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Since joining Dancing With the Stars in season 13, pro Valentin Chmerkovskiy has become one of the most popular dancers on the series thanks to his charm, talent and obvious passion for dancing, and it seems he is just as excited about the upcoming 28th season as fans are!
Talking with Entertainment Tonight, Val said, “I’m really pumped for this show to be back. I missed it, and I know our fans have missed it tremendously.”
“Honestly, I’m really excited. I’m excited to contribute,” he continued. “This is season 28. We really kind of push the boundaries every season. This is the first year where we haven’t had a spring season, so I feel like enough anticipation is there, the excitement is there. Me, personally, I’m ready to go and dance and teach and do my thing.”
On Wednesday, August 21, the full celebrity cast for season 28 was announced, but in a twist the pro and celebrity pairings weren’t announced and will not be known until the premiere on September 16th, but Val doesn’t care who he gets partnered with just as long as they want to dance. “I would love to be partnered with someone who really wants to dance, who really wants to do it well. Because sometimes you get people that sign up for the wrong reasons,” he explained. “For me, I don’t care about what you look like, your age, weight or anything. I just care that your heart’s in the right place [and] your head is in the right place. You want to work, you want to build [and] you want to have fun. That’s really all I’m looking forward to.”
He also opened up about competing against his now wife, Jenna Johnson, after their wedding this past Spring.
“Well, now that we’re married, you know, we have a mutual bank account,” he joked. “I think we’re gonna support each other as much as we can. I mean, we’ve been doing that anyway.”
“I think there’s a healthy dose of competition, but at the same time, this isn’t even about us,” he added. “It’s about our celebrity partners and that supporting role that we play is the role that really can’t get too competitive between each other. … I think we all just want a collective of celebrities that want to learn, have fun and just be kind to one another.”
Chmerkovskiy is one of fourteen pros announced for the season, which includes two brand new professional dancers, but since there were only 12 celebrities announce it will be interesting to see what that means.
Of course, fans were disappointed to learn that fan favorites Artem Chigvintsev and Sharna Burgess, who is also the defending champion, would not be competing this season. Both dancers took to social media to share emotional messages about leaving the show.