Dancing with the Stars brought the fun and the controversy this week with whimsical Disney choreography and a hotly debated elimination to end the night.
With the theme of the week being Disney, each of the 11 pairs of contestants chose a song from a Disney movie to do their choreography to.
Each of the pairs also had meticulously detailed custom costumes created to be on theme for the movies they were drawing inspiration from, which added even more creative energy to the ballroom.
The highest score of the evening went to Whitney Leavitt and Mark Ballas for their foxtrot to “The Room Where It Happens” from Hamilton. While not technically a Disney production, the Hamilton film is available through Disney+, allowing it to fit the theme.
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Leavitt and Ballas were the only pair to score a 25 out of 30, meaning they solidly dominated the night.
However, the second place spot in terms of judge scores was a three-way tie between Jordan Chiles and her partner Ezra Sosa, Alix Earle and her partner Val Chmerkovskiy, and Elaine Hendrix and her partner Alan Bersten, each of whom earned a score of 24 out of 30.
Praising Chiles and Sosa’s quickstep to “Special Spice” from Princess and the Frog, judge Carrie Ann Inaba said, “Exactly this kind of dance is why people love Disney night.”
Additionally, judge Bruno Tonioli praised Earle and Chmerkovskiy’s Viennese waltz to “Once Upon a Dream” from Maleficent as “hauntingly beautiful” while judge Derek Hough praised Hendrix and Bersten’s quickstep to a piece inspired by the ride Space Mountain, saying that despite the extremely fast pace of the song, the pair “didn’t miss a beat.”
Surprisingly, Robert Irwin and his partner Witney Carson earned a 22 out of 30 again this week for their cha-cha to “Try Everything” from Zootopia. This pushes their ranking into the middle of the group after they had been solidly tied for first place in weeks one and two.
In contrast, Chiles and Sosa have been consistently leveling up each week. The pair started out near the bottom in week one, but tied for second place this week.
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Despite technically tying for third place with a score of 23 out of 30 from the judges, Hilaria Baldwin and her partner Gleb Savchenko were sent home due to a lack of votes from the audience, which pushed them towards the bottom of the pack overall.
While the audience votes were not there for Baldwin and Savchenko, their fans still had a lot to say online.
“She was so fantastic!! Then you kick her off?? So unfair. Not treated correctly,” one fan commented on a video clip of Baldwin’s performance on the Dancing with the Stars Instagram account.
“How has she been eliminated! Fantastic performance,” another disappointed fan commented on the post.
With Baldwin and Savchenko’s elimination, only 10 couples remain in the competition. The remaining pairs will continue on to episode 5 of Dancing with the Stars season 34, which will air October 14 on ABC.
