Every season of Dancing With the Stars, fans start playing the advantage game.
Who has dance experience? Who has the biggest fanbase?
While several oppose Jenna Dewan being cast on DWTS since she became famous as a professional dancer, most of the contestants have some level of training and/or experience in the performance arts.
Other contestants have massive social-media followings, which would be an advantage … especially since it was reported that potential Stars on DWTS have to agree to maintain a TikTok presence during contract negotiations.
Is prior dance experience an unfair advantage?
I’m confident most of us will agree that having dance experience certainly helps celebrities on their DWTS journey. Contestants who already understand musicality, choreography, performance, and body movement aren’t starting from the same place as novices.
But Dancing With the Stars isn’t simply a dance competition. The audience votes for a personality, performance, and (let’s be honest) popularity.
Being a professional dancer may get you high scores from the judges, but they may struggle to connect with viewers. Meanwhile, someone who starts like a complete fish out of water can become the season’s breakout star. (Enter the people’s princess, Andy Richter.)
Longtime DWTS pro Gleb Savchenko addressed the alleged advantage Jenna Dewan and Harry Shum Jr. have over their competition. He told Us Weekly, “Ballroom is completely different because it’s a partner dance. In order to learn the routine, to deliver the routine, to perform the routine with a partner, you have to create a connection. To create a connection, if we go into technical terms, it’s a push and pull. To find that connection and balance is extremely hard.”
Is having a massive online fanbase the key to success?
We have to consider the social-media advantage.
Someone with millions of TikTok followers (ie, Alix Earle from season 34) obviously has a larger pool of potential voters than a contestant who is new to using the app.
Besides Jenna Dewan, Jackson Olson from Savannah Bananas has the most fan support coming from TikTok, which is essentially a companion text to the televised show. During week 3’s Yacht Rock night, Jackson was the only person from the last three contestants whose scores didn’t improve from the week prior. However, Bananas Fans kept him in the game (pun intended.)
The gift of time
Rumors spread that Season 35 frontrunner Maura Higgins took dance classes ahead of the show. Keep in mind, Maura and Ciara Miller‘s cast announcements came in late April, giving them the advantage of having more time for practice/training before the show officially started.
In an interview on the Get Real podcast, Maura said she didn’t take classes prior to the show’s start, despite former DWTS competitor Dylan Efron advising her to.
On the other hand, Jimmy Kimmel revealed on the third episode of Howard Stern’s HBO Max show that Guillermo Rodriguez has been taking dance classes since June in preparation for his time on DWTS.
The ‘gift of time’ argument can be made for contestants who have spent years performing onstage, touring, acting, or entertaining crowds. Those experiences can help with confidence and stage presence that may put them a step ahead of contestants with less experience in the arts.
Still, knowing how to command an audience doesn’t automatically mean stars will know how to command a quickstep. So, I couldn’t help but wonder …
