‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 17 spotlight: Amber Riley and Derek Hough

Tomorrow, we are going to publish our full predictions for “Dancing with the Stars” season 17, and it only seems appropriate that we start things off today by talking about someone who has a very good shot to actually win this entire season: Amber Riley. She has a huge fan following of people who watched her on “Glee,” has a popular pro dancer, and also has experience in doing choreography. If all of this does not amount to being a favorite, we don’t really know what will.

Amber will be at times pulling double-duty this fall, as she still has some “Glee’ appearances coming up, even if she is no longer a series regular on the show.

Professional partner – Derek Hough. Easily, this is a huge advantage for Amber to have. Derek is by far one of the most-popular pro dancers on “Dancing with the Stars,” and he also has more Mirrorball Trophies in his possession than anyone else. He almost always gets great partners, and he is a skilled choreographer who comes up with exciting ways to make the person he is dancing with shine. He’s made it to the finale in each of his last two seasons.

Strengths – Amber is a performer first and foremost. She’s used to being on stage and on television, and the choreography that she has done with “Glee” gives her a slight edge over some of the competition. She was never the most prominent dancer out of all of the people on there, but she clearly still did enough to be taken seriously as a pretty significant threat.

Weaknesses – The biggest one that we see for Amber is strictly if she is going to be able to handle having such a busy schedule. She’s been forced to pull double-duty during much of the rehearsal process so far, and the shooting days for “Glee” are not short. She will have to make up for borrowed time later, and hope that she survives the first few weeks of the season.

Prediction – We think that she will do that easily. While we want to wait to share our projected winner until tomorrow, we will say that Amber is one of the people at the top of the list. She is not someone who will leave early thanks to her fan following and Derek, and we think that with time, she is going to blossom into someone that everyone who watches the show will love.

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Photo: ABC