‘Dancing with the Stars 21’ surprises: No Artem Chigvintsev; Kaitlyn Bristowe not competing

The official cast list for “Dancing with the Stars” came out Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” and for the most part we’re not that surprised by it … at least with two very notable omissions.

Let’s start here with the fact that Artem Chigvintsev is not listed a professional dancer this season, despite him being featured on the show’s promotional poster, and being previously listed as someone who would be competing. What happened? Artem has not yet addressed it; it’s not really fair to speculate, but we’re surprised that he would go from being a face of the show to not appearing in the cast at all. We’d say that Jenna Johnson and Sasha Farber are also snubs when it comes to not getting a celebrity partner, but they were never announced to be performing on the show.

Contestant-wise, we suppose that the biggest shocker is that nobody from the “Bachelor” franchise is competing. Kaitlyn Bristowe was someone who had been the center of speculation for a while, and given that she was listed as a dance instructor back during Chris Soules’ season, she probably would pretty great at it. Maybe she’d be too much of a ringer given her experience; it’s just interesting that we’ve had Jake Pavelka, Sean Lowe, and Chris all do this show, but Trista is the last former Bachelorette to do it, and that was back in the show’s first season! (Granted, “Dancing with the Stars” did have “Bachelor” runner-up Melissa Rycroft on twice, but her casting was extremely last-minute and happened only because Nancy O’Dell got injured.)

We’d say that for the most part, the rest of the cast (view here) is pretty expected, though we are shocked there is not someone with a specific comedy background other than Gary Busey (and we don’t think all of his comedy is intentional).

Who was your biggest snub this season? Share in the comments, and head over here to get some other TV news sent over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)