If you've never seen this show and you have a dance background or just a love of dance, I suggest you give it a watch. Now I love dance, I used to live to dance. I'll give you a bit of information of my background in dance before I go into details on the TV show.
From the age of 2, my mum took me to a local dance school where I would go every Saturday for ballet, tap and modern lessons. As I got older, I started going more nights after school. At the age of 11, I switched dance schools so I could try more styles of dance (contemporary, street) as well as musical theatre. It was at this age that I discovered that I loved tap dance the most; that was the main reason for moving dance schools. For a couple of years, I loved going to dance class every night after school. I was good too. Not to brag or anything but I was always in the top class, I frequently won medals at competitions, I was always on the front line in shows. But at the age of 11, I realised that I was never going to be a dancer. In fairness, I didn't really want to be a dancer; a dancer's career is so short-lived and with very little pay too but I enjoyed dance, it was my passion. Age 11 is definitely the age where it gets a whole lot more serious; you audition for dance schools and are expected to go to rehearsals for three hours every night straight from school. If you do ballet, that's the age you start to go on pointe and I absolutely hated it. When I got to 13, I decided enough was enough; I realised that I was smarter at school than I was a good dancer. That's the age I stopped going to most classes, I dropped every type of dance apart from tap and street but after a year, it just wasn't fun anymore. I needed to concentrate on my GCSEs and fortunately my dance teacher understood my decision. All of my friends from dance disowned me because they felt I was choosing between school and dance and I was. As much as I loved a childhood in dance, I also missed out on a lot of things. Birthdays, I had no time to hang out with my friends, I was always missing school so I could perform in shows. Dance was my life. I'd go to school, go to dance and then go to bed.
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| 1. My first ever dance show where we did a Swan Lake number. I still have that costume! 2. The year I was one of the seven dwarves in panto. 3. A winning group number. 4. My first ever dance show again and this was the tap number. |
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| 5. My favourite ballet group number ever; we were schoolchildren going on a trip to the zoo. 6. A Bug's Life. 7. I won my first solo in ballet at the age of 6. 8. No ida what this number was but I know it's at Middleton Hall at Hull Uni where I currently study! 9. Doll On A Music Box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. |
To start with, the mothers in it are awful sometimes. They shout at each other, they argue with the teacher, they sit in on rehearsals, the show is all about them. At my dance school, the parents just used to drop the kids off and come back later. Yes, they had to take care of costumes for competitions and shows if we were doing solos but they never had to make them. They just had to fund our dancing.
Secondly, Abby Lee Miller, the dance teacher, is vicious. The way that she treats the kids is bordering on child abuse. Yes it is fair to give critique but she does it in such a demeaning way. My dance teacher was always fair. She's tell you if you were doing something wrong but never would she verbally abuse you in front of your peers.
Another point that annoys me is how Abby denies that she has a favourite but she does. My dance teacher had a favourite group of around 7 or 8 in each class purely because they were more talented. Lucky for me, I was in this group but every person had a preferred style of dance and she appreciated that. My strong suits were tap and ballet but I was not the best at modern as I'm not the most flexible of dancers. Yet she never pitted us against each other deliberately.
The costumes are so inappropriate too. They dance around in "costumes" that barely cover their bodies. Bear in mind the kids on the show are about 7-13 in the main competition group. I never once felt uncomfortable in a costume. If it was for a solo, I got input into the design; if it was a group number, my dance teachers would never put us in anything revealing. In Dance Moms, Abby is in charge of all costumes and if the mums find them inappropriate, she never listens. Sometimes the costumes are that bad, they get disqualified from the competitions because the judges feel that the dance and costumes sexualise the children.
Finally, the competition aspect of the show is my biggest pet peeve. They do a different competition anywhere in the country every weekend so the dancers and their mums have to travel the country competing. Let's not forget that the US is much bigger than the UK so travelling could be a 7 hour coach ride. The furthest I ever went was Scunthorpe and that was always during the holidays. In fact all competitions were during school holidays. I also used to go to a Saturday morning ballet class in York that I had to initially audition for. Out of about 100 girls that auditioned, only 5 of us got in. I quit after a few months because it was exhausting. It cost my parents a fortune for costumes and entry money for competitions yet it seems nothing compared to the amount they must pay on the show!
Maybe American dance schools are like that but the ones I've competed against in the UK are nothing like that. I feel that people who watch the show will think that the world of dance is an awful world to be in. I guarantee it is not; competition can be healthy and you learn valuable lessons such as teamwork as well as the dance skills. As much as I would've loved a normal childhood, I wouldn't give up my dance background for anything. It was only at the very end that I stopped enjoying it. Now I am part of the performing arts society at uni, I'm found my love of dance again. I think I love dance because I know it's something that I'm good at. I just feel bad for my parents because they invested so much money into it and nothing came of it in the end.
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