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Shangela channels Lady Gaga on Dancing with the Stars – and Gaga approves

A composite graphic of Shangela and Lady Gaga standing in front of a pink and blue background

Lady Gaga tells fans to vote for her “friend” Shangela in Dancing with the Stars semi-final. (Disney/Getty)

RuPaul’s Drag Race royalty Shangela has made it through to the Dancing with the Stars final after Lady Gaga come out swinging for her.

Shangela paid tribute to Lady Gaga, who she starred opposite in A Star is Born, in the semi-final of the show, performing a Paso Doble to Gaga’s 2011 hit “The Edge of Glory” with her dance partner Gleb Savchenko.

And it appeared Gaga was among those watching at home. She shared a clip of the dance on her Instagram Stories and urged her followers to vote “10 times” for Shangela to make it through to the final.

“My friend Shangela just did an amazing dance to ‘The Edge of Glory’ on the Dancing with the Stars semifinals,” Gaga wrote.

 

Shangela and Gaga know each other from their time filming A Star is Born but recently reunited at Gaga’s Chromatica Ball show in Boston. After spotting Shangela in the crowd, Gaga grabbed her hand and screamed “Yeeeees!” 

Before taking to the dance floor in this week’s episode, Shangela told GLAAD that performing a Gaga song was an “honour”.

“The fact that we are able to perform to a Lady Gaga song is so special because she has always been supportive, kind and so generous with her love for me and I am so grateful for it,” she said. “This is a full-on honour.”

In addition to performing the Gaga hit, Shangela and Savchenko also got to pay tribute to another icon, performing a Viennese waltz to Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing”.

The pair landed in the bottom three, but were voted through to the finals by all four judges.

The drag diva took to Twitter to express her pure joy, writing: “This is our moment!!!”

Shangela has proven a hit with the Dancing with the Stars judges, becoming the highest-scoring pair three times throughout the competition.

Audiences have been obsessed with the Drag Race legend and her antics, too — during one particularly chaotic episode, Shangela pulled out fried chicken from her bra to give to judge Len Goodman, before host Tyra Banks ate it. Wild.

Shangela is the first drag queen to perform on the US version of Dancing with the Stars, while she and Savchenko are the first men to compete together.

Fellow Drag Race alumni Courtney Act previously competed in the Australian version of the show, making it all the way to the finale herself, while Drag Race judge Michelle Visage took part in the UK counterpart Strictly Come Dancing back in 2019.

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