Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned in Dance Class (15 page)

Abby

BEHIND THE SCENES

My Least Favorite
Dance Moms
Moment

In one episode, Maddie supposedly forgot her dance, but in reality it was all set up by production. When I say set up, I don’t mean it was created—nothing is fake—I mean they set a ball in motion at the beginning of the week so that Maddie didn’t have enough studio time to finish learning her solo. Chloe had completed her entire piece, and then we started Maddie’s. We only got through sixty-four counts and they said we had to leave, get out of the studio, our time was up. I had a meeting to go to, and I said to my assistant choreographer, Gianna, “When you get back to the hotel, find some area, some lobby or some space, and finish Maddie’s number. You don’t go anywhere and she doesn’t go anywhere until that routine is perfected.”

They got back to the hotel and Maddie and the rest of the girls to go to dinner. The kids didn’t get back until 11:00
P
.
M
. By then my assistant, Gianna, was gone—an ALDC alum wasn’t going to sit around all those hours waiting, while the Big Apple was ripe for picking. Melissa is a very go-to-bed-early, get-up-early kind of person, so she was out like a light. She has so much faith in Maddie, she didn’t seem at all concerned about the solo. Unbeknownst to me, Maddie ended up learning the remaining two-thirds of the routine in the morning—the morning of the competition!

The other thing that you don’t see in the episode is that the jib camera operator didn’t know what he was doing, and during the competition we attended, two kids before Maddie and two kids after Maddie ran off the stage because they forgot their dances; three kids in ten minutes. That
never
happens.

That happened because the jib operator was swinging the camera down in front of their faces. Maddie came out of a turn and the camera was less than twelve inches from her face and she couldn’t do the next step because she would have hit the camera. Then she forgot what she was doing. I think that was absolutely criminal on the part of the jib operator, the director, the producer, and all involved.

I know when she came off she was hysterical, and I don’t want to ever see that happen to a kid, especially one who works so hard and usually carries my team to victory. A dancer who couldn’t care less, never comes to rehearsal, misses technique classes, and goofs around is more likely to forget her dance. That’s fate. You get what you deserve. But some artists deserve nothing but respect.

NO INTERRUPTIONS!

Never interrupt someone’s thought process. Don’t become the kid who always has to go to the bathroom in the middle of class. This also goes for the moms. Don’t interrupt the teacher when she’s teaching. When a mom interrupts dance class because her daughter needs a costume, she just throws everyone on the dance floor off track, including me. I may have had the next sixteen counts of brilliant choreography in my head, and now I can’t even remember my name, because the mom threw me off track.

Am I speaking to someone else? Am I in the middle of a lesson? Then why are you talking out of turn? If I ask you something, answer it. Otherwise, listen and look and raise your hand if there’s something pressing that can’t wait. And it better not be “Can I go to the bathroom?” because that should be done before class, between classes, or after class!

When I’m talking to the girls, if I’m giving a speech or a lecture, don’t interrupt me. If I’m explaining something about the costumes, how the straps get sewn, or what special makeup you need to purchase, don’t interrupt me. Save your questions for the end because I’m probably going to answer your question by then anyway. If you listen long enough, I’m probably going to answer every question. I’ve been doing this for thirty-three years and I know what I’m doing. When a mom keeps interrupting, I make her offspring drop and give me twenty push-ups, although I would love to make the mother drop too.

If you are in class, at dinner in a restaurant, at a show or a movie, or anywhere where people are busy or enjoying themselves, shut off your phone. No ring; no vibrate; nada. Immerse yourself in the happenings around you. Engage the company you’re with right here and now. I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to tell a kid to stop texting or playing games on her phone. Phones are a distraction, and if you’re not old enough to understand phone etiquette, then you’re not old enough to own one. That’s the beauty of a phone: you can hang it up.

Phones have become tracking devices for your children. When I was young, we knew to look both ways before crossing the street, to ride our bikes on the side of the road, not in the middle of the street. We had money in our pockets for the ice cream truck and it was an unwritten law that you had to be home when the streetlights came on. When did this all change? You have got to let your children have some leeway. Why don’t you trust them? Don’t give me that old adage about trusting them but not the rest of the civilized population. You’ve got to give a kid enough rope to jump all by herself or you will catch her rappelling out of her bedroom window down the side of your house. Raise a pillar of the community not the neighborhood sneak.

Dear Abby:

I don’t understand why after paying thousands of dollars a year for my son to dance at our local studio, the studio also requires parents to volunteer for chaperoning, costume alterations, fund-raising, makeup application, etc. We pay so much money already! Shouldn’t the studio be providing these things?

I don’t know where your studio is located, but costume tailors and professional makeup artists are not readily available in most small towns across the United States. Unless you’re in the New York area or Chicago or Los Angeles, you won’t find makeup artists who will come and be able very quickly to do two hundred and fifty kids’ faces for a competition number or a show. Furthermore, you should want to be involved in your child’s activities. You should volunteer to chaperone or do fund-raising because you want to be part of his hobby and special interest. One last thing, is your son attending classes on a scholarship? Because most boys at most studios are. Actually, I wonder if your child is getting things for free that the girls are paying a lot more for. In that case, you should definitely be there volunteering.

Abby

ABBY’S STOLEN WALLET

by Sandy Powers

Over the course of the last thirty years I have shared many crazy experiences with my friend Abby, but the one that comes to mind first is an early spring weekend in New York City.

As always, Abby had a plan and she runs the show, so we had to squeeze the most out of every minute. First, a bagel on the street, and then we were off to the garment district. We trudged from one fabric store to the next, with Abby barking orders to the shopkeepers and workers scurrying around cutting her fabric. There was no time to waste because we had matinee tickets to a Broadway show.

