Dance Moms is one of the best reality TV shows. For eight seasons, the show focused on dance teacher Abby Lee Miller, owner and head choreographer of the Abby Lee Dance Company. The “dance moms” aspect comes in the form of the moms of the elite competition team. The girls learn a new dance each week and compete across the country.
So many people are still talking about the show, enough for the producers to start a season 9, but with a different teacher and cast. They even hosted a reunion with some of the most well-known dancers and their moms from the show.
Part of the popularity is the diverting cast. Abby Lee Miller is a personality, to say the least. She’s loud, brutally honest, and has some wack priorities. Never mind her prison stint for bankruptcy fraud that kept her in the headlines while the show took a break. Then there’s the moms. Melissa is Maddie and Mackenzie’s mom, though she often forgot about the latter. She was the sneaky one, the one who was up Abby’s butt trying to get her kids ahead. Kelly is Brooke and Paige’s mom. She was Abby’s student 30 years before the show started, so their relationship is pretty strained and it affected how Abby treated Kelly’s kids, and not in a good way.
Then there’s Christi, Chloe’s mom, a witty blonde who went mama bear whenever Abby treated her daughter, or any of the girls for that matter, poorly. Dr. Holly is the angel of the group. She didn’t swear and always had the kids’ best interests at heart. Jill, Kendall’s mom, joined in Season Two, though some consider her an OG. She’s feisty and spent her early days at the studio buying her way up the pyramid.
This pyramid is not a metaphor, but a literal ranking of the girls based on their performance during the previous week’s competition. Pyramid usually foreshadowed the coming arguments, and it kept the audience drooling for more.
Being a reality TV show, drama was a core principle. But it was the kind of drama that made the show stand out. The arguments were about costumes, going to cheer instead of dance, or who had a private lesson with Miller. In all, their arguments were to create an equal playing field for their daughters. The seemingly petty fights were charged with real emotions.
Amidst the screaming matches and physical altercations, the show juxtaposes drama with sweet moments too. Specifically through mother-daughter interactions, or the rare moments when Miller is kind to the girls, which was scarce the longer the TV show ran. What always gets me is when Christi cries watching her daughter perform against a rival studio, that seemed to have a personal vendetta. It highlights that at the end of the day, these are run-of-the-mill moms who just want the best for their daughters, something the audience can relate to.
Sarah Dempster in the Guardian writes,“[Dance Moms] features the usual structured-reality volley of explosion noises, decontextualized reaction shots, and recaps of things that have literally only just happened. Amid the clamour, the titular “moms” sit around in the studio’s “observation mezzanine” watching their daughters yawning in tulle.” These were their real everyday lives, only spliced up and presented with some heavy editing. That reality factor, which was far more present and tangible than in something like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, makes the show that much more irresistible.
There is no doubt that Dance Moms is a popular show, just from a glance at the ratings. But with its rollercoaster ride of sentiments, a knack for pumping out internet personalities and its dedicated following, it truly is the best reality TV show out there.
