Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class

by Abby Lee Miller

  Speaking of the moms, here’s what they’re usually up to on the bus:

  •Holly is either on the computer or reading.

  •Christi is on the phone fighting with somebody, probably the production company about something.

  •Melissa is loud and talky-talky to everyone on the bus, even when they’re trying to sleep.

  •Kelly is either screaming at her children or sleeping. But you can bet her feet are tucked up underneath her on the seat.

  •Jill is sweet and looks in the mirror a lot, just like her daughter Kendall.

  I’ve experienced all kinds of children in a wave. Many are sugar and spice and everything nice in the classroom, then somehow unbeknownst to me they turn into holy terrors telling tales outside of school! I thought the class went great and everyone got equal attention and their share of corrections. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until the little sweetie got Mom and Dad all fired up over something that happened, something that was said or something someone did to their oh-so-innocent child. The perfect parents have filled up my in-box with their nonsensical e-mails and used up all the voice mail space in my cell phone. And made complete fools of themselves on the studio’s answering machine eleven times over. I expect them to barge into the studio screaming and yelling at me first, then at every other parent. Now, my old-school mom and dad would have never reacted in that manner. They would have told me to handle it; after all, it’s my world and I have to live in it every day. It’s up to the crybaby to take charge of the situation herself by saying something: “I don’t really need to be your friend anymore,” or “You’re really nasty,” or “I hear you keep talking about me. If you have something to say, say it to my face.”

  I think a lot of the fighting and bickering that happens between moms stems from their own kids. I have to blame the parents too. They should stop their kids from complaining to them about anything and everything dance related. When competition plays a key role in your child’s activities, you are playing with fire. The dancer, athlete, or scholar should redirect her issues to her coach, choreographer, or professor. I don’t claim to be a doctor of psychology but I do know kids. On occasion even the best kids need a little extra attention from Mom and Dad. They want to ensure that you have their back, that you would go to the ends of the earth to protect them. So when they raise a ruckus, they never ever conceive that whining to Mom and Dad would cause a chain reaction that gets them expelled from their dance school and thrown off the team. Be careful what you wish for!

  Children need to be independent. They need to fight their own battles themselves because they’re never going to learn if Mom and Dad try to fix every little thing. If a kid is a troublemaker and is starting problems—like the kid who thinks it’s great fun to play other kids against each other in groups (and I’ve had many of those)—the mom and dad are usually completely unaware of it. They have this little con artist who is wise way beyond her years and they have no idea. They think their whippersnapper is clever like clover. She’s actually a little devil and she’s starting trouble and she’s a constant problem. Attention parents: if your child is only eight and already marked with the scarlet letter, you’re in for much bigger problems ahead.

  I try to encourage my dancers to come to me and work out their problems instead of running to their parents. Often they don’t even need to come to me and start a conversation or be verbal about it. They just need to show me in their will to work, show me in their technique, show me by arriving early and warming up and being ready to go as soon as class starts. This proves to me that they’re eager beavers and they are going to nail this number. That way there’s no need for a conversation or any drama.

  Bottom line—don’t fight all your kid’s battles. If you allow yourself to get caught in the middle of that whole girlfriend thing by calling the other mother, you’re going to look pretty ridiculous the next day when the kids are best friends again. Just let your kid figure it out on her own, live and learn, and laugh at it all.

  * * *

  ABBY’S ULTIMATE ADVICE

  Three Key Points to Remember

  1.Mother doesn’t always know best. In fact, chances are your dance instructor knows a lot more about dance than you or your mother.

  2.Be patient—when you’re ready to progress, your instructor will take you to the next level.

  3.Learn about theater etiquette. Say please and thank you. Help out your teammates. Be nice, but stand up for yourself when necessary.

  * * *

  FIFTH POSITION

  ÉCARTÉ

  When There’s a Crown on Your Head, Someone’s Always Watching

  A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

  —Coco Chanel

  I AM A STICKLER for manners and etiquette. I don’t understand why most parents are not. Your child is a representative of you, your family, and her upbringing. Did you raise her in a beautiful home in the suburbs or a barn?

  The moment a crown is placed on your pretty little head, you must stand up straight! Instantly you are in the spotlight, and everybody’s watching you. They examine your entrance, they study your stride, they observe the obvious. So you better not pick your nose, burp, slouch, put your elbows on the table, or try to eat all your meat at once without cutting it one piece at a time. You need to use the correct fork, pass the rolls in the right direction (counterclockwise), and be well-versed in appropriate topics for dinner conversation. In other words, when you teach your kid to say “Mama” and “Dada,” the next words should be “please” and “thank you.”

  Nothing irks me more than a kid who acts like she’s got something coming to her—that she’s entitled. I am not your servant, and I deserve to be asked and answered with respect. If someone does something nice for you or gives you a gift, send a thank-you note immediately. Cross your ankles, put your hands in your lap, and be a good role model to everybody else. One more thing: you can’t smoke, or drink, or swear when you’re wearing a tiara on top.

  Dance like nobody’s watching. Stand like the world is at your feet.

  Dear Abby:

  The studio my daughter dances at actually makes us request vacation time well in advance, and then we can only take a vacation if they approve it! This seems a bit extreme to me. Is it normal for a dance studio to ask parents to put in a request for a family vacation?

  I really don’t care when you go on vacation as long as your daughter/son on my competition team is available to rehearse and prepare for our national competition. You and your husband don’t have to go. The rest of the family can stay home. You can go wherever you want, but that kid better be with me. So, yes, the studio is right—when we attend Nationals in New York City, Las Vegas, or Orlando, we block all the summer dates. They should give you their dates too that are not available for a family vacation. You don’t practice and prepare all year from September to June only to get to July and have to rechoreograph all the routines because someone decided to go to Ocean City, New Jersey.

  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 w
aiting, 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 keepin
g 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.