Where Am I? And Who Are All These People? A Night At ‘Dancing With The Stars’

Last week, I indulged my dorky love of talent competition shows by heading to Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, New York (pop. 67,000) to catch the national tour of Dancing With The Stars 2024, featuring a dozen limber and bespangled hoofers from the 32nd season of the long-running TV show. I can hear you sniggering now, but as a kid growing up rarely more than five feet from the set, I was hooked on variety shows. All those singers, dancers, comedians, ventriloquists, magicians, animal acts, jugglers (ok, maybe not so much), plate spinners (but only when the dishes crashed), international ballet companies (time to grab a Coke), and those brilliant movie parodies from Carol Burnett.

But once Carol, Sonny & Cher, and Ed Sullivan decamped, no one stepped into the spotlight, and now variety shows are as extinct as phone booths. The closest approximation to the genre is either the currently anemic Saturday Night Live, or talent contests - The Voice, American Idol, America’s Got Talent, the returning So You Think Can Dance, and Dancing with the Stars. So, in a blatant case of transference, I’ve turned my yearning gaze towards them. Dance is the most elusive of the performing arts since it relies on the body to tell the story. It may also be the most captivating.

Since all these contests are all shot on the west coast, I figured why not take advantage of DWTS tour coming just an hour away from my upstate home. However, after googling to learn that the median age of the DWTS’s viewers was just under 65, I geared myself up to be engulfed by busloads of assisted living residents, auxiliary women’s groups, and locals who frequent this 100-year-old theater because it’s the only game in town.

Instead, I was drop-jawed to discover I was an elder in a sold-out crowd-out crowd of 2600. Instead of busloads on Medicare, it was date night, it was family night, it was girls’ night out (though there were more men in attendance than you’d find in a packed stadium waiting for Taylor Swift). Most significantly, everywhere you looked were throngs of young girls - hundreds of them! - decked out in sequined tulle and iridescent polyester chiffon dance skirts, bobbing, twirling, swaying, never standing still, each radiating a sense of anticipation that would warm Ms. Swift’s soul.

Where’d they come from? The answer to the puzzling audience demographics is in noting who qualifies as a ‘Star’ on DWTS these days. There are no contestants who can boast their name above the movie title, let alone top billing on a tv show, or a singer who just won five Grammys. In fact, this season’s contestants included a favorite Bachelorette (good dancer), a cast member on Vanderpump Rules who despite her immense wealth was badly wronged (also good), a pop singer whose last big hit was 13 years ago (when he did win two Grammys, and so awfully good he came placed second) and a goofily handsome stud with a beguiling aw-shucks smile and two leaden feet that never heard a beat they couldn’t miss) but remained a finalist because he's cannily worked his charm and abs across multiple reality series and social media venues to amass 10 million followers, and they got out the vote. And there was this year’s winner, who did turn out to be actress, a gifted 17-year-old sparkler named Xochitl Gomez, who hit big in the near billion-dollar grossing hit Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and possessed an irresistible personality, an infallible sense of rhythm and evidently a fervent, pre-pubescent following, because she was guest starring on stage tonight.

As the lights went down, the decibel level went way up, spiked by extended squeals of delight, whistles, football stadium whoops. Since the house ushers gave out no programs, for a second, I thought we had we come on the wrong night, or maybe it had leaked out that Justin Timberlake was tonight’s surprise guest? (he wasn’t)

But at the height of the frenzy, out strutted a dozen familiar DWTS pros, the women in skirts slit up the thigh, the men with shirts unbuttoned down to where it still could be labeled a family show. After a swift greeting from host/pro Emma Slater, they began to dance. And they danced. And danced. And they danced nonstop to the point where it started to feel relentless. When watching DTWS, the focus is mainly on one couple at a time, so you can discern specific footwork and take in nuance. But with six dancers onstage at once, with little script and even less context – is that a rhumba or a samba, jazz or contemporary – at a greater distance and peering through a smoke machine that wouldn’t stop, it was two dozen limbs comin’ at ya, flailing precisely at hyper speed. And when young Ms. Gomez came out to dance with her Len Goodman trophy winning partner/coach Val Chmerkovsky, you’d swear that all her three million Instagram followers were in the balcony.

After intermission, the pace slowed down, there were more individual couple numbers, allowing you to savor the various dances as not just artistic expression but also to realize that while most people who go out dancing regard it as a let-it-all-out release, ballroom dancing is about connection, trusting another body while being in synch with their touch, an invitation to romance without saying a word. I’m not one to scream, but now I was happy I came.

At intermission, a circle of gleeful and bedazzled girls was buzzing about with their parents. “I want to do that mom,” one girl in pink sequins and matching rhinestone glasses said, “I’m going to be on that show!” Mom smiled, gave her a little squeeze, and replied, “You just got to get a little taller, pumpkin,” And get a few million people to follow you on Instagram.