LOS ANGELES — Natalie Jolley did not lose a dance-off. No judge ranked her at the bottom, no vote went against her. The 20-year-old arrived at the Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro rehearsal studio on July 27 in full health, one of the frontrunners in a competition that offers its winner a professional contract on the parent franchise’s 35th season. She left by ambulance.
The collision that ended Jolley’s run on ABC’s summer reality spinoff happened during what was supposed to be a defining episode. The group choreography challenge for episode three was led by guest mentor Britt Stewart, requiring contestants to execute a tango ensemble. During the rehearsal, fellow competitor Stephani Sosa caught Jolley across the face with her arm. The impact was immediate and visible: Jolley’s eye began to swell shut. Fellow contestant Adele Zaikman, watching from nearby, said what the room was already seeing. “It’s like a black eye.”
On-set medical staff responded quickly. Jolley was dizzy and having trouble breathing. Paramedics arrived and evaluated her on the floor of the rehearsal space before transporting her to a hospital for further treatment, leaving a competition she had entered in good health without any warning her body might be the reason she exited it.
Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro, which launched July 14 on ABC and streams on Hulu, is built around a specific prize: twelve up-and-coming professional dancers live and train together while competing in an intensive audition process for a role as a pro dancer on Dancing With the Stars’ coming season. The format was built to find the next great ballroom talent. It was not, apparently, built for this.
When Jolley’s medical evaluation returned, the verdict was unambiguous: she was not cleared to compete. Host Robert Irwin delivered the news to the group. What happened next made the structural situation plain. The team that had ranked lowest in Britt Stewart’s group challenge included Stephani Sosa, along with Tristen and Selena. Under the show’s standard elimination rules, one of those three would have been going home. Instead, judge Shirley Ballas announced that neither Tristen nor Selena would face elimination. The arm that ended Jolley’s night carried no competitive consequence for the person who swung it.
Stephani addressed the accident in a confessional that aired during the episode. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “The dance was moving so quickly, and Natalie got hit in the face. I hate being the one that caused that.” She added, tearfully: “I know she’s worked really hard to be here, and I hope she’s okay.”
Jolley’s farewell to the competition was composed in a way that felt costly. “I’m really sad and disappointed I won’t be able to continue in this competition,” she told the cameras. “But the most important thing is just to take care of my body so I can dance again.” What the broadcast did not include, according to her brother, was a separate conversation that came after.
Ezra Sosa, a veteran professional on the parent Dancing With the Stars series and Stephani’s brother, moved quickly to defend her once the episode aired and the criticism began building in comment sections across social platforms. “My sister apologized to Natalie,” he wrote. “They didn’t air it.” He pushed back on viewers who framed the incident as negligence: “This happens all the time when you are rehearsing.”
The posts landed in comment sections that were not particularly receptive. The objection circulating was specific: that a contestant who struck a fellow competitor, however accidentally, had been insulated from the competitive consequences of ranking at the bottom of the episode’s group challenge, while the person who absorbed the blow lost her place in the show entirely. Viewers have raised this on social platforms in nearly identical terms, many arguing that Stephani should have been disqualified rather than allowed to continue. Those arguing for Jolley’s reinstatement, or at minimum for some competitive remedy, have not received an answer from the production.
What Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro has not addressed is whether it carries a formal policy governing accidental injuries during group rehearsal sequences, or whether a medical elimination of this kind has any built-in resolution. Whether Jolley might be considered for reinstatement if she recovers was not discussed in the broadcast and had not been clarified by ABC as of publication. The competition framework, as it was applied on July 27, left the person who was struck with no path back and the person who struck her in the competition with her team’s elimination waived.
The Dancing With the Stars franchise has navigated serious on-set medical situations before. When Hayley Erbert required emergency surgery after suffering a brain bleed during a DWTS tour performance in 2023, the crisis pulled Derek Hough from the show’s production mid-run. That situation involved a professional dancer, not a contestant competing for her livelihood on the show. Jolley’s case has no clean precedent in the franchise’s recent history, which is part of why the rules appear to have been silent on it.
Episode four of Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro airs August 3 on ABC, with guest mentor Jenna Johnson and eight contestants remaining. Whether the show addresses Jolley’s departure in next week’s broadcast, or simply moves forward, is a production decision. Whether viewers do the same is considerably less certain.
