Source: Entertainment Weekly

Eyes to the chimney; the smoke has turned white. Dancing With the Stars must have just found its next pro.

After eight weeks full of cutthroat gameplay, nasty injuries, surprising reversals of fortune, and scintillating dances, the dancing competition series’ latest spinoff, Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro, has finally chosen its first winner.

Three contenders entered the Next Pro ballroom in host Robert Irwin’s native Queensland, Australia, at the top of Monday’s episode. Adele Zaikman, an Israeli-Ukrainian dancer proficient in Latin styles that previously won the prestigious Blackpool Dance Festival; AJ Pritchard, a British veteran of the series from that country that DWTS adapted stateside, Strictly Come Dancing; and Selena Hamilton, a Los Angeles-based contemporary specialist who appeared in the viral KATSEYE Gap commercial last August.

After two rounds of dances with celebrity alumni of the anchor series, judge Shirley Ballas called out the name of the winning contestant. And that winner is…

“I feel like this is a celebration. All of the sacrifices that I’ve done, this is an ‘I’ve made it’ moment,” Zaikman told Irwin as confetti rained from the ceiling. Zaikman was embraced by both her fellow finalists, and by her celebrity partner for the episode, Nev Schulman, who placed second on DWTS season 29 back in 2020.

One of the most vocally ambitious of the spinoff’s contestants, Pritchard said he relished the “opportunity to dance in the finale with [season 31 winner Charli D’Amelio], every moment was so enriching.” But he still ventured to acknowledge the bitter side of his loss: “Obviously, I’m absolutely devastated, from every being in my body.”

Hamilton’s concession was decidedly sunnier. “I didn’t think I’d make it past week one,” she told longtime pro and season 34 winner Witney Carson, who served as Irwin’s cohost for the evening. “Being in the top three has given me so much, and just amazing friends. Yeah, this is not the end.”

Zaikman showed a consistent level of craft mastery and teaching fluency from week to week. But still, her victory was far from certain going into Monday’s finale.

For the contestants’ first dance, they were allowed to choose the style that suits them best, and Zaikman went with the samba. It was a wise move, considering she earned high marks from Ballas and her son, DWTS pro Mark Ballas, when she danced the samba in week 1 with fifth-place runner-up Nina Mayster, and again in week 7 with pro Gleb Savchenko.

For their second and final dance, Zaikman and Schulman duked it out in a fiery freestyle, complete with actual jets of flame shooting to the rafters at the rear of the stage. “Adele, you can just walk across the floor and be captivating… If you became a pro, you wouldn’t just fit in, you would elevate the rest of the Dancing With the Stars cast,” remarked guest judge Derek Hough. “The fire, the drama — Adele giving them hell, I love it,” Mark added.

Zaikman will now join the cast of Dancing With the Stars season 35, which premieres just two weeks from Wednesday. The full stable of returning pros won’t be announced until Wednesday, but Zaikman will definitely be dancing alongside Carson, who was recently announced as the first pro partner (to Jimmy Kimmel Live’s Guillermo Rodriguez), and Sharna Burgess, who is returning after a four-season hiatus.

Dancing With the Stars season 35 has its two-night premiere on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, with new episodes streaming on Hulu and Disney+ the following day.