Tyler Cameron is headed back into a dance competition, but this time the floor is bigger, the steps are stricter and the stakes are very different. He is set to compete on Season 35 of Dancing With the Stars with Sharna Burgess when the new season premieres on September 15.
The timing is what makes the move stand out. Cameron already has reality-competition dance experience, and that is why viewers searching for Tyler Cameron Dwts are hearing his name now: he is not walking into the ballroom cold, but he is also not walking in with much of a shortcut.
His last turn in the genre came in 2022 on The Real Dirty Dancing, where celebrity contestants visited locations from the movie Dirty Dancing and recreated routines from the film. Cameron finished as a runner-up with Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, while Corbin Bleu and Cat Cora won the competition. In the finale, Cameron and Johnson-Reyes performed a version of '(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,' a song first tied to Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze in 1987.
That earlier run gives him a paper trail, but Cameron has been clear that it does not amount to an edge. He said his previous experience was like “can you learn three eight counts? And that was it,” then added, “This is a whole different ballgame.” Burgess has made the same basic point from the other side of the partnership, calling DWTS more “technical” than The Real Dirty Dancing.
The contrast matters because Cameron’s earlier show was built around familiar songs and shorter routine-building bursts. On Week 1, he danced with Loni Love to 'Hey! Baby' and was named the “Best Johnny” among the male competitors. For Weeks 2, 3 and 4, he was paired with Johnson-Reyes and moved through 'Hungry Eyes,' 'Do You Love Me' and then the finale performance. That path helped him survive the format once, but it also makes the next step easier to define: DWTS asks for a longer, more exact performance language from the start.
Cameron has already put that difference into plain words. “This is the real deal. I’m drowning,” he said. That is the useful part of the preview: not that he is pretending to be ready, but that he knows the job has changed. The question now is not whether he can dance in front of cameras. It is whether he and Burgess can turn one former reality-show contestant’s instinct for performance into something sharp enough for Season 35, beginning September 15.