While racing down the street to grab a quick lunch before the theater, a gentleman bumped into Abby and kept on walking. When we were paying for lunch, Abby noticed that her wallet was missing from her purse. It was then that we realized that the man who had run into her had stolen her wallet. We saw a police officer on the corner and told him what happened. He told us that he was assigned to traffic duty and that we should go to a station to report it. Of course we were running late, so that had to wait until later. Nothing was going to keep Abby from seeing the latest Broadway show.

After we left the show, Abby noticed a police station. Perfect—she could report her wallet stolen there. But they told her that she would have to report her robbery to the precinct where the crime occurred. Strike two for the New York City police!

Well, there was no time to find the right police station at that point. We had tickets to an evening show, and available cabs are hard to find at that time on a Saturday night. Finally, after the show and dinner, we made our way back to the North Precinct. By that time it was after midnight and Abby was running out of patience. They should make this whole victim-of-a-crime thing a lot easier!

Things didn’t get any better when she was told to take a seat in the lobby and wait her turn. We soon realized that we were the only ones there to report a crime. Everyone else was there because they had
committed
a crime. That didn’t stop Abby from loudly complaining about the cops’ poor customer service and total lack of compassion.

At last, Abby was called from behind the glass window and asked to fill out the necessary paperwork. As we were strolling out the door, Abby stopped, looked at the assembled group of New York’s finest, and asked, “After the day we have had, aren’t you even going to call us a cab?” There was a moment of jaw-dropping silence before one young officer shook his head in amazement, grinned, and said, “Come on, ladies. Follow me.” He walked us to the corner, stopped traffic, and hailed us a cab. I can still remember Abby’s parting words: “Hey, it’s life and we’re living it. Other people are just watching it on TV.”

Sandy Powers’s
daughter Melissa became a member of the original ALDC in 1980. At the time, Sandy made the mistake of volunteering her expert services. She has been making bows, sewing costumes, creating headpieces, writing lyrics, feeding children, collecting tuition, and keeping the peace for the past thirty years.

DON’T BE A CHEAPSKATE

A child should never leave to go anywhere without money. I don’t care if your kids are five years old. Put five bucks in their backpack, in their little purse, in their pocket, in their shoe, or inside their sock.

Things have changed a lot (and if you’ve seen
Dance Moms
, you’d agree not necessarily for the better). I used to take kids to competitions by themselves without parents. The kids were all supposed to have an envelope of money for each day. The parents, kids, and I would go through the information before leaving home for the competition and I would break down the expenses by the day: This is day one, and we’re going to travel to this city and incur these expenses. We’re going to be in the airport, then take a taxi, then check into the hotel, and we have to get into our room with all our luggage. This means they need ones and fives for tipping. (Your delicate daughter is seventy pounds soaking wet. Her luggage weighs in at two hundred pounds. Who is going to carry it? Not me!) On such and such a day we are going out to dinner someplace nice. Or we’re going to Disney World and they’re going to need more money because they must purchase a hopper pass to get into the park, they’ll need food, and they may want to buy a souvenir. The next day all they need is lunch money because they’ll be going to class all day, and then there’s a banquet at night that is already paid for along with the competition fees.

I would go over each day’s itinerary and break it down by activities and their costs. That way, a sealed envelope with the correct amount of money to cover all the estimated expenses for that day would accompany each dancer. In addition, I wanted every kid to have a hundred dollars in an emergency envelope, just in case those Katy Perry tickets come through. Remember—I’ve been taking kids on the road to attend competitions for more than twenty-five years. Many of my guidelines predate the debit cards and ATMs that make getting cash a lot easier today.

In those early days, before I learned better, I would end up giving twenty dollars to the valet who took the luggage out of the car and another twenty when the bellman came up to the room. I would always hear “Oh, I’m going to pay you back” or “Oh, we’ll pay the next time.” Then the next time comes and the kids are in class or at an audition, so I’m checking out of the hotel and I’m stuck paying again. So I’ve learned after all these years to collect money from the kids in advance, and then when I have to pay for something, I use their money, not mine. I hate asking the kids for money, but why am I paying for those kids when their dads are doctors and engineers and their moms are corporate vice presidents and lawyers? It’s bad enough I’m babysitting them for a whole week. What would it cost them to hire a nanny to do my job?

Eventually, I started giving the kids the job of paying for everything. I would say, “Sarah, you’re in charge of the tipping when we get to the hotel,” or “Amanda, you’re going to pay the taxi driver.” This way they take on the responsibility of collecting the money from everybody so that I don’t look like I’m taking money from poor innocent children. Plus they learn the value of a dollar, and don’t think that somebody else is always going to take care of paying for them all their lives.

Then there are those times when you have a kid who leaves her envelope in the dance bag and the dance bag is locked in the car. The car is in the parking garage and we’re at a restaurant hundreds of yards away. I had this one kid who never seemed to have any money with her when she needed it, and expected everyone else to pay her way. She danced with two beautiful girls—Koree and Allie, who lived in her neighborhood. They were tall and blond, and she was secretly envious of them because she was this little pip-squeak who was very talented, but a little too big for her britches. She was tiny, like four feet two or something, and they were five feet seven or eight. Their moms and dads were all friends socially.

One day when we were in New York City at some barbecue place, they got sick and tired of her because she didn’t have her money again. These two fourteen-year-olds, Koree and Allie, looked at me and said, “Let her starve.” They just wanted her to sit there and watch us all eat, because they were finished with her excuses and tired of their teammate always trying to scam a free meal.

There’s one in every crowd, and she learns from the best: her parents. She never has her money with her! She always has to bum money to buy a snack, to eat dinner after the competition, or to purchase a T-shirt. It gets real old real fast. She tries to hide it from me, and then when that kid goes to the bathroom, her friends can’t wait to tell me, “Brittany just asked us for money again.”