The seventeenth season of the ABC mainstay ‘Dancing with the Stars’ kicked off last night with twelve new celebrities and their pro partners.
Gone this season is the famous Skybox where contestants previously gathered to watch the action and dish with Brooke Burke afterward. This year they all sit together on a long red bench next to the judges desk – which has been switched up to the opposite side of the ballroom.
No one is going home this week so votes cast last night will be applied to next week’s scores. The leaderboard reveals ‘Glee’ actress Amber Riley at the top and Science Guy Bill Nye at the bottom:
Jack Osbourne, who was diagnosed with MS in 2012, is also getting his dance on this season with veteran pro Cheryl Burke. Their 23 score for the night landed them high up on the leaderboard. Ozzie and Sharon Osbourne cheered and wiped tears from their eyes after his first performance.
Sister Kelly Osbourne, a DWTS alum, hit Twitter from Europe, where she is attending London Fashion Week festivities with her boyfriend.
She tweeted, “In London almost 1:00 a.m. I can’t sleep. All I am thinking about is my brother @JackOsbourne I can’t stand that I’m not there to support him #dwts”
Leah Remini scored just so-so with the judges but was delighted to have Jennifer Lopez in her corner – literally. The singer later tweeted a photo with a shout out:
Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi of ‘Jersey Shore’ fame had a respectable first performance with pro Sasha Farber. She told her co-hosts that she prefers to be called Nicole now that she is a mother, but they continued to refer to her by her reality show moniker.
Next Monday the contestants and their partners will try the Jive, Quickstep or Jazz and one of them will be eliminated. It doesn’t look good for the Science Guy.
Photos: Twitter-DWTS, Twitter-Jennifer Lopez