“Dancing with the Stars” is back at the 20th milestone. Season 34 returned Tuesday night with hosts Alfonso Ribeiro and Julian Huff, as well as judges Bruno Toniori and Derek Huff. Earlier in the day, Carrie Anne Inaba announced that she would not be able to attend due to illness.
The premiere began with the opening dance, Whitney Meyer’s “Kill the Right,” choreographed by Ray Reaper. The all-new group went on stage for Tate McRae’s “just keep watching” and dance. The new band includes Carter Williams, Onyer Stevenson, Jackson Willard and Haley Bills-Jenna Johnson cousins.
80 minutes after the episode, Ribeiro announced that Monday’s episode would surpass voters from the season 33 premiere. Finally, he shared that last year’s premiere doubled.
The final dance of the night was Robert Irwin and Whitney Carson. (As a reminder, Huff took home the Miller Ball Trophy with Irwin’s sister, Bindi.)
Irwin landed at the top of the leaderboard, tied Whitney Leavitt with a score of 15. On the turn of the strange event, both Huff and Toniori raised 7 seconds for Leabbit, but it is later revealed that Toniori actually locked to 8, giving 15 instead of 14.
There were no exclusions during the premiere, but the votes from the first two weeks will be combined with the scores of both judges, and next week the two couples will decide whether to return home with double exclusion.
Scroll down for all dances and judge scores from week 1.
