- Jan Ravnik is being called out by former Dancing With the Stars pros for a lack of ballroom experience.
- Maksim Chmerkovskiy said Jan “has absolutely no business being a pro on Dancing With the Stars.”
- Peta Murgatroyd called Jan’s casting “outrageous.”
As the only new pro on Dancing With the Stars this season, Jan Ravnik—aka the ladder guy from Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—was always going to be at a bit of a disadvantage. He has to learn how to choreograph for the show, how to cater to the judges, and how to teach a complete novice. And that was all before Jan’s ballroom experience was being called into question by former DWTS pros.
Last week, legendary pros Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Peta Murgatroyd called out DWTS for hiring Jan in the first place. “Jan has absolutely no business being a pro on Dancing With the Stars. There’s zero foundation, technique, quality, understanding of partnership. It is absurd,” Maksim said on The Penthouse with Peta podcast.
While Peta was a bit kinder to the pro, she agreed that Jan’s lack of ballroom knowledge put his partner Jen Affleck at a disadvantage. “She’s not getting taught the base of the dance,” she explained. “Hiring a non-ballroom dancer to teach ballroom dancing to a celebrity as a job is outrageous.”
Both she and Maksim agreed that, ultimately, Jan and Jen’s lackluster partnership was the fault of the casting department. “He had no idea what the foxtrot is supposed to look like. How are you going to expect him to teach it and deliver that message in a format that is completely different?” Maksim said.
Jan may be a great dancer, but Maksim and Peta are worried that he’s not the best teacher for the job. And, as Maksim said earlier in the podcast, “[If] you can’t teach fundamentals, you should not be a pro on Dancing with the Stars.”
It’s true that Jan’s background in ballroom is a bit of a question mark. The dancer himself has been vague about his training. “Yes, I do know ballroom, guys. I’m okay. I’m going to be fine,” he said in a not-so-reassuring TikTok live before the premiere. “I'm going to do my best.”
Jan’s Instagram mostly features videos of himself performing contemporary dance, though there is one ballroom video from 2020. And his recent professional background is mostly as a background dancer—before he went viral for working on The Eras Tour, he danced with Paul Abdul in Las Vegas and appeared in a McDonald’s commercial.
