Carrie Ann Inaba Responds to Artem Chigvintsev’s Comments on ‘DWTS’ Elimination
Photos by ABC/Eric McCandless Reading Time: 2 minutes
Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba took to Instagram stories Tuesday to respond to pro dancer Artem Chigvintsev’s comments about his and Heidi D’Amelio’s elimination from Season 31 on Monday night.
Artem Chigvintsev Comments on ‘DWTS’ Elimination
Monday’s ’90s Night episode of DWTS featured a double elimination. Chigvintsev and D’Amelio were sent home, in addition to Vinny Guadagnino and his partner Koko Iwasaki. After the results, Chigvintsev shared his honest thoughts with the press.
Chigvintsev told Page Six he was “definitely disappointed” by the elimination. He added that the show “becomes your life,” saying they “breathe, and sleep, and even dream of this, of what’s happening on the floor.”
Being eliminated this week was especially hard, because the pair worked to create an emotional Contemporary routine to Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic.” He shared that they worked “so hard to take in the correction from the judges and to, like, really deliver.”
“The emotional part, it’s more challenging than learning the steps – especially for a person who is not a performer,” Chigvintsev explained. “There’s a lot of people on the show who perform for a living … that’s what they do [on a] day to day basis. [Heidi] doesn’t, that’s not her job … so overcoming that and then kind of getting, like, ‘Bye, see ya,’ it does makes you feel a little bit like, ‘Ah, well this sucks.’”
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Carrie Ann Inaba Responds to Chigvintsev’s Comments
On Tuesday, Inaba took to Instagram to share screenshots of Chigvintsev’s comments and offer a response. She admitted, “I hardly ever respond to things like this, but I wanted to take a moment to respond to @theartemc comments after being the first to be eliminated last night.”
Inaba told the pro dancer that she was “impressed with how you took our comments to heart and how you coached her into a place where she could be vulnerable.” She added that she “did see a beautiful and heart opening breakthrough in a few moments of the dance,” particularly the floor work.
“Your comments implied we didn’t recognize her efforts,” the judge continued. “I just want to say that I did see the efforts. And I saw some moments where she allowed the emotional expression we were all looking for. It wasn’t throughout the whole dance, but there was so much progress.”
Inaba added that the judges couldn’t give final commentary during the show’s first elimination, but this is what she would have said. She congratulated Chigvintsev and D’Amelio on “a great season.”
Why does she need to justify their decision? Artem was asked and he gave an honest answer. That’s how he felt and that’s his opinion. He didn’t specifically mention any judges names.