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Aired fall 2015 · A cast strong in personality across age groups and backgrounds

Fall 2015

Season twenty-one assembled a celebrity cast that covered age groups and public profiles more widely than the fall slot typically managed. The result was a season with a distinct cast personality — one that gave the live-vote dynamic real texture across twelve episodes.

Filmed
Los Angeles, California
CBS Television City, Los Angeles
Premiered
Sep 14, 2015
ABC · September 2015
Episodes
12
Format
Celebrity ballroom · 12 episodes
Wide-ranging celebrity cast, one of the better-received fall runs
Host
Tom Bergeron
twenty-first season with Tom Bergeron at the helm
On this page5 sections
  1. 01The take
  2. 02The shape of the season
  3. 03Where it sits in the canon
  4. 04Adjacent in the canon
  5. 05Also appears in
01The take

Range translates into unpredictability.

The cast carried the season — a range of personalities and backgrounds that made the weekly vote feel genuinely unpredictable.
02The shape of the season

Twelve episodes, a wide-background roster.

Season twenty-one built a celebrity cast that covered a wider range of ages, backgrounds, and public profiles than most fall editions. That diversity translated into a competitive field with genuine unpredictability — the live-vote dynamic shifted week to week in ways that kept the elimination stakes alive. Twelve episodes gave each partnership room to develop, and the back-half choreography reflected a cast that had committed to the process. Among the single-abc-era fall seasons, it holds the strongest claim.

03Where it sits in the canon

The #14 slot.

Slot #14 of 34 in the Dancing with the Stars Editor's Canon. Season twenty-one built a celebrity cast that covered a wider range of ages, backgrounds, and public profiles than most fall editions in the single-abc era. That diversity translated into a competitive field with genuine unpredictability in the middle episodes — the live-vote dynamic shifted week to week in ways that kept the elimination stakes alive. Twelve episodes gave each partnership room to develop, and the back-half choreography reflected a cast that had committed to the process. Among the single-abc-era fall seasons, it holds the clearest claim to this position.

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05Also appears in

Cross-references.