Trigger Warnings: discussion of eating disorders, racism, and abuse
Lifetime had its humble beginnings as a channel built on small talk shows. It soon evolved into producing its questionable “based on true life” stories and reality television. Once upon a time, its flagship trash boat was Dance Moms: a journey through the competition season of the Abby Lee Dance Company (ALDC), located outside of Pittsburgh. While the premise of watching a bunch of 8-10 year old competitive dancers rotate through weekly choreography might not sound deserving of the title “garbage,” nobody remembers the show for the dancing. You don’t get multiple spin-offs from banking on the concept of learning copious amounts of choreography each week. The moms, studio owner Abby Lee Miller, and their constant battles for dominance are what propelled the show into the cultural hivemind. It’s been a decade since the ALDC first graced the small screen and I, as a former competition kid myself, would be remiss not to analyze what made the show explode in popularity, as well as the consequences of such a toxic environment being easily consumable — both within the show and outside of it.
The general formula for a Dance Moms episode is fairly basic. Every episode starts with the infamous Pyramid, where Abby ranks her dancers based on their previous performances and openly “critiques” them in front of everyone. Critique is a term I use lightly because Abby’s placement of the girls usually relied more on punishing them or their mothers for perceived transgressions rather than how well their performances went. Abby assigns the group number and varying amounts of solos, duets, and trios; inevitably one of the mothers yells at Abby, thus kicking off the drama for the week. The majority of the runtime is intercut with the girls learning the week’s choreography, the moms fighting amongst themselves, and Abby verbally abusing anyone that mildly upsets her. Usually, there’s also a few bonus scenes of the moms or the kids doing something outside the studio. Finally, the competition comes around and the girls perform. This is where the biggest fights with the most fallout take place. The moms get excessively vitriolic, girls get pulled from dances last minute, and at least two ended in a police escort. Depending on how well the girls score, the episode either ends with Abby (or the moms) gloating or bemoaning their fates for the next week.
The framework for each episode allows for excessive amounts of drama — some real and some manufactured. Most of said drama fits into one of three categories: favoritism, studio rivalries, or inappropriate material. The former two produced less controversy amongst audiences but were consistent sources of conflict on the show. A lot of the infighting between the moms as well as the beef between studios were egged on or completely manufactured by producers, but the running storylines they created are what made the show entertaining. Arguably the most famous examples, respectively, were Abby’s leniency and seemingly endless praise for one Maddie Ziegler, the star of all of Sia’s music videos and a dancer in Spielberg’s upcoming West Side Story remake, and the resulting feuds between Maddie’s mother, Melissa, and the other dance moms. Abby also had the habit of creating rivalries between studios that housed students that defected or teachers she’d previously had tiffs with. The most infamous was the recurring storyline of the ALDC’s long-standing beef with the Candy Apples Dance Academy, run by former ALDC dance mom Cathy Nesbitt-Stein.
But what consistently brought in new viewers, both out of curiosity and sheer distaste, were the questionable decisions about the thematic content and costumes for some dances. The second episode of the show stirred up controversy when the ALDC elite competition team — who were between eight and thirteen at the time — performed a contemporary jazz piece to music and with costumes probably better suited for older dancers. This was a regular occurrence: preteen dancers would perform in relatively revealing costumes to questionably mature songs. The way the dancers were filmed by the adult male camera operators took this a step further with weirdly voyeuristic camera pans during some of the solos. Episode nine of season two has been permanently pulled from reruns for similar reasons. The mostly preteen ALDC performed a burlesque number in stereotypical Vegas showgirl dress and gained rightful backlash. In recent years, Abby has claimed that most of the provocative dances were requested and subsequently pushed by producers to cause controversy though Lifetime and the production company Collins Avenue have not commented further. Other examples of borderline inappropriate dances include the team’s darker pieces, which routinely received scorn both on and off screen for trivializing and poorly handling the topics they portrayed, such as child abduction, racism, and schizophrenia/psychosis. It’s extremely harmful, though nothing new in the dance community, to present stigmatized mental illnesses and traumatizing events as little more than a shocking performance.
