Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned in Dance Class (18 page)

Dear Abby:

How do you audition dancers for your competition team?

I hold an audition every August for students who want to become a part of the Abby Lee Dance Company. The first things I ask them to do are a right split, a left split, and a straddle split. Then I make a cut. I want to see who is flexible and what their body alignment looks like right off the bat. Then I do ballet steps to see if they know their terminology, and tap to check their rhythm and timing, and to see if they can actually count out the tap steps. Then acrobatics, a simple standing backbend. I can tell a great deal about their flexibility and potential from a basic standing backbend. I move quickly to a chin stand, full back split, hand walks, back handsprings, aerial cartwheels, and aerial walkovers. I am always looking for dancers accomplished in all genres, as well as smart dancers who are quick and creative. Then we teach a short combination to see if they can pick it up right away. The innate ability to comprehend movement quickly is the essential gift every great dancer is born with. And looks are important too. Let the hopefuls show off and see what they can do. This is called improv. I want to see what a dancer brings to the audition. And as long as their parents’ credit checks out, then we’re good to go. This may sound harsh but I am running a business. I have learned from my mistakes, much more slowly than my students do, I’m afraid to say. Letting all the Chloes continue to take class when their parents couldn’t afford the luxury is not how I do business anymore. When you don’t pay, it’s called an after-school activity. When you do pay, it’s respecting one’s vocation. Nice guys finish last. Letting all those innocent ingenues I cared so much about go without paying for months at a time put my building and my livelihood in jeopardy.

Abby

DON’T BE MEDIOCRE

One of my less-than-brilliant moms always used to say, “I just want my kids to be happy. I don’t care if they’re mediocre.” Who the hell wants mediocre kids? Why don’t you want your kids to be the best that they can be? Maybe it’s not dance. Maybe it’s not music or the recording industry. Maybe it’s being a nurse or a doctor, but why don’t you want them to be the best nurse or doctor they can be? Why do anything half-assed? If you’re not going to do it 100 percent, then don’t do it.

I don’t subscribe to mediocre. I think that there are kids who love to dance and they do it for fun, to learn, to get off the couch and get some exercise. Or they dance because they like to be onstage. They like the theatrics of musicals and the television show
Glee
. That’s all fine, but I’m talking about members of the elite Abby Lee Dance Company competition team. These wannabes want it all. They want to be amazing. They want to be the best. They want to be on Broadway. They want to be inside the industry in any way they can. Half of the TV crew that works on our show is filled with people who moved to Hollywood to find fame and fortune in the entertainment industry as an actor or actress, or as a writer or director—and they failed. Now they call themselves producers, and they’re not too good at that either. Then there are the kids who love to dance and work really hard, but don’t have the talent. They just don’t have what it takes, but they work like dogs. They want it. They breathe, sleep, and eat it.

Then there are the kids who are lazy. I think they would rather lie in their beds and talk on their phones than work hard at anything. When traveling for competitions, I have seen Brooke’s mom, Kelly, apply all Brooke’s makeup and put her eyelashes on—all while Brooke was snuggled in her bed! Kelly would wake up before dawn and ever so gently transform Brooke’s face into performance perfection. When the princess finally woke up and got out of bed to brush her teeth, she would startle herself in the mirror. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

If you’re going to choose to be mediocre, I think it’s better to quit than to pull others down with you. On the flip side of that, I once had a girl who was Miss Dance of America who just up and quit one day. You are on top of the world, top of the pyramid, top of the heap, and you give it all up? That is the epitome of laziness. Earlier in this book I said getting to the top is hard but staying there is even tougher. Well, this young adult obviously wasn’t up for the challenge. Rumors were ablaze: she had to go to a special summer program to get into college. She had to do
something
because dance wasn’t in her future anymore. Nobody really knows the truth. It was all very strange. More important, it was a huge waste of all the time, energy, and expertise that I had put into her.

I have a boy this year who is amazing. He’s been with me since he was eight years old. He has had several scenes on my TV show. He’s a beautiful dancer, but he’s lazy. I caught him skipping all these classes at the national convention and doing all sorts of things he shouldn’t have been doing. He’s not behaviorally bad, he’s just a bit lazy. He doesn’t consistently come to the studio. He missed a lot of time in the studio and then came back one day in September and took a class. He was fine and could still do everything. He disappeared again and came back one day at the beginning of October and had lost some of his flexibility. He wasn’t as on top of his game and as great a dancer as he was during the summer. I’m waiting to see if he shows up in November. I’m starting to feel he’s a once-a-month student. It’s a weird situation with the mom and dad and they’re having a lot of troubles at home. I offered him a partial tuition fellowship, and I helped him out financially so that he could go to Nationals. I brought him on the TV show and that provided him with yet another wonderful opportunity. After doing all of these things for him, I realized that this kid doesn’t even walk into the room and say hello to me. So I said, “No. Forget it. You don’t want it? Quit then!”

