her cheek after a redemption dance becomes a transcontinental Rorschach test: to Brazilians it reads saudade; to South Koreans, han; to Americans, simply good television. The tear is monetized within the hour as a GIF on Giphy, valued at 0.00003 cents per loop, which still beats the yield on some European bonds.
Of course, every empire mints its own absurdities. Inaba’s authority rests on a paradox: she is both gatekeeper and product, judge and former contestant in the global pageant of Western validation. One senses she knows the jig—pun mercilessly intended—can’t last forever. The Chinese version of the show has already replaced human judges with an AI trained on 10,000 hours of perfectly scored waltzes. Its first act of jurisprudence? Awarding itself a 10. Even Inaba laughed at that, or so the memes claim.
Still, the woman has survived Madonna’s cone bra, a J-pop career in the pre-streaming wilderness, and the indignity of live television in HD. If civilization collapses tomorrow, cockroaches will still argue over whether her critique of that Paso Doble was fair. Until then, she remains our accidental diplomat: negotiating nothing less than the terms under which the world agrees to feel something together, preferably in 4/4 time with a disco ball.
Conclusion: In the grand casino of international affairs, where missiles and microchips usually hold the high-stakes tables, Carrie Ann Inaba keeps a discreet corner reserved for sequins and sincerity. The house always wins, of course, but at least the music’s decent—and for a small entry fee payable in attention, the rest of us get to pretend we’re all dancing to the same song. Just don’t lift. She’ll dock you for that.