Though the show itself was heavily produced and dramatized, the effects it had on young dancers were as raw as a popped blister. The most obvious repercussions stem from the omnipresent tension between the mothers and Abby Lee. The girls had little to no respite from the constant negative commentary and violent fights — even less so if they happened to be the weekly target of Abby’s ire. Crying was seen as a sign of weakness and the phrase “save the tears for your pillow” became one of Abby Lee’s iconic catchphrases. Most quit dancing as soon as their tenure on the show ended, and Paige Hyland (former dancer) even sued Abby Lee for emotional abuse, although the case ended up being dismissed. Something less manufactured for the show but incredibly present in the dance community is the latent body shaming. Competitive dance — regardless of genre — is an art form centered around aesthetics. Abby would constantly criticize her dancers with more muscular body types, namely Nia Sioux and Peyton Ackerman, on the size of their thighs and general body type. Sophia Lucia and Camryn Bridges have admitted that the show made them spiral into eating disorders. Both are now in remission.
The most sinister unmanufactured element on the show was the blatant racism. Several dances straddled and sometimes stepped over the line of cultural appropriation which, again, is unfortunately nothing new for the dance community. Even worse was Abby’s tendency to typecast and attack her Black dancers. During Nia’s seven season tenure on the team she endured the worst of the worst: her season 1 solo “LaQueefa” leaned heavily into harmful stereotypes, she often played animals whenever the role came up (the worst being her solo where she was a dog complete with an actual collar), her box braids were referred to as “sloppy” and her feet “weird” because they looked different on the marley (the black or grey flooring present in most dance studios as a safety measure) and worst of all, Abby considered her white dancers for the role of Rosa Parks in a group dance. Her mom Holly later attested that she chose to not participate in drama or yell at Abby because she was afraid of producers painting her as an angry Black woman. The other Black dancers that made it on the show, Camryn and Nicaya, also suffered due to Abby’s blatant racism. Camryn admitted that Abby gave her solos that didn’t play to her strengths and producers purposely cut her solos to make her look like a weaker dancer. Nicaya was always pitted against Abby’s favorite dancers, thus setting her up to fail. Her mother Kaya faced the double-hitter of being portrayed as an angry Black woman as well as comparatively minor ire for being a lesbian.
As someone who was in the competition dance bubble during the Dance Moms peak, I saw the effects of the show on my own studio firsthand. After a change of company directors somewhere around the show’s fourth season, the atmosphere shifted considerably. The changes were superficial at first: the dress code became more lax, several dancers began copying Maddie and Sophia’s iconic hairstyles, and the owner began bringing in guest choreographers that specialized in pieces that relied more on tricks and performance than technique. Eventually, the changes became more detrimental. The work ethic morphed from an even school-dance balance to “your life must become dance. If you are not here every second of every day you are a disappointment.” The competitions we went to increased in frequency and the amount of pieces we brought increased exponentially. Bribery in the studio to get ahead became commonplace and favoritism became obvious. If you weren’t in the teacher’s good graces, the back row and wings became your permanent spot. Cultural appropriation wasn’t off limits anymore. We were told to work through injuries because it made us stronger. As a result, the IT bands in my hips are permanently stretched beyond repair, I have danced on barely healed broken feet, and I sound like cellophane when I wake up every morning. If you chose to further your ballet training, you had to say goodbye to the recommended 2000 calories a day. Salads, kid’s meals, and tiny snack boxes became a staple and eating anything else was met with sarcastic comments. At one point, we were threatened with weekly weigh-ins, though thankfully this was shut down immediately. This doesn’t mean eating disorders didn’t become normalized and even praised. Naturally thin dancers were immediate favorites, rapid weight loss was encouraged, and the same contouring of abs shown on the show became a staple regardless of how much midriff we had in a costume.
While Dance Moms is admittedly the pinnacle of train wreck reality television, the amount of people it hurt doesn’t make up for its entertainment value. Its most (and only) positive contribution was kickstarting the careers of both Maddie Ziegler and Jojo Siwa. Nearly every former member has admitted to the high amount of physical and mental trauma the show has caused them years later, from both Abby’s degradation and the constant fighting between the adults. It perpetuated racism and trivialized other serious topics. The toxic attitude of the show managed to sneak into other studios, turning them into unstable hellholes. And yet, because of the entertainment value, the show endured until mid-2020 and survived Abby’s imprisonment for tax fraud and her battle with cancer. Though the show has ended and its entertainment value unquestionable, its tainted legacy remains in the minds of its audience.
