Bruno Tonioli brushed off the growing debate over Dancing With the Stars season 35 on Monday, saying prior dance experience does not matter and that he will judge every contestant the same. Speaking on Radio Andy on Sirius XM, he said he wants viewers to focus on what is in front of him, not on who may have walked in with a background in dance.
The timing matters because the season 35 lineup dropped at the beginning of the month, and the cast drew attention before the show even started. Julia Stiles, Jenna Dewan and Harry Shum Jr. were among the names that set off the argument, with fans split over whether contestants who have trained before begin with an unfair edge.
Tonioli pushed back hard on that idea. He said ballroom and Latin are so specific that training in other styles can be useless, or even get in the way. A ballet-trained dancer, he said, does not get help from ballet when Latin asks for a completely different use of the foot. Hip-hop and modern, he added, may have nothing to do with ballroom at all. In his view, it can be better to start from scratch because posture and frame matter so much.
That is the part of the debate that makes the season harder to reduce to a simple yes or no. Some viewers see prior dance experience and assume an advantage. Tonioli sees a different problem: habits. The technique that helped in another style can be the thing a judge notices first when the dance on the floor is ballroom.
He also pointed to the show’s history. Tonioli said Dancing With the Stars has had winners who never danced before, and others who won not because they were dancers but because they worked as hard as anyone else. He said he is open-minded and will judge exactly what he sees. He also argued that the competition deserves more generosity, not less, because everyone in it works extremely hard.
The argument is unlikely to disappear before Dancing With the Stars season 35 gets underway. Tonioli’s view leaves the same unresolved question hanging over the cast: when the dancing starts, will the judges see background as an edge, or as something the ballroom quickly strips away?
