‘Dancing With The Stars’ Recap: Season 35 Kick Off Continues With Ladies Night & Another Elimination

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the second of ABC‘s two-night Dancing with the Stars Season 35 premiere.

Why have one night of Dancing with the Stars when you can have two? Fresh off the news that last night’s premiere was the most watched in six years, the kickoff continued Wednesday night with the women celebrities making their performance debut.

ICYMI, the male celebs performed last night (and were in the audience to dutifully support the ladies on their big night), and Conner Leavitt was the first to go home. There’ll be another contestant sent packing by the end of Wednesday’s show. The results are at the bottom of this post.

You can breathe a sigh of relief, because there’s only one cha cha in this round. Also, online voting was back after it crashed during Tuesday’s live show.

Let’s get into it.

Actress Tatyana Ali with Jan Ravnik. Reuniting with her on-screen brother Alfonso Ribeiro here, Fresh Prince of Bel Air star Ali performed a jive to “Knock on Wood” (her kids’ song choice, she says). Ravnik is one of the newer pros, making his debut last season, and the jive is quite an ambitious dance style for the very first performance. Ali struggled with some timing issues at the start, but they ultimately pulled off a fun first routine. “That was a bit of a rough start,” Carrie Ann Inaba told her. “But what I see in you, that is positive, is that there is a fierce fire burning under you.” SCORE: 12 out of 30 (kind of rough!)

Olympian Amber Glenn with Pasha Pashkov. The gold medalist has some big shoes to fill, considering the show’s lengthy track record of figure skaters who found success on the ballroom floor. She dances the lone cha cha of the night to a Santana song, and while you could tell she was deep in thought the entire time, she rose to the occasion. “OK ice queen! I see you!” Derek Hough told her. “You have such a beautiful awareness of your body…just a little bit more finesse.” SCORE: 18 out of 30

Reality star Ciara Miller with Brandon Armstrong. When she says at the top of her intro package that she’s had a “hell of a year,” she’s pretty much understating it. The Summer House star thinks, at this point, she can take on anything, and she’s ready to express herself through a medium other than words. She and Armstrong come out of the gate with a rocky foxtrot, but listen, it’s the first performance. On a positive note, she nails the “sophistication” of the dance style, Bruno Tonioli tells her. “It’s all there with you to use.” SCORE: 15 out of 30

Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis with Alan Bersten. Dancing a tango, this celebrity chef is trying to bring an elegance she says she learned in the kitchen to the ballroom floor. She’s just got to find the right recipe! Looks like she’s sniffing it out, because the judges were truly surprised at her performance despite her zero dance experience, but Derek says he wished it was a little less safe. “With that said, I love seeing the joy in this dance,” he adds. Prepare yourselves for a lot of cooking puns this season. The judges were really packing them in there. SCORE: 16 out of 30

Actress Julia Stiles with Ezra Sosa. While she might’ve starred as a Julliard student in Save the Last Dance, Stiles really doesn’t have much dance experience. If you didn’t know, the movie was doubled, she tells viewers in her intro package. (“I’m well aware,” Sosa sweetly replies when she tells him). These two brought a quickstep to “9 to 5” by the late Dolly Parton to the show on Wednesday, and there may be room for growth, but this DWTS superfan totally disproved Andy Cohen’s previous remarks that Stiles can’t dance! Yes, they did bring that up. “Andy Cohen, you can eat it!” Derek said to the camera when the performance was finished. SCORE: 18 out of 30

Reality star Maura Higgins with Mark Ballas. These former Traitors co-stars reunited for a foxtrot on their first night in the ballroom. She’s been on several reality series at this point, and yet she’s never prevailed in the end, so she’s got her eyes on that mirrorball trophy. Too bad dance does not come naturally to her. Yet, Ballas still had her out there looking like a pro herself strutting across that floor to “Black Velvet.” A blessing and a curse to deliver like that the first week, because she’s now set the bar high. “You foxy traitor! So seductive, so enticing, smooth as silk and ready for the kill,” Tonioli said. “The movement, I’ve never seen something like that on week one.” SCORE: 21 out of 30 (highest of the night)

Reality star Sarah Jane Nader with Hailey Bills. Sarah Jayne is no stranger to the ballroom, since her sister Brooks previously competed. She took the stage for one or two counts on Season 33, but now she’s ready to take the stage for herself. This is the second time that DWTS has had a same-sex female couple, and last time it was Bills’ aunt and longtime pro Jenna Johnson paired with JoJo Siwa. So, they both have a lot to prove with their jive to “Sk8er Boi,” and it seems they did decent. “Can I just say what we’re all thinking? That was super hot!” exclaimed Inaba before delivering a hard truth: “You were out of sync.” Room for improvement! SCORE: 14 out of 30

Actress Jenna Dewan with Val Chmerkovskiy. The Rookie and Step Up star Dewan closed out the show with a tango. After starting her career as a backup dancer, she’s been focusing on purely acting for a long enough time now that she’s not sure if she can meet the expectations that she assumes people have for her run on DWTS. Chmerkovskiy is ready to push her, though, and he got a lot out of her on night one. “You put the ‘go’ in ‘tango,’” Derek says. He called it “a little frantic in places” but it certainly sets the standard for her performances to come. SCORE: 19 out of 30

So, who goes home?

After just one performance, Sarah Jayne Nader is the first female celebrity to be eliminated from the competition. The 14 remaining contestants will take on Week 2 to some viral hits next Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and Disney+.