Tatyana Ali will use Tuesday night’s Dancing With the Stars Dedication Night to honor James Avery with a Viennese waltz, a tribute she says was always the only choice when the show asked her to pick someone special. “There’s nobody else I thought of: It had to be James,” Ali said of the performance, which will be set to a recording of herself singing Nancy Wilson’s “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am.”
The dedication lands at a moment when season 35 is already keeping Ali in the spotlight, and not just because she and Jan Ravnik go viral practically every week. The pair’s reach has helped keep interest high in her run, but this dance is personal in a way that has little to do with clips and everything to do with memory. Ali said fan support means everything to her, and she described the chance to talk directly to the audience as the biggest surprise of doing the show.
That connection helps explain why she agreed to the competition in the first place. Alfonso Ribeiro was a big part of her decision to say yes to Dancing With the Stars, and she said he had been telling her about the show for years. He was also a familiar face from her own past in television: Ali said she remembers cheering him on when he competed in season 19. She added that this was not the first time she had been asked to join, but her kids were babies then, and she feels they are probably a better age now.
The work behind the tribute has not been easy. Ali called the preparation for Dedication Night “emotional and really painstaking, but in a good way,” and said she wants this to be the best one. That matters because the dance is not just another routine in a crowded season; it is a public salute to the person she wanted to recognize most. The tribute will unfold on Tuesday night, when viewers will see whether a performance built on affection, memory and live competition can land with the same force Ali clearly hopes it will.
