Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class

by Abby Lee Miller

  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.

  We do not live in a selfish world. We live in a world where you must think of others. For so many people, it’s all about them. Forget about everybody else! What if you’re in a group routine that has partners and there are twelve kids? Suddenly you quit and there are only eleven kids. What does the kid without a partner do now?

  I believe that you have to give kids the wings to fly. Start off small, make sure that you can trust them (and if you’ve done a good job parenting, you can), then cut them a little slack. Or even better, cut them a lot of slack.

  Dear Abby:

  I’ve owned a dance studio for two years. I’m thinking about starting a competition team. What do you think attending competitions does for your studio?

  Some studio owners have great recreation programs, with kids who come and have fun. Then they start a competition team and end up losing money and losing students because the kids don’t want all the extra rehearsals, the time commitment, the pressure to be better—they just want the sweatshirt, the jacket, and the glory. So the answer is, I think competition can be a great thing. It’s going to motivate your dancers to improve. It could help your business because students will want private lessons. They’ll want to come to extra classes and pay for rehearsals so they have the edge up at a competition. However, it could also be detrimental. You don’t want your students to see the studio down the street winning everything at a competition, because then they’ll end up there.

 
Abby

  DON’T PUNISH YOUR KIDS BY TAKING AWAY THINGS THAT ARE GOOD FOR THEM

  Years ago I used to have a lot of parents who would reprimand their children by taking dance classes away. If kids got bad grades on their report cards, Mom and Dad pulled them out of dance class, rushing them home to study. I always thought these parents were kind of dumb because they were paying for the kids to come to dance class yet punishing them by not letting them come to a class they’d already paid for. But not only were they punishing their kids, they were inadvