text: Bristol Palin was eliminated on "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" | ABC 
   
   Bristol Palin was eliminated on "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" this week. 
   
   For the first week ever, fan favorite Palin and her partner Mark Ballas did not earn the lowest score from the judges -- Kirstie Alley and her partner Maks Chmerkovskiy did. In previous weeks, the audience vote saved Palin, but not this time. 
   
   During Monday's performances, Palin and Ballas did some rock 'n roll and she was praised for her improvement, while Alley and Chmerkovskiy were stuck with the Charleston. 
   
   "I had an awesome time and an awesome partner and I wish everyone the best of luck," Palin said before leaving the stage. 
   
   Palin's mother, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in attendance to see her daughter go home. No word on when or where she was watching the evening's presidential debate. 
   
   Apolo Ohno and his partner Karina Smirnoff, who had a breakdown after falling in Mondays' hip hop dance, were also in the bottom along with Alley and Chmerkovskiy and Palin and Ballas. 
   
   Oddly enough, when host Tom Bergeron revealed the two would be in the bottom, Alley and Chmerkovskiy burst into a giggle fit. 
   
   Next week, the remaining all stars and their pros will do a team freestyle dance and an individual dance to the all-stars' guilty pleasure song. 
   
   Tune in to see who stays and who goes when "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" airs on Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. ||||| Not a Surprise 
   
   One night after Bristol Palin convinced partner Mark Ballas to forgo matching bunny costumes on Monday's Dancing with the Stars , the pair was eliminated.Ballas, 26 – who after his dismissal told reporters backstage that he was "dead serious" about dressing up as an animal pair – doesn't regret Palin's decision to play it safe, but he also points out that taking a risk with what to wear could have possibly prolonged their time in the competition."Hey, you can guide a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," he says."At the end of the day, they have to be comfortable when they walk on stage. The problem is, though, with doing that, this is the all-star season, so we have a lot of champions and a lot of finalists, so all of these people are really open-minded."Using contestant Gilles Marini's open-chested Aladdin ensemble as an example, Ballas goes on to say, "It's called stepping out of the box, you know what I mean? You've got to be more open-minded to that stuff, but at the same time, as a choreographer and coach, you have to be respectful of your partner's choices."Although Ballas says elimination "just sucks," he feels accomplished this season."This is someone [who], compared to the others, has zero dance experience or performance experience," he says of Palin, 21. "So for someone like that who comes from a normal background from Alaska, I'm really proud of her."Now that he's out of the running to win the coveted mirror-ball trophy, Ballas tells PEOPLE, "I'm going to be pulling for Shawn [Johnson] and Derek [Hough], and Sabrina [Bryan] and Louis [Van Amstel]."Ballas and Palin's elimination did not come as a shock to some PEOPLE readers, who expressed mostly support on Twitter for the decision to send the couple home:
target: – Bristol Palin got the boot from Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars last night—even though she and partner Mark Ballas actually did not get the lowest score of the week, for the first time in the entire competition. That slot went to Kirstie Alley and partner Maks Chmerkovskiy, the Hufington Post reports, but the audience still voted Palin out. "I had an awesome time and an awesome partner and I wish everyone the best of luck," Palin said before leaving the stage—but once backstage, she refused to talk to press, which was a little odd, E! notes. Ballas explained that she was "preparing for the schedule that lays ahead," which may have meant their appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (in which Palin asked Kimmel to apologize for all his jokes about her mother). Ballas also said he was "really proud" of his partner. "For someone like that with zero entertainment experience, she didn't go down without a fight," he said, adding that she was "more vocal about what she wants" since her first appearance on the show. One thing she didn't want: matching bunny costumes for this week's dance, People reports. Ballas gave up on the costume idea, but after the elimination he bemoaned Bristol not being more "open-minded" and willing to step "out of the box."