Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class Read online

  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 rehear
sal.” 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.

  I think both glory and embarrassment help to shape a child’s personality. The kid who isn’t doing so well needs to buckle down and concentrate more, and the kid who’s doing well deserves the praise for having the highest score in the class. In my dance class, every kid who walks into my room to take a class is competing against everyone else in there every minute. I think the mirror can be both your best friend and your toughest competitor. When you look in the mirror and see someone leaping across the floor and she’s higher than you by a foot, then you need to compete against that person by jumping higher than she does the next time you go across the floor. I am always screaming at the girls to look into the mirror because I know they will compete against one another if they have to work hard to keep up with and be better than the others. The competition that happens when they are looking in the mirror and comparing themselves with others makes them better dancers.

  A lot of dance teachers, especially young ones, ask me, “What should I do? I just opened a dance studio and right now we’re noncompetitive, but some of the parents who have seen your show have been asking me if I would consider competitions for my students.” I always tell them that competition can make your dancers tremendous and really motivate them to be better or it can ruin your business. If the kids at your studio see kids from another studio down the street performing better at competitions, then those kids are going to walk.

  And it depends on what you’re in it for. I was never in it to make a million dollars. I was in it to produce employable kids. I always wanted to be able to say that I produced the most employable dancers. I made that possible. Most of my dancers didn’t leave my studio and go to NYU or Carnegie Mellon for four years; they went from my studio to Fifty-First Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in New York City, got an apartment, went to an audition, and got the job. I know that I did that for them. Had their parents chosen another studio in town, they’d still be here in Pittsburgh doing something else. Maybe flipping burgers at McDonald’s or working at the mall.

  Dear Abby:

  I think my six-year-old son is an amazing dancer. Should he be competing or performing?

  The only way to know if you’ve given birth to the next Baryshnikov is to take him to a dance class. You’re his mom, so you can’t be objective. He sneezes and you applaud. That’s why you should leave it to the professionals. I can tell when a child is naturally talented by his physical attributes. Do his hip sockets turn out? Do his legs hyperextend? Do his feet arch the way they are supposed to in classical dance? All these things along with the desire, the dedication, and the determination go into making a champion in the dance world.

  Abby

  BEHIND THE SCENES

  A Day in the Life

  For Dance Moms, I usually head to the studio at about noon. I get into hair and makeup and talk briefly about the ideas and music. I start teaching at about 3:00 P.M., and we go all the way until the last class ends at 10:00 P.M. that night. My business day doesn’t start or end at the dance studio. I’m always working on costumes, placing orders, or searching for music at home, either late at night or early in the morning. The day-to-day activity of running a business takes up most of my morning. Then I eat lunch and head to the studio. I had to cut back on my teaching because of the demands of the show, but more important, I had to cut back to spend more time with my mother, whose health started to fail before she passed away in February. At the end of the classes, we usually have “Abby After Class,” which is a time to dish at my front desk with the other dance teachers, to reflect on the day, and for me to hear what’s going on with the other classes, students, and mothers. I’m a night owl. Once I head home at 10:30 or 11:00 P.M., I’m up for three or four more hours doing paperwork and all the other business that wasn’t taken care of before I went to the studio.

  I’m lucky to have an amazing group of instructors. Every one of my instructors is on the same page. They follow a curriculum that was created by my mother more than fifty years ago for all the preschool classes. We have a great team at my studio, Reign Dance Productions, and the Abby Lee Dance Company. In addition to dance, we offer voice lessons and acting classes.

  When we’re on the road for a competition, we’ve got an entirely different routine. Here’s a typical schedule for the Abby Lee Dance Company during a Saturday competition, though the times can change quite a bit depending on the specific event:

  5:30 A.M.: Wake up.

  6:00–8:00 A.M.: Hair and makeup.

  8:00–9:00 A.M.: Breakfast; then on the bus to the competition.

  9:00 A.M.: Competition starts.

  6:00 P.M.: Awards ceremony.

  And win or lose, there’s always drama with the moms—guaranteed.

  It would probably surprise most Dance Moms fans to find out that we don’t get to see the episodes before they are shown on the air. I see them when everyone else does.

  SIBLING RIVALRY IS A PLUS

  Often you will find two or more siblings in the same dance studio, even on the same competitive team. Sometimes it’s just because it’s more convenient for Mom—less chauffeuring to do. Stop, drop, and roll. But other times it’s because they genuinely care for one another and they want to help their siblings become better dancers.

  When you have a sibling, you have built-in competition. There is also the case where the younger sister isn�
��t starting out on the same playing field as the older child, and she has a leg up on her peers. When the younger sister of one of my students is dragged to the dance studio daily, and grows up in that environment—drinking from the water fountain, visiting the ladies’ room, and getting candy from the snack machine—she becomes very familiar with the surroundings. So by the time she’s two and a half or three years old and it’s time to go into the classroom, she isn’t hanging on her mother’s leg screaming her lungs out, because she already knows that you’re supposed to go into that room, listen to the teacher, and have fun.

  Usually Little Sis is way ahead of the game. She has absorbed proper terminology just by hearing the words plié and relevé, and if she’s on the ball, she has already learned how to do those ballet basics from Big Sis. When children are very close together in age, the older sibling ends up speaking for the new baby, reaching to get her what she wants, and even physically making her do the ever-important first arabesque. Younger siblings know all the positions before they ever get into the classroom. This usually means the younger sibling will turn out better. If not better, certainly smarter. That’s definitely what’s happened with Mackenzie.

  Siblings are great because you have someone to practice with. You have someone to play your music while you’re rehearsing, and then you play her music while she runs through her number. For all those exercises that require a partner, you have someone to practice with. If you have a conflict, like a school activity you have to go to, then your sibling can come in and learn your part and teach it to you when you get home that night, so the next day when you go to class you already know it. You always have a built-in duet partner and don’t have to rely on anyone else.

  I have two families on my show with siblings, Brooke and Paige and Maddie and Mackenzie. I frequently tell Mackenzie, in an effort to motivate her to do better, that when Maddie was her age, she was already doing this or that. Guess what? It works!