Hello, friends!
After a summer-long hiatus…
Welcome back to the GraceofStorytelling blog! To justify my absence: when my school's semester ended in April, I was still in the process of applying for summer internships. I told myself that if I ultimately didn’t get hired by anyone, I would focus on posting content on my blog each week, treating that like a kind of internship. I did that all through May, and at the beginning of June, I got an internship! Once that happened, I was devoting most of my time there, without a lot of time left over to write for my blog (even though I still had a lot of ideas for posts!) Now that school’s started again and I am continuing to intern for the same company in the fall, I also want to resume posting, especially because…
It’s time for DANCING WITH THE STARS!!
If you remember from this time last year, I launched this blog with a Dancing with the Stars recap series. I wrote recaps for about half of the episodes (you can find them under the Movies/TV tab), but I didn’t end up posting coverage for the entire season. My school course load was so demanding last fall, and I fell so behind that ultimately it was the best decision to move forward with other content that I was excited about.
Of course, now that Dancing with the Stars is starting up again, I’m still going to need an outlet for all the thoughts I will inevitably have about the competition. So, instead of burdening myself with a hyper-detailed commentary on every episode, I’m thinking of only posting a few articles covering the 2021 season, such as:
Thoughts on the cast
Premiere
Disney Night
Semi-finals
Season finale
By only covering a few episodes, I’ll have time to write blog posts about other topics, while still keeping up with my internship and school work. At least, that’s the plan, haha.
So, without further ado, let’s talk about who’s going to be in the ballroom tonight:
THE PROS:
Returning to the ballroom from last season are Cheryl Burke, Jenna Johnson, Sharna Burgess, Emma Slater, Britt Stewart, Daniella Karagach, Artem Chigvintsev, Val Chmerkovskiy, Alan Bersten, Brandon Armstrong, Sasha Farber, Gleb Savchenko, and Pasha Pashkov. Lindsay Arnold and Witney Carson will also be returning after taking last season off while they were both pregnant. It’ll be great to see all of these pros again!
There will be two new professionals joining the company, performing in the ensemble and being on call to step in for any of the professional competitors. Their names are Sofia Ghavami and Ezra Sosa. I recently saw a video on Instagram of the pair dancing a medley of Latin dance styles, and it was amazing! They’ll be so great on the show!
Peta Murgatroyd and Keo Motsepe will not be returning to DWTS this season. That’s a bummer, because Peta is great and Keo is one of my favorites.
THE CONTESTANTS:
As usual, this year’s celebrity cast is full of names I do not recognize, with a select few names that excite me...
Jimmy Allen--a country music singer, a genre I don’t usually listen to.
Melanie C--singer from the Spice Girls, a group that I have heard of but I don’t know a lot about.
Christine Chiu--she’s from a Netflix show called Bling Empire. It was released pretty recently, but I’ve somehow never heard of it. That surprises me, because this seems like the kind of show that would garner a lot of social media attention.
Brian Austin Green--an actor with a long list of credits, none of which I have seen.
Melora Hardin--an actor known for many things, specifically The Office and the Hannah Montana movie.
Olivia Jade--a social media influencer with famous parents.
Matt James--the most recent star of “The Bachelor.” After Hannah Brown’s and Kaitlyn Bristowe’s back-to-back Mirrorballs, it looks like ABC has established a solid Bachelor-Nation-to-DWTS pipeline for the foreseeable future.
Amanda Kloots--a talk show host. I had never heard of her until she tragically lost her husband, a Broadway actor, last year.
Martin Kove--an actor known for his role in The Karate Kid, which I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen. He was also in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I unfortunately have seen.
Suni Lee--a gymnast who recently won multiple Olympic medals. After watching her kill it this summer in Tokyo, I was excited to hear that she will be on this season of DWTS.
Mike “the Miz” Mizanin--a WWE wrestler.
Kenya Moore--a reality television personality.
Cody Rigsby--I tried looking him up on Wikipedia, but his name redirects to the Peleton Interactive, Inc. page.
Iman Shumpert--a basketball player! I always enjoy seeing athletes on the show.
JoJo Siwa--I never watched JoJo on Dance Moms or any of her Nickelodeon content, but I’ve definitely been keeping an eye on her social media presence over the course of 2021. She made headlines by publicly coming out as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and now she’s going to make DWTS history by having a female partner. Ballroom dancing is an extremely gendered discipline, and as someone who prefers the more traditional ballroom routines on the show, I am really looking forward to seeing JoJo and her partner dance. I am expecting routines that are innovative while still being true to traditional ballroom styles.
I’m looking forward to getting to know all the contestants as the season progresses!
THE JUDGES:
Len Goodman’s coming back! He’ll be joining all the judges from last season: Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough.
Hopefully, this will be a very exciting season of Dancing with the Stars! I am looking forward to watching the premiere this week and the rest of Season 30!
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