{"id":627460,"date":"2026-09-17T12:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627460\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T12:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:28:10","slug":"maura-higgins-tops-womens-leaderboard-on-dwts-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627460\/","title":{"rendered":"Maura Higgins tops women’s leaderboard on DWTS US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maura Higgins has made a spectacular start to her journey on Dancing with the Stars US, finding herself at the very top of the women’s leaderboard after her first performance.<\/p>\n

Paired with professional dancer Mark Ballas, the Longford star took to the dance floor to perform a foxtrot to Alannah Myles’ Black Velvet.<\/p>\n

The performance impressed all three judges, who each awarded the couple seven points.<\/p>\n

\n

With a total of 21 out of 30, Maura and Mark finished the night with the highest score, putting them in first place on the leaderboard.<\/p>\n

Judge Carrie Ann Inaba called the performance “mesmerising”, while Derek Hough praised how smooth the routine was.<\/p>\n

\"DWTS_MauraHiggins_interview02\"
\nMaura Higgins has made a spectacular start to her journey on Dancing with the Stars US<\/p>\n

Higgins was among eight female celebrities dancing on the second night of the new season, following the men’s opening performances on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Love Thy Nader star Sarah Jane Nader and her pro partner, Hailey Bills, were eliminated at the end of Wednesday night’s show<\/p>\n

Higgins has become increasingly familiar to US television audiences in recent years, appearing on Love Island USA: Aftersun before finishing as runner-up on The Traitors earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Read more:
From Longford to LA: The rise of Maura Higgins<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maura Higgins has made a spectacular start to her journey on Dancing with the Stars US, finding herself…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-627460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}