This week’s introduction of four new dance styles challenged both the stars and the professionals who had to educate themselves on styles: the hustle, the West Coast swing, the salsa, and the jitterbug.

With the coming week bringing triple the choreography for the dancers to learn, I think the weak dancers will be weeded out, leaving some of the more obvious contenders to fight for the mirror ball.

The giant pink bird has flown the Dancing coop, but he insists to us his ruffly feathers aren’t ruffled.

“It’s all gravy! This was a wonderful experience and there’s nothing to complain about,” Rocco DiSpirito told us backstage tonight after getting the heave-ho from Dancing with the Stars to the surprise of, well….no one. ”I got to learn how to dance. I got to make friends with Karina. I even got Bruno to dance!”

Speaking of, Rocco’s mother gave us a few choice words for Bruno (meow, mama!), and we got the inside scoop on why Cloris Leachman will be the next to go…

“Someone had to make Bruno dance at some point, he can’t just sit behind the desk and talk about it for ten seasons.” This is what Rocco tells us of his motivation for calling Bruno out onto the dance floor tonight to “show me how to make my hips move properly”…which he did.

For the record, Rocco’s mother Nicolina was not impressed with the judge’s moves. “Listen to me, Rocco shaked more than him!”

Rocco admits he wasn’t surprised by tonight’s outcome, and adds humbly: ”You should miss [my mother] more than me. Frankly she’s far more interesting. She’s probably a better dancer, too.”

Meanwhile, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for you fans who have been clamoring for Cloris to get the boot! Her partner, Corky, tells us they will be doing a “spicy salsa” next week, which sounds to me like a Rocco-samba-ish disaster in the making. Am I right? 

Add some hot pink ruffles to that bird and she may be cooked.

Are you hoping Cloris goes next? If not, who?

Reality show and sex-tape star Kim Kardashian, caustic comic Jeffrey Ross and Olympic gold medalist Misty May-Treanor are among the latest celebrities to try their feet at “Dancing With the Stars.”

ABC yesterday ended months of speculation and online chatter over who might get the call by revealing the 13 contestants. Also among those who will compete are Lance Bass, Toni Braxton, Brooke Burke, Rocco DiSpirito and Susan Lucci.

Kardashian, who has a reality show on E!, cut her foot Sunday on a glass table. She said yesterday on multiple TV appearances that she had the gash glued shut, rather than stitched, to cut healing time.

“The timing was just perfect now,” Kardashian told Kathie Lee Gifford on NBC’s “Today.”

Lucci, famous for playing Erica Kane on “All My Children” and for being nominated 19 times for an Emmy before finally winning, said, “I just feel blessed that they asked me to do this. When else in your life would you really take all of these amazing dance classes?”

Lucci said she’d been asked to be on the show before but turned it down. “I just wasn’t sure if I could fly back and forth across the country,” she said via phone on “Good Morning America.”

Lucci said she spoke to fellow “AMC” star Cameron Mathison after he did both shows last season. “I thought, I really want to do this,” she said. “I’m so excited to be part of this.”

The new season, which gets underway Sept. 22, will have its youngest contestant ever in 18-year-old Cody Linley from “Hannah Montana” and its oldest in TV and film veteran Cloris Leachman, who is 82.

Other “Dancing” stars this time around are Olympic gold medal sprinter Maurice Green, sitcom star Ted McGinley and former football-great-turned-NFL commentator Warren Sapp.

Last season, the show’s Monday segments were the highest-rated, averaging 21.15 million viewers to finish third behind two nights of “American Idol.” That’s up from the 20.4 million viewers posted on the Tuesday editions of the 2006-07 season, that season’s highest-rated shows.

Producers are also mixing up the format a little this season. For the first time, all 13 teams must prepare two dance routines for the first week of competition. The first routine will be performed on the premiere. But at the start of the second night, Sept. 23, one of the couples will be sent packing.

A second team will be dismissed on Sept. 24. Adding to the potential ratings draw for that first official results show will be performances by the Jonas brothers and Jesse McCartney.