‘Dancing with the Stars 23’: Sharna Burgess suffers injury; Jenna Johnson to dance with James Hinchcliffe

For this week and potentially even the rest of “Dancing with the Stars” this season, there could be a pretty significant chance when it comes to the James Hinchcliffe – Sharna Burgess partnership.

As first reported by TMZ, Burgess (pictured above with Artem Chigvintsev) suffered a knee injury while in practice that is severe enough that it could sideline her for as long as three weeks this season. That’s rough news, especially since James right now is one of the favorites to make it to the end of the season; in our own rankings, we have him #2 behind only Laurie Hernandez.

Even if Burgess is not dancing, though, we do expect her to still be very much involved in choreographing and offering up advice. The site reports that her replacement will be Jenna Johnson, who was eliminated at the start of the season with Jake T. Austin. She’s got a ton of experience thanks to “So You Think You Can Dance” of working with a variety of people, and we figure that she’ll be rather great at stepping in here at the last second.

Still, you don’t quite know precisely what the long-term ramifications of said partnership are going to be given that Sharna’s chemistry with James is one of the reasons they were so electric in the ballroom; this is an entirely new person that you have to build off of, and James is effectively starting from scratch. At this point in the competition, we have to imagine that you would like to have a little something more in the way of familiarity.

Here’s one really odd coincidence; this is the second time in three seasons that a female pro featured in the ABC promo art suffered an injury during the season. Previously, we saw this with Peta Murgatroyd. Is this similar to the Madden curse?

Anyhow, best of luck to Sharna on a speedy recovery, and be sure to head over here to preview tonight’s “Dancing with the Stars” results. (Photo: ABC.)