HOW TO INTERVIEW

Someday you may find yourself interviewing for a dance job. Sometimes it comes down to not just how you dance, but who you are. After all, if you’re going to be working side by side with someone onstage or on a tour day after day, you want to know that it’s someone you
like
! There’s a right and a wrong way to respond to the questions you’ll be asked. Here are some sample questions and answers, all of which are meant to convey confidence, intelligence, verve, and even wit:

What do you think about Obama winning the election?

My parents taught me never to discuss religion or politics
.

If you could be a flower, what flower would you be and why?

I would be a dandelion because you can’t keep me down
.

What three things would you bring to a desert island?

The Professor, Ginger, and Mary Ann
.

Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten
.

I’m a nine because there’s always room for improvement
.

How old are you?

How old do you need me to be?

The high schooler who gets the best SAT score doesn’t always win the scholarship. The most qualified applicant doesn’t always get the job. It’s just a truth of life that presentation is everything. For example, my students start interviewing at the age of eight, and I teach them exactly how to do it, the same way they learn their routines. The most important part is making a good first impression. This includes everything from what they wear (
Buy the two-hundred-dollar shoes even if you have to return them the next day!
) to how they walk (
Enter the room boobs first! Chest out; stand tall!
). I even tell my kids how to sit:
You don’t walk over to the chair, look at it, and sit down
. Feel
the chair with the backs of your legs
. You have to believe in what you’re selling:
you
.

ABBY’S ULTIMATE ADVICE

Three Key Points to Remember

1. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. Recognize and admit to your faults and commit to correcting them.

2. Don’t let fear get in between you and your dreams. Face your fears head-on!

3. Be amazing, be remarkable, be happy—be
anything
but mediocre!

SEVENTH POSITION
À LA QUATRIÈME DERRIÈRE

Contracts Aren’t Meant to Be Broken

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

—Vince Lombardi

I HAVE NO TOLERANCE FOR QUITTERS
. They waste my time and everyone else’s time too. As I mentioned earlier, kids quit my dance classes for two reasons: they can’t cut it or they can’t afford to pay. Contrary to popular belief or town gossip, my studio is not expensive! Some moms are serial studio-hoppers; they like to sample this and that, and wind up driving their kids nuts and discouraging them in the process.

A child who is a serious competitor at any age in any field will have to become more independent. At the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre, dancers are pretty much living on their own in New York City at the age of eleven. Joshua Waitzkin became an International Master of chess at the age of sixteen. Serena Williams won the U.S. Open when she was seventeen, after touring the world competitively for years. To be the best at what they do, competitive youngsters have to move around, and this requires them to be autonomous. My students travel most weekends, whether it’s just from their homes to the studio or to competitions all over the country.

One time a mom called me to say her daughter couldn’t make it to practice because there was no one to drive her. I told this mom to send her teenager in a taxi, and she freaked out—had a conniption. I’m talking about a fourteen-year-old young woman here, and her mother is afraid to let her get in a car with a driver who is bonded and insured so she can get to class on time. The mom would have preferred that her kid go with a sixteen-year-old boy from the neighborhood who had just gotten his license last week. Does this make any sense? Who lost out? Her daughter sat on her butt all evening while everyone else had four hours of training to become better, stronger, and smarter.

If you sign a contract to do something, there’s a duration during which you must honor it. If you signed a contract for six months, then you have to commit for six months. If it’s for a year, then you’re in deep for a year. When parents let their kids quit before they have fulfilled their commitment, those kids are going to end up attending five different colleges before they finally receive a degree. When they take a tough class they’re going to say, “Oh, geez, this class is a hard one; I think I better just drop it.” And they will. Remember, you taught them this is okay.

When your daughter brings home her very first club flyer from school and wants to join the Brownies, it’s about making a commitment. She would make a commitment to stay after school from 4:00
P
.
M
. to 5:00
P
.
M
. once a week. She would make a commitment to make crafts, earn badges, go camping, and sell Girl Scout cookies.

In my house and in my neighborhood, we didn’t go around and sell things. When I was a Girl Scout, my mom wrote a check and bought all the cookies, and then gave them to people. A high school girl up the street from me had a dad who was president of a big company in Pittsburgh. One day when she came to our house selling candy for the high school marching band to go on a class trip to Walt Disney World to perform in the parade, without missing a beat, my dad told her to have her old man write a check for her vacation to Orlando—he could certainly afford it.

Now I know that kids have to sell things to raise money. It’s the American way. You name it, the Abby Lee Dance Company sold it! I’ll bet you that my original members from 1980 to 1995 could recite to you “Three ham, three salami, two cappicola, two provolone, lettuce, onions, and tomato in a separate baggie in the hoagies.” We actually made all the sandwiches ourselves and then the kids went out and delivered them. I’m embarrassed to admit that I miss the smell of those oven-fresh Italian rolls.

When you commit your child to an activity, as a parent, you need to be responsible for your child seeing it through. This is the parent’s responsibility as much as it is the child’s, so explain the commitment to your child. Go over it. If you don’t want to sign up again next year, that’s fine, but come hell or high water, you’re going to be in that recital this year and do whatever it takes to get there. When all your friends are outside playing in May and June, and you have to come inside and put on a leotard and tights to get to your dance class, you’re doing it because you made a commitment. You have a place in the group, and people are counting on you.