Gleb Savchenko teased a possible casting shakeup for “Dancing With the Stars.”
In a March 30, 2024 interview, the longtime pro dancer told The US. Sun that the cast members usually don’t find out their status for the next season until the end of August. “We just sit and wait for the calls to be picked up. And hopefully, I’m back as a pro,” he said.
Savchenko, 40, then shared a teaser. “A friend of mine just said it to me yesterday, ‘The show will definitely, at some point, get a facelift.’ And facelift, meaning it has to be updated with maybe dancers or whatever. But I’ll tell you one thing, even though I’m 40 years old, I don’t look like I’m 40,” he said.
“I don’t feel like I’m 40,” the dancer added. “ I’m freaking in the best shape of my life… I look like 30. And this is my prime time. …I love the show. I love to dance. I still have a few more seasons in me for sure.”
There have been some calls from fans for older DWTS pros to retire to make room for new talent. The 32nd season of DWTS introduced one of the youngest pro dancers in history with the addition of Rylee Arnold at 18 years old.
Other Pro Dancers Have Talked About Being Too Old For ‘Dancing With the Stars’
Other veteran DWTS dancers have talked about retiring from the show.
In a March 2024 interview with Parade, former DWTS pro dancer Kym Johnson Herjavec, 47, admitted she felt “old” when she returned to the ballroom last October for an emotional tribute to late judge Len Goodman. “I did feel quite old compared to the other pros there, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. I feel like the Golden Dancer,” she cracked.
In March, Herjavec told Heavy she would still consider returning as a pro dancer someday. “Maybe they will need an older pro at some stage, and I can dust off the dance shoes!” she told us in an interview.
In November 2022, longtime pro Artem Chigvintsev, 41, told “The Bellas Podcast” that he sometimes thinks about getting too old to be a pro dancer. “There’s always all these younger guys coming up. And you go, ‘Am I too old for this?’ Do I need to retire? Is that the case? Or what? Yeah, it’s tough,” he admitted. “For the past year, I’ve definitely got more into, like, okay, I’ve gotta go work out harder than I was before. Just because the result is definitely not the same,” the professional dancer said.
And in 2022, Cheryl Burke, who has since retired from DWTS, told Variety, “If I were to just talk as an athlete, a dancer and a woman, my time has been up.” She was 38 at the time.
The oldest DWTS pro ever was Louis van Amstel at age 50.
Gleb Savchenko Doesn’t Want His Celebrity Partner To Be ‘Too Old’
While there is no age limit for DWTS contestants—Buzz Aldrin and Cloris Leachman were both in their 80s when they competed on the celebrity ballroom show, per Showbiz Cheat Sheet— Savchenko admitted ti The Sun that he would rather that his next celebrity partner not be “too old.”
He added, “I do want [my next dance partner] to have a little bit of a dance experience, dance ability to have rhythm, not be pigeontoed, be able to straighten her legs.”
“Here’s the thing,” he added. “I know it sounds like, ‘Oh yeah, he doesn’t want to dance with an older partner.’ No, I love my partners that are older and they’re nice and we can hang out and have a cup of coffee or whatever. When it comes to hard work, I’d rather not take breaks because your knees are hurting or you fractured your wrist or something else.”
In a previous interview with The Sun, Savchenko teased his timeline as a DWTS pro dancer. “I definitely have a couple more seasons, couple more years- maybe five years more in me to do this,” he said in November 2022.
