Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned in Dance Class (6 page)

If you look at my computer, there’s a file folder on the desktop labeled “Pictures for John TV.” This was the original folder that I sent to that hot guy in L.A., John Corella, when he first mentioned his idea for a TV show. It’s a little scary to open that folder, for it contains the headshots of the girls who ended up on the show. He actually created the premise for the TV show
Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition
first. That’s the show John and I wanted to do originally, but who was going to listen to us?

And then there was the casting director who took all the credit for casting the five moms and their daughters when in fact we had already chosen the five moms. They sent in their own photos and videos from competitions and uploaded Flip-cam footage every night. There they were, ready to be filmed for the show when the casting director arrived. When this casting director made that claim, I said, “What do you mean, you cast the show? You came to Pittsburgh, you walked into my studio, and there were five moms and you put them on TV. You didn’t cast them. You didn’t go out and find them. They were sitting there waiting for you. You had appointments, and you were late.”

The kids chosen for the TV show are all adorable and built nicely, but not one of them has the signature Abby Lee feet. When you look back at the history of the ALDC, I always had the pretty girls, the best-dressed girls, the well-behaved girls. However, my groupings always fit together somehow and made sense. For a few years it was the tall blondes who could turn and tumble. The next generation was four dark-haired debs with incredible flexibility. A few years later came an all-American, wholesome team of Trinas. But one thing remained the same: the look, the height, the impeccable technique, and the two-year age range.

What were these producers thinking? Did any of them know anything about dance? What was I going to do with this team of misfit toys? Were they casting a new version of the
Facts of Life
TV show, or a competitive dance team? Some taller than others, some skinnier than others, some older than others, and some way better than others?

Dear Abby:

I think our dance coach is pushing our daughter way too hard. She’s only nine and the coach wants her to be on pointe this year. Not to mention in class with girls twelve and thirteen years old. I feel bad holding her back, but this seems like too much
.

There are lots of philosophies on beginning pointe work. The role of Clara in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is for a child who is four feet eight or under. Not too many twelve- and thirteen-year-olds are under four feet eight. Girls that height are usually nine or ten. If your child is going to begin on pointe younger, like nine or ten, perhaps only fifteen minutes a week, after a ballet class, would be okay. Check with her pediatrician. In my opinion, nothing more than half an hour, twice a week.

Abby

YOU HAVE TO WORK YOUR BUTT OFF TO BE THE TOP OF THE PYRAMID

There’s working hard, and then there’s working smart. First of all, you have to work smart. If you do it right the first time, you won’t have to do it over and over. Dance is a physical art, not a sport. It takes years of technical training, sore muscles, bleeding feet, blisters, bruised knees, scabs, sweat, and tears—it takes all of that, and more. So if you don’t have the will to work to achieve greatness, to look in the mirror at yourself and know that you have to leap higher, then stay home. If you stand at the ballet barre and have your leg up in the air and see that the girl in front of you has her leg higher and you don’t want to work toward that or to be better than she is, then stay home.

I remind my girls that if you’re not giving it your all, then you’re taking up space that someone else could be using. Maddie attended a regular public school for the first five or six years of her schooling and did well. Now she has chosen to be homeschooled and has private ballet class every morning at 9:30
A
.
M
. She has six other private lessons, and she takes the senior company–level classes when we’re not shooting. As a result, she has improved dramatically. Maddie is smart, and now she’s better than all the other girls on the TV show. This isn’t because she’s my favorite, it’s because she has worked hard and made it to the top of the pyramid and can physically out-dance all the other girls. It’s that simple.

To be honest, the other kids on the show aren’t as driven. They tell Maddie to go for it and act as if they don’t even care. They say, “We aren’t going to try to compete with you, Maddie. You can just carry the show for another twenty-six episodes.” You have to really work your butt off to succeed. There’s always someone else, somewhere else, working harder and putting in more time.

ABBY’S MYSTERY MAN

by John Corella

Abby and I had this crazy idea of showcasing the world of dance competitions with girls and their moms. We took the idea to Bryan Stinson, a television producer who then became the cocreator of
Dance Moms
. I was a competitive dancer (Mr. Dance of America, 1994). I used to beat Abby’s kids all the time—that’s how I met her. She was younger than all the other dance teachers. She was fun, cool, and a little bit flirty. Abby’s main objective has always been to make her dancers stars, so when I told her this reality show had the green light from a production company, of course she was the first person to submit her dancers to me. She was on it.

At the time, the idea for the show was to move from city to city in each episode, looking at different kids and moms in each location, and a dance teacher wasn’t really involved. But as we developed the show, we decided to focus on Abby’s studio, and on Maddie, Paige, Chloe, Mackenzie—and of course their moms. It turns out there was enough crazy to keep us in Pittsburgh.

To me, Abby is the ultimate dance mom. She doesn’t have kids, but she can do something that the moms can’t do, and the moms have something she doesn’t have, so they work well together. Abby is the superglue of the show. She’s smart, she’s outrageous, she’s courageous, she’s funny, and she’s got a heart of gold. Make no mistake about it: she’s a tough teacher, but believe me—she’s not the only dance instructor I’ve seen who teaches the way she does. She is, however, the only one I know who’s courageous enough to own up to it. She’ll be the first to admit that her approach might not be politically correct, but it works for her. Throughout my professional career, I have shared both stage and screen with several of Abby’s alumni. Her kids get in front of an audience and they’re incredible. And that’s all the proof I needed.

John Corella
is the creator and executive producer of
Dance Moms
—without him, there would be no
Dance Moms
television show. John used to be a competitive dancer, and he and Abby used to run into each other at different competitions across the country. She likes to keep her enemies close, so they eventually became colleagues.

