Next Up! Ezra Sosa Is Just Getting Started | Inside Dance
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Fans of So You Think You Can Dance are not surprised Ezra Sosa was cast as one of Dancing with the Stars‘ latest pros because they saw that incredible talent shine on the 16th season of the FOX show. Even though the 20-year-old ballroom dancer doesn’t have a celebrity this season, his journey to the ABC series almost didn’t happen because he was in rehearsal for Donny Osmond’s residency at Harrah’s Las Vegas.
Sosa revealed to Inside Dance that DWTS producers first reached out to him and his sister, Stephanie Sosa, “in February” to submit their dance reels and have a meeting. A second Zoom meeting followed in July with a promise from producers to follow up with him. When he didn’t hear anything back, he moved ahead with the Osmond audition and booked the job… and that’s when an unexpected plot twist occurred.
“Dancing with the Stars wasn’t even a thought,” he explained. “I just didn’t see it happening at all, and it wasn’t until the third day of rehearsals when Steph and I got the same email saying, ‘You guys are top candidates going into the season.'”
That email was a game-changer for Ezra, who was in an enviable position of having a guaranteed Las Vegas job or a possible DWTS job. “It was actually a very hard decision to make, but I thought it was best for me to leave the show and be a swing for the show,” the ballroom dancer said. “At the time, I still didn’t think it was going happen for me, but [in] the slightest chance that it does, the last thing I wanted to do was be a risk to [Donny Osmond’s] production.”
The story doesn’t end there because his sister was invited to another virtual meeting and he was not. Ezra thought that he “made the biggest mistake ever” going with his gut instincts about leaving his Osmond job and working with choreographers NappyTabs. Then things turned around again when the producers called him back for a final Zoom interview, but he didn’t think he got the DWTS gig. “I just felt like such a turd for turning down already an amazing job,” he joked.
But of course, he got that incredibly call to join the ranks, along with Sofia Ghavami, as the first Latinx pros on Dancing with the Stars — that risky career move paid off. “I’m just so blessed. It could have easily been the worst month of my life. But it turned out to be the best,” Ezra admitted. Since then, he’s been soaking up the experience of being on the set with the pros he’s grown up watching from his living room.
Being able to dance on that ballroom floor is a dream come true for Ezra. “It’s so big and it’s gorgeous. It was a huge moment” he shared. “I kind of teared up a little bit going out to see the ballroom for the first time.”
If DWTS comes calling, Ezra already has an answer as to who he would like to dance with: Bachelorette star Becca Kufrin. “I toured with the Bachelor franchise after the So You Think You Can Dance Tour. I got really close with Becca Kufrin and feel like she could make that show and be on Dancing with the Stars,” he said confidently. “If she was my celebrity, I feel like we would have nothing but the best time.”
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Inside Dance’s Kristyn Burtt Talks with Ezra Sosa!
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Photos courtesy of ABC/Maarten de Boer, ABC/Eric McCandless, and ABC/Chris Willard
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