Dancing with the Stars Season 35 Cast Reveal: The Show Has Outlived Trends, Eras and Almost Every Reality TV Rival

Dancing with the Stars Season 35 Cast Reveal: Dancing with the Stars is entering its brand new chapter with Season 35. At some point, a television show stops being just a television show and starts becoming a memory, but Dancing with the Stars is still here with all the shine, drama, and producing people who become everyone’s favourite dancer for eight weeks before going back to their regular life. 

Dancing with the Stars Season 35 has found its people, and they come from basically all around.

Dancing with the Stars Season 35 Cast Reveal: Celebrities and their Pro Partners

DWTS Season 35 features 16 celebrity contestants who are paired with professional dancers for the ballroom.

• Julia Stiles is paired with Ezra
• Taylor Hanson would be seen with Britt
• Tatyana Ali is paired with Jan
• Jackson Olsen is paired with Emma 
• Ciara Miller is paired with Brandon
• Ezra Frech is paired with Daniella
• Sarah Jane Nader with partner Hailey
• Harry Shum Jr. with Jenna
• Maura Higgins is paired with Mark
• Guillermo is paired with Witney
• Connor Wood with Rylee
• Amber Glenn with Pasha
• Connor Leavitt has the Next Pro Winner Adele as his partner
• Giada De Laurentiis is paired with Alan
• Tyler Cameron is paired with Sharna
• Jenna Dewan with Val

The cast was fully revealed on Good Morning America on September 2. Dancing with the Stars Season 35 will premiere with a two-night event on September 15 and 16 on ABC and Disney+ at 8 PM ET.

The cast list is an ensemble of actors, athletes, reality stars, internet personalities, a chef, a musician, and television stars.

What Made DWTS Different?

Dancing with the Stars premiered in 2005 with a simple idea: take some famous people and give them professional dancers, teach them ballroom, make them perform, and judge them; basically, set a competition around them until someone gets the Mirrorball.

The magic, however, was the transformation that separates DWTS from a lot of other dance reality shows. Most other shows are fundamentally interested in dancers and people who already understand the language of movement. Dancing with the Stars begins with people who often do not understand it.

The person you are watching is not necessarily trying to prove that they’re the best dancer in the room: they are trying to remember steps and perform while millions of people are watching. The person becomes central suddenly.

Twenty-One Years Later, Celebrity Has Changed

This is perhaps where Season 35 becomes particularly interesting because when DWTS began, celebrity culture was largely controlled by television, movies, music, magazines and the occasional paparazzi photo.

Earlier, you could be famous because you were in something, but now you can also be famous because you posted something, went viral, were on a reality show, or because people listen to you talk for three hours every week, and the DWTS Season 35 cast reflects the shift. The ensemble reflects the many avenues.

The Show Had to Learn to Age Without Getting Old

Thirty-five seasons means DWTS has had to survive several different television eras: it has survived the era when televisoon dominated, the age of streaming, the explosion of social media, the decline of traditional celebrity culture; somehow the ballroom has remained the same.

The format is familiar, but the people in it keep changing, and that might be the real secret to the show’s longevity. DWTS does not need to reinvent the entire machinery every season, but the larger culture around the show can keep evolving and changing.

There is the Emotional Bit

Under all the glitter, Dancing with the Stars has always been a little bit about vulnerability: it is the celebrities not acing what they are doing; they can even be bad at it.

We do not get to see that very often. Celebrity culture is built around competence: people are famous because they are glamorous, talented, successful, funny, athletic, entertaining or some combination of all five. Basically, they ace what they do.

DWTS asks them to be beginners, and that is wonderfully human.

What Has Kept DWTS Alive?

Perhaps it is because the show has never really been about dancing: not entirely. It is about watching people change publicly. It is about the strange intimacy of rehearsal footage, shaky steps, falls, costumes, injuries, and those little moments when somebody suddenly gets it somehow.

It is also about watching the glossy stars less polished, and after 35 seasons, that formula has become almost comforting. The faces, music, internet, and even the way we understand fame change, but every year there is a ballroom waiting, and for a few weeks we watch them become somebody different.

Perhaps that is the real recipe for the longevity of Dancing with the Stars. It never asked us to care about perfect dancers; it asked us to care about people learning, and apparently after 35 seasons, we still do.

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