You know you’re a dance mom when
. . .

you have rhinestones and E-6000

(an industrial-strength adhesive) in your purse
.

You know you’re a dancer when . . .

you can keep your hair in a bun for four days straight!

You know you’re a diva when . . . you carry a Louis Vuitton

bag at age nine, and everybody knows your name.

Dancers used to say their mothers were living vicariously through them, and I believe that’s true to an extent, but more and more, I see a parent’s work ethic in the kid. If you have a mom who sits on her ass in the dance studio for five hours a day and talks about people behind their backs, she’s lazy and her kid turns out to be lazy too. The kid is yawning and constantly looking at the clock. She’s in the room with her leotard on—she actually showed up—but she doesn’t want to do the work.

Then you have another parent who works two or three jobs in addition to volunteering at the studio. This is the parent who bends over to pick up the trash off the floor of the studio and puts it in the trash can—instead of ignoring it. The children of these parents are the ones who work hard.

I have taught poor kids and wealthy kids, and what I see is that when a parent is a hard worker—whether poor or wealthy—her kids tend to be hard workers too. You can have kids who are poor, whose parents treat them like they’re kings, giving them everything they want, and they’re lazy. I may push and challenge a child mentally and physically, but ultimately those kids have to go out onstage and do that dance, because nobody can do it for them, and I can’t make them do it. You can’t stick a gun to their heads and make them work harder to become better—they have to want it. Even when parents sign their kids up for extra classes hoping that will make them better dancers, if those kids don’t want it bad enough, all the classes in the world aren’t going to help them become stars. So even though a mom is living through her kid, the mom can’t make the kid do something the kid doesn’t want to do.

I’ve never seen any of the lazy girls become motivated, but I have seen kids who weren’t great dancers, and who weren’t born with the ideal dancer’s physique or facility, who worked so hard that they became great dancers. I had a young man who was (and I say this with great love) a dorky little kid with a big grin and big ears, and he was a twin. His twin sister danced, as did his older sister, and he was just thrown into it. I thought his mother was a bitch on wheels. She looked at him and basically said, “You can either dance or you can stay home because I’m not driving anywhere else.”

Anyway, this kid was very close to me—I feel like I raised him. One time in the late eighties we were all going on a cruise for a dance competition and convention that took us away for most of a summer and he couldn’t go. His mother couldn’t take the kids on the cruise so he was out of luck. When we came back, he had both splits down on the floor and was dancing so much better that I thought he’d been going to another studio behind my back. I asked him what he did to improve so much and he said he had worked by himself at home the entire summer. He then went on to say to me that he would never stay home again. He said, “You’re never leaving me—I’m going with you from now on, and I’ll get a scholarship to every convention so I can go with you.” He is now the dance supervisor for the Broadway show
Wicked
, in charge of every single
Wicked
in the world. He teaches every new person coming into any
Wicked
show, and he shows them what they’re supposed to do. He’s done six hundred Broadway shows by now. He’s so valuable to them that they let him do movies and commercials and other Broadway shows because they can’t teach anyone else everything that he knows. So this is what I mean by your kid has to want it because nobody can want it for him or her. No amount of overzealous parents paying for extra classes is going to make a better dancer. Only the child can become a better dancer if he or she wants it.

This is of course a lot more than most kids are willing to give. That can be a problem for a child who’s always saying, “But my friends don’t practice violin three hours a day,” or “Susie gets to watch TV instead of going to rehearsal.” This can also be a problem for the mom, who comes to me and complains, “Susie has a solo, and my daughter doesn’t!” Don’t tell me that your kid should do something because her friend is doing it. To be competitive, your child will have to
not
do what her girlfriends are doing. Forget Susie. Because when Susie gets a full ride to Harvard, she’s not worrying about your kid!

Dear Abby:

My five-year-old loves to dance, but I’m a single mom. I don’t have any extra money to spend on dance classes—I’m barely paying my rent and electric bill every month. What should I do?

You want my honest opinion? Take the deadbeat father to court and make him pay for lessons. Every kid needs to dance! That said, you can also contact a studio in your area and ask if there is any financial aid, payment plan, or scholarship package available. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and most studios know not everyone is loaded. Reach out.

Abby

A LITTLE COMPETITION IS GOOD FOR YOU

I firmly believe that a little competition is good for you. I once heard a coach tell his team, “Off the field, we’re friends. On the field, we’re warriors.” Good for him! I believe a healthy dose of competitiveness is a great motivator.

I believe that competition starts in kindergarten. It begins with whose coloring-book page did the teacher put on the bulletin board. In an effort to take the competition element away, parents take their kids to dance studios that are noncompetitive. They have their kids participate in activities like swim lessons, but they don’t join the swim team because it’s too competitive. They want to encourage their child to play T-ball because everybody gets a trophy. These parents don’t realize it, but their children are already competing academically. They’re competing for someone’s attention, most likely their teacher. They’re competing when that mom dresses her child for school in the morning and makes sure that she has a giant bow in her hair or that she has her best Christmas sweater on for the Christmas party. They are competing with what they are wearing to be the cutest or best dressed. They just don’t want to admit it.

A little competition is healthy. Kids who are homeschooled don’t know what it feels like to get that paper back in front of the rest of your class with big red marks on it. It’s embarrassing. Or, on the flip side, when they do get the A+ and it’s in a big circle with a smiley face next to it on their paper. When you’re homeschooled, you don’t have your best friend looking over your shoulder with envy because you got the best grade in the class, so you don’t get the glory or the embarrassment. As for Maddie, who is homeschooled, this works out wonderfully because she is competing in dance every single weekend.