Melora Hardin's quickstep was the best 'Dancing With the Stars' performance of the season so far, but she says it was 'counterintuitive' to her past ballet training

• Melora Hardin earned top scores on Monday's "DWTS" Disney Heroes Night with her quickstep.
• But she told Insider before the performance it was "counterintuitive" to her past ballet training.

Melora Hardin said that her highly-praised routine on Monday night, which sent her to the top of the "Dancing With the Stars" scoreboard and was the best-scoring dance of the season so far, was "counterintuitive" to her previous ballet experience.

The "Office" actress scored 36 out of 40 points from the four judges with her quickstep routine set to "I Wan'na Be Like You" (from "The Jungle Book") during the dancing competition show's Disney Heroes Night.

However, ahead of the performance, Hardin told Insider it wasn't particularly easy perfecting that routine, given her ballet training.

During her intro package in the "DWTS" season 30 premiere, Hardin explained that she "loved ballet as a little girl" but had never done ballroom dancing before.

"So I have to be down, I have to be bending my knees all the time," Hardin told Insider ahead of her quickstep. "It's like I have to both be stretching neck out, but I also have to be down low. So there's a lot of things counterintuitive about that coming from ballet where everything is held up, up up."

Even though her ballet-training might have caused a few hiccups during initial rehearsals, it all worked out on the ballroom dance floor on Monday night with each of the judges awarding Hardin and Chigvintsev a near-perfect score of 9 out of 10.

Judge Bruno Tonioli praised Hardin and Chigvintsev's routine as "the best quickstep" of the season so far.

While Hardin doesn't necessarily view her ballet experience as an advantage over her ballroom competitors, past "DWTS" contestants, like the rapper Nelly, have spoken out about their cast members having an edge over them with dance skills.

Nelly, who placed third in season 29 of the popular ABC show, told Entertainment Tonight in November 2020 that he wouldn't have agreed to join the cast of "DWTS" if he'd known he was competing against people with more dance training.

"Because you don't stack yourself up against that," he said. "Why would I get in a boxing match with someone who's been boxing since they were 12?"

Fellow "DWTS" season 30 contestant JoJo Siwa previously defended her prior dancing experience, explaining that ballroom dancing is "truly different" from anything she's tried her hand at in the past, largely echoing what Hardin told Insider about how her ballet training didn't help her at all with quickstep prep.

"I think for me, the best analogy that I came up with was it's like a football player trying to play baseball or soccer or basketball," the former reality star told Us Weekly and other publications in September. "It's truly different. It's different muscles, it's different styles."