The September 17, 2024 premiere of Dancing With the Stars offered several promising cha-chas, but the night’s highest score went to a tango: Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong earned 23 out of 30. Among the cha-chas, Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson led with 21 out of 30 for a confident, if imperfect, first showing.
Who had the best dance on the premiere?
By the judges’ scoreboard, Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong had the night’s top routine. Their tango to Chappell Roan’s “HOT TO GO!” earned 23/30. TVLine praised Kinney’s execution and identified her as an early frontrunner, though a premiere score is only an initial snapshot—not a prediction of the season’s result.
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The distinction matters for a recap focused on cha-chas: Kinney’s top-scoring dance was a tango, not a cha-cha. Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson delivered the highest-scoring cha-cha highlighted here, with 21/30.
Which cha-chas stood out?
The first-night cha-chas ranged from 15 to 21 points among the pairs covered below. Scores indicate the judges’ response; the accompanying performance descriptions are TVLine’s assessments, not objective measures of dance quality.
#1 Best Overall
| Pair | Song | Score | What the recap noted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson | “Dancin’ in the Country” by Tyler Hubbard | 21/30 | TVLine called the routine surprisingly strong, while noting stiffness and loose hand placement; it also saw confidence and potential. |
| Phaedra Parks and Val Chmerkovskiy | “I’m Every Woman” by Whitney Houston | 19/30 | TVLine described the dance as proficient and sassy, but not especially distinctive. |
| Jenn Tran and Sasha Farber | “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus | 19/30 | TVLine noted nerves and hurried feet, while seeing room for improvement as Tran settled into the competition. |
| Ilona Maher and Alan Bersten | “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” by Shania Twain | 18/30 | TVLine described solid technique alongside visible nerves. |
| Anna Delvey and Ezra Sosa | “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter | 18/30 | TVLine called the performance adequate and characterized the audience response as uneasy; that is the recap writer’s impression, not a measured audience finding. |
| Eric Roberts and Britt Stewart | “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger | 15/30 | The lowest reported score in these premiere recaps. TVLine noted mistakes and a coordination challenge Roberts had discussed in rehearsal. |
How the cha-chas fit into the night’s leaderboard
Other styles also scored strongly. Dwight Howard and Daniella Karagach earned 22/30 for salsa; Stephen Nedoroscik and Rylee Arnold scored 21/30 for jive; and Danny Amendola and Witney Carson earned 20/30 for tango. Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko scored 18/30 for tango, Tori Spelling and Pasha Pashkov received 17/30 for foxtrot, and Reginald VelJohnson and Emma Slater scored 16/30 for salsa.
Those comparisons put the cha-chas in perspective: Graziadei and Johnson’s 21 was one of the night’s leading scores, but Kinney and Armstrong’s tango set the overall high at 23. To judge an early standout, it helps to separate the points from the critic’s description of technique and from the routine’s confidence or energy.
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What happened on premiere night?
Season 33 began September 17, 2024, with 13 celebrity-professional pairs performing their first-week routines. Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, and Derek Hough judged; Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough co-hosted. No one was eliminated during the premiere.
At the time, viewers could watch live on ABC and Disney+, with the episode reported to stream on Hulu the next day. That describes the original 2024 arrangement, not a guarantee of current availability. ABC/Disney reported 4.97 million total viewers and a 0.73 rating among Adults 18–49 for the September 17 episode’s Nielsen Live + Same Day window. The company said those figures were 4% and 14% above the Season 32 premiere, respectively; they are not seven-day totals.
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- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
- Language: English
- Region: Region 1 U.S. and Canada only
- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Run Time: 51 minutes
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