‘Dancing With the Stars: Juniors’ Couple Wins Second Standing Ovation of the Season

Dancing With the Stars: Juniors now has a second team that’s earned a standing ovation from the judges!

After singer Mackenzie Ziegler and pro Sage Rosen took home the honor of the Dancing With the Stars spinoff’s first standing ovation ever in Sunday’s all-new episode of the ABC competition, Avengers star Ariana Greenblatt and pro Artyon Celestine also earned the honor from judge and Dancing With the Stars: Athletes winner Adam Rippon.

The duo, mentored by Brandon Armstrong, performed a jive to the 2007 Avril Lavigne song “Girlfriend” in honor of the “Year I Was Born” theme, which was praised universally by all three judges.

La La Land choreographer and judge Mandy Moore told the Young Gamora actress, “You are really good, little missy, so I hold you at a different standard. And the question is did you raise that standard? And the answer is yeah.”

Rippon quickly rose to his feet to clap for the duo, saying, “Here’s the thing, if [judge Val Chmerkovskiy] is gonna stand for the first dance of the night…”

Chmerkovskiy tripled down on the praise, adding, “For me, if you are not the couple to beat, maybe one of a handful of couples to beat in their competition. You’re separating yourself quite quickly.”

It was clear the pair was thrilled with their high praise, and their high score of 24/30, which tied them with Ziegler and Rosen as well as Black-ish star Miles Brown and pro partner Rylee Arnold, who took home a 24 for their Argentine tango to the 2004 Gavin DeGraw song “I Don’t Want to Be.”

“It feels amazing,” Greenblatt said. “Thank you to the judges for being so nice.”

Ziegler and Rosen earned their standing ovation for their quickstep to the 2004 song “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” by Jet, which also happened to be the first performance of the night.

“This might be premature, but I gotta do that [give a standing ovation], because I was really tough on you last week,” Chmerkovskiy told the duo during judging. “This is exactly why I was tough on you, because you totally killed it.”

He continued, “That was incredible, there was a lot of confidence in your movement. Keep it up. That’s what I expect from you.”

Moore added, “I don’t know what you did this week, but you definitely are your dance cereal, because you are a new girl this week. What happened?”

She added, “That was setting the bar super high this week, good job.”

Dancing With the Stars: Juniors airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo credit: ABC/Eric McCandless