Idol Chatter & Voice Views

On The Voice, they call them battle rounds.

But just how combative were those duets?

Not as combative as you might think, at least in the case of Terisa Griffin and Julio Cesar Castillo.

Terisa is a soul singer; Julio sang Mariachi music pre-Voice.

For the battle round, they were assigned Gloria Estefan’s fast-paced “Conga.”

It wasn’t a performance they were going to pull off without cooperating and working as teammates, Terisa said in a recent conference call with the media.

So Julio taught Terisa to salsa. And practiced dancing with her. And Terisa, Julio said, taught him how to loosen up on stage.

“We had to support each other,” Terisa said. “We agreed early on that we were not going to have an ugly battle. Life is too short for that.”

Besides, there was another matter to consider — entertaining the audience.

And putting on a show to be proud of, win or lose.

“YouTube is forever,” Terisa said. “People are going to watch this over and over. And if there is not some camaraderie between the two of you having respect for music, then you’ve kind of failed anyway.

“So it’s scary. It’s scary in that you want to win. You really want to win. But if you (lose) and don’t get stolen, you don’t want to walk off and have somebody say, ‘Yeah, and they gave a crappy performance, too.'”

In the case of Terisa and Julio, it worked out just about as well as possible.

Blake declared Julio the winner of the battle round, saying he showed the most progress after struggling with the song early on.

But Cee Lo stole Terisa, who’s now hoping “he does something crazy, like put wings on me or something.”

For more on Terisa, head here. And check back Monday at 8 p.m. for live blogging as the knockout rounds begin on The Voice.