The first episode of the first season is where we meet all the girls, their moms and their overbearing dance teacher from the Abby Lee Dance Company. The ALDC is the elite, audition-only dance company of the Reign Dance Productions studio in Pittsburgh, PA. Interestingly, John Corella, executive producer for Dance Moms, is listed as part of the ALDC faculty. Does he really teach classes there??
Meet the cast...
Those six little Pittsburgh girls must be some of the bravest kids in the world because that woman is SCARY. Honestly. Abby Lee Miller is a tough dance coach who "produces amazing, employable dancers" and the six girls are apparently the cream of the crop in their age group. They are going to be doing a new* routine every week which is crazy because other dance studios will have rehearsed their numbers for months prior to competing them.
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| Abby Lee Miller... don't let that smile fool you |
| Melissa, Maddie, Kenzie |
Christi is supposed to be the funny one of the moms group, and she does have some funny lines, but she's also frequently battling with Abby because she feels her daughter is being maltreated. Her daughter Chloe is 9, although the little giggle she gives when she says "yes I am [9]" suggests that she wasn't actually nine at the time these episodes aired and the interviews were shot. The interviews are usually shot after the episodes have been filmed and Chloe had already turned ten by the time the show aired.
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| Chloe and Christi. The picture is from when Chloe competed at YAGP 2011 Philadelphia semifinals in the precompetitive division. She was 9 years old at the time (one of the youngest) and came in the top 12. Chloe has great natural facility for ballet, but isn't really dying to become a ballerina. She'd much rather be a rockette. |
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| A younger Chloe with baby Clara. Chloe got to name her sister, and named her after Clara in The Nutcracker. |
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| Kelly, Brooke, Paige and Abby |
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| The original trio with Chloe, Paige and Paige's brother Josh |
Finally we have Holly, often described as the voice of reason, and her daughter Nia, aged ten. Nia is the dancer who struggles in the group. It's not that she's a bad dancer, in my opinion, Nia is as good as the average dancer her age. The problem is that the other dancers in this group are a little above average, so Nia stands out not in a good way. But the kid is dedicated and a hard worker. There is a heartbreaking moment when Nia tells us she had to buy a crown because she hasn't won one yet but she just had to have one. Holly has two sons who don't dance. She is well educated and is a principal at a private school.
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| Holly and Nia |
Oh, wait! Then there's Cathy, who is just in another realm altogether. She owns her own dance studio in Ohio, but is apparently driving two hours to Pittsburgh every day to bring her daughter to the ALDC. Vivi-Anne (Vivi) is 6, and the show makes her out to be a horrible dancer. After the fact, we know that while dance may not be her favourite thing, she is actually decent at it, maybe not at Mackenzie's level, but certainly not awful for her age. Just goes to show what editing can do! Vivi is adopted from Guatemala for those who were curious.
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| Cathy and Vivi |
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| Vivi is not awful |
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| Vivi has beautiful pointed feet |
Back to the episode, so this week they go to West Coast Dance Explosion in Phoenix, AZ. they take a group dance, Party Party Party (jazz) which gets 3rd place, and a trio 15 minutes of Fame (musical theater) which gets first. The trio had actually been performed before as "Pin-Up Girls".
The girls also performed the group dance "Rag Dolls", a contemporary number which placed fourth. Brooke and Paige are in these costumes when Paigey gets burned by the curling iron.
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| Paige and Brooke in Rag Dolls costumes after curling iron incident |
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| Brooke and Maddie in Rag Dolls, different competition |
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| Chloe, Nia, Paige and ALDC dancer Kennedy in Rag Dolls, yet another competition |
Abby ranks the kids on a pyramid, which she never did before the show and doesn't do when the show isn't airing.
Maddie is supposedly sick this week, but actually, she was sick the following week. The dance they were rehearsing was "electricity" and apparently Lifetime assumed that just by changing the music viewers wouldn't notice it was the wrong dance.
Bad parenting moment with Melissa - "I can't stand a kid who is sick."
It's not her fault she's sick, Melissa, and that's not something you say on national television if you don't want to be perceived as a crazy dance mom for whom dance comes before the well-being of her children.
In a "totally not staged" moment, Brooke apparently wants to quit dance and try out competitive cheerleading.
Cathy shows up with her kid insisting she competed this weekend, and in hindsight, it's so funny to see Cathy and Abby pretending they didn't know each other, when they were in fact, friends before the show.
In another moment that probably happened some other time and not that week in particular, Minister Dawn gets furious because her daughter was kicked out of class for wearing socks during acro. Minister Dawn apparently does not understand why socks would be inappropriate for acro class (my guess is Abby was trying to prevent your daughter from breaking a bone or several, Dawn, which might happen if she slipped and fell due to her socks while doing an acro trick). Long story short, lots of yelling, and name calling, and police calling, and getting kicked out of the studio forever.
In another "totally not staged" moment (yeah, right), Christy and Kelly sneak off to get a drink at the bar before their kids go on stage, and this results in a shouting match with Abby in the hallways after the headband incident.
Paige is accidentally burned with a curling iron.
Bad parenting moment for Kelly. Accidents will happen, but they're far more likely to happen when alcohol is involved.
"Sometimes, when Abby yells, it makes me laugh 'cause her face turns red." ~Mackenzie
"Girls, what are you doing? Those legs are about as straight as Elton John." ~Abby Lee Miller
"That's more like a Bermuda triangle than a pyramid." ~Christi
"I am absolutely loaded with quirks." ~Cathy
"She doesn't have any weapons, just her mouth." ~Abby Lee Miller
Abby's "Worst teaching moments" count...
1. To Paige, "I would have your head on a platter!". Paige actually leaves rehearsal in tears because her teacher is awful to her.
2. About Chloe, "She's fine? It's my dance, my name!" Ermm, no, Abby. Your dancer was on stage, blindfolded, doing leaps and turns, and could have been injured! It is not about you in this situation!
Most delusional moment...
"To make it on broadway or a tv show you really do need to focus on dance all the time." ~Melissa
I'm not sure this is right, Melissa. Yes, you need to focus on dance but not at the expense of other skills like acting, and singing, and auditioning (yes, that's a skill too). There's far more broadway and TV shows that do not involve dance than dance-related shows, so if that's really your dream, go broad with the skill sets, not narrow.
*after the fact, we know that in the first season, a lot of the routines were not new, and had been performed earlier in the dance season
