britt stewart

Britt Stewart and Taylor Hanson were the ones to watch when it was announced that the pair would compete together on the 35th season of Dancing With the Stars.

Hanson didn't have the dance experience of fellow contestants Harry Shum Jr. or Jenna Dewan, but there was a sense of possibility around the partnership. Fans who came of age in the ’90s would get to watch their childhood crush learn a proper quickstep with one of the show's most beloved pros. Plus, musicians tend to arrive with a built-in sense of musicality, timing, and the ability to perform under pressure.

The hope was that Hanson and Stewart would improve week by week, maybe make the semifinals, and, if everything went according to plan, deliver the kind of epic finale freestyle that has become one of the show's greatest rewards. Plus, everyone knows, Britt deserved her win already.

Instead, after a spirited Foxtrot to a Doobie Brothers classic during week three's Yacht Rock theme—their highest-scoring dance of the season—Hanson and Stewart were eliminated. They looked genuinely stunned. “I'm so sorry,” Stewart mouthed to the 42-year-old musician as the other stars, pros, and judges looked on. It was an unusually heavy moment for a show that has historically managed to make even its most dramatic eliminations feel like part of the fun. But Dancing With the Stars isn't really the same show it used to be.

The internet, obviously, had thoughts. Reddit quickly assembled to demand Stewart be given a ringer if she deigns to return next season, with fans drafting elaborate lists of potential partners who might finally get her to the finale. “Justice for Britt!” became a rallying cry. Opinion pieces appeared. Even judge Carrie Ann Inaba, not exactly known for handing out consolation prizes, admitted that this one “hurt.”

The reaction might seem disproportionate if you still think of Dancing With the Stars as a bit of analog entertainment in which a famous-for-something person pairs with a professional ballroom dancer and eventually gets eliminated. But the show's recent resurgence has tipped the scales.

The pros—the backbone of the show, who for years often seemed encouraged to step back so their celebrity partners could shine—have moved to the fore. As DWTS found a highly engaged generation of fans online, its pros amassed social-media followings of their own, becoming influencers, Broadway draws, targets, and, in some cases, just as starry as the stars they're they're paired with.

Stewart is one of the clearest examples of that shift. Growing up in Colorado, she started dancing at three, studying ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, and hip-hop. She landed an Off-Broadway gig at 13, then appeared in all three High School Musical movies at 15. Her career has since included dancing alongside Katy Perry and Janet Jackson, choreography, teaching, and work on the DWTS live tour. Her path to ballroom was helped along by two familiar names: choreographer Mandy Moore and Derek Hough. Stewart joined DWTS in 2016 as a troupe member before becoming the show's first and only Black female pro in 2020. She's reached the semifinals twice but has never made the finale.

In other words, the woman the internet is demanding be given a better celebrity partner has been working at the highest levels of dance since she was a teenager. But, yes, she still hasn't gotten to hoist the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy, which now feels less like a piece of pointless pop-culture kitsch and more like a physical representation of serious work, dedication, and the increasingly consequential art of winning over the internet.

I wanted to know what Britt Stewart makes of the campaign to get her to that finale, what it means to be a pro on a show that has become a cultural phenomenon, and whether she believes in the concept of a “ringer,” and more.

Take me back to week three, when you and Taylor were eliminated. You were coming off what the judges called your best dance. What was going through your head?
Transparently, my very first thought was that I had failed.

Is that why you said sorry?
Yeah, I felt like I'd let Taylor down. My last four seasons of Dancing With the Stars have ended very early, with nothing progressing past week four. So at that moment, I thought, “Oh, this is a me thing at this point,” because four seasons in a row, I've seen this trend.

You seemed to be hitting a turning point with Taylor. What was happening in rehearsal that week?
He's a perfectionist, so we'd been working on getting him to understand that he had zero dance experience and that the competition isn't about being perfect. It's about the journey and the process. I really wanted him to enjoy dancing. And we'd finally gotten there—and then we got eliminated.

I know Dancing With the Stars is a competition, a reality show. But me and the other pros love what we do. You're developing this amazing relationship with your partner, learning and moving your body. It's incredibly vulnerable. So when you find out that journey is going to be cut short, it is disappointing and you do get sad. I thought we would've had more than three weeks.

And yet the elimination seems to have made people love you and Taylor even more. What's it been like to watch a disappointing moment turn into this outpouring of affection?
Because Dancing With the Stars has become such a cultural phenomenon, everybody has an opinion, so the love we've both received has been unexpected. I'm hesitant to use the word “overwhelming,” but it really has been. I could never have imagined that something that was such a raw experience for me could turn into something so positive.

Before you became a pro, you'd already built an impressive career. How did Dancing With the Stars come into the picture?
I was doing a Disney 60th-anniversary special, and Derek [Hough] was there. His partner wasn't available, so Mandy Moore asked if I could do the final partnering section with him. I had no ballroom experience, but she helped create that opportunity for me. I auditioned for the troupe, eventually got in, and spent five seasons there before becoming a pro. I was literally learning ballroom while I was on the show—I'd never done it before. I faked it pretty good.

The show has exploded in recent seasons, thanks in part to social media. Stars are clamoring to compete, while TikTokers and Redditors obsess over the lore of the pros, dissecting partnerships, and building worlds around people they technically don't know. Does that intimacy ever feel overwhelming?
Social media has been a blessing. It's part of the reason the show is at such a high level of success and keeps building momentum. We're able to showcase ourselves and our partnerships outside of what you see every Tuesday and really build community. To see the love and support for the pros has been amazing. We are the show's constant, so to see fans show us that support is something none of us take for granted. But you have to have boundaries or the negative can start to outweigh the light.

Dance has always had its pop-culture ebbs and flows. Dirty Dancing sparked a dance craze; then came the Lambada and, in the late ’90s, swing dancing. Could DWTS inspire another generation to dance?
I was talking about this the other day: Dance does tend to have ebbs and flows in pop culture, even earlier. Think of the eras of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Cyd Charisse. Dance was prevalent; it was everywhere. Then in the ’70s, with John Travolta and all that.

We hadn't really had dance be super mainstream since the ’90s, like you said, and then High School Musical happened, followed by Teen Beach, the Step Up series, and Glee. Music and dance came back into pop culture. And we're now in a time when dance is kind of fading—except for Dancing With the Stars.

The show is practically educating a nation about dance, from the terminology to the technique. Just this season, I learned about what makes a proper Cucarache and the appropriate speed of a Viennese Waltz. If it gets people, especially kids, interested in dancing again, that's a meaningful cultural impact.
Oh my gosh, I'm so proud. Look at you, saying 'Cucarachas' and 'Viennese waltz.' But you're right. The show highlights dance in such a beautiful way. It's the artistry, the craft, the athleticism, but it's also really special that you get to see us dancers as humans. You really get to see who we are and the lives that we live. That's been really special to be a part of.

The concept of a “ringer” has become a whole thing among fans, with people on Reddit campaigning for you to get one. But we've seen contestants with dance experience get eliminated early, while others with no experience improve week by week. Is the ringer concept a myth?
It's a very interesting question. Some people might say a ringer is someone with dance experience or who can dance, but we've had people like Heather Morris, who literally danced with Beyoncé and is incredible, get eliminated very early. Brandon [Armstrong's] first partner, Tinashe, also had a dance background and got eliminated early.

So for me, a ringer means a lot of different things. It's someone that can move—it is hard for people to come in with nothing. But we're in a bit of a new era of Dancing With the Stars. I think there was a bit more patience for people with zero dance experience than there is now, or at least maybe this season. So someone who can move, someone who can connect with our audience—that means kind of everyone.

The audience now spans a massive swath of demographics, and now viewers have opinions about the pros, too. Does that make it harder to predict who'll succeed?
We're a multigenerational show—which is incredible—but it can be less predictable. You just don't know who the audience will connect with.

There's also a bizarrely intimate ecosystem around the partnerships. You've literally met your husband—the show's third-ever Deaf contestant—when you got paired. Why do so many DWTS relationships cross over into real life?
Dance is very connected. The obvious thing is that you go from being strangers to being in each other's faces, and especially with partner dance, you're very close to each other. Also, Dancing With the Stars is very intense in a short amount of time. You go from strangers to spending every single day with one person. Sometimes that works really well and sometimes it doesn't.

And then I think there's another part of it. There are so many people who don't really move their bodies. I'm such a fan of dance because I think it opens up so much. As soon as you get connected with your body, you start to connect with yourself. That can be an incredibly transformational experience for someone who has never experienced it.

So whether it's a little bit of trauma bonding or a spiritual experience, I think that's why you see so many couples come out of Dancing With the Stars. That's also not uncommon in the ballroom world. A lot of partners end up getting married.

What was it like meeting Daniel, dancing with him, and eventually falling in love?
With Daniel, I just got lucky. I knew we had chemistry during the season, but I didn't think it was romantic, and neither did he. It wasn't really until after we got eliminated that I thought, “Oh man, I really miss this guy.” We started dating after that and kept it quiet for a while. We both wanted to make sure it was something real. Dancing With the Stars is so intense, and emotions get tossed up into it. But it ended up being very real. Now we're married.

Did he have dance experience before the show? He was very good.
None. He'd done movement before. He was in the Deaf West version of Spring Awakening, so there was choreography and movement, but it wasn't full dance training. And he took a couple of lessons before coming to the show. I was always blown away by Daniel because I didn't understand how he was doing what he was doing and grasping what I was teaching him.

I even think now, “Geez, if I had only known sign language and known about Deaf culture, the Deaf community and American Sign Language then, the things that I could have done…” But maybe it wouldn't have been as magical.

You're the show's first and only Black female pro. Has that sense of responsibility changed as DWTS has become a bigger cultural force?
I'm very aware of my purpose on the show. Being the first and only Black female pro is a huge deal to me. I'm president of the nonprofit Share the Movement, which is all about creating opportunity and supporting diverse dancers in this industry. The founding board members and I actually started working on that before I became a pro.

Last week, there was this little Black girl who ran up to me. I'd never met her before. We were out by the trailers and she just ran up to me and said, “Good job.” I was like, “Who are you? What's your name? Give me a high five.” Then I saw her mom, and she said, “Just keep doing what you're doing. You even just being here.” She told me that every time I went onto the ballroom floor, her daughter would gasp and just love seeing me there. So regardless of everything, that matters.

Do you think you'll ever stop feeling the weight of being the person that little girl sees when she watches the show?
It's visibility. It's vital. I do not take it lightly. That's also why I say I know my purpose, but I also hold firm in my goals. Because that same little girl—I hope that she's in the ballroom when she sees me get to the finale. That is something that matters to me hugely. And really, I want to get to the finale for that little girl more than I do myself, quite honestly.

And eventually, are we getting you that Mirrorball?
One day. Yes, I hope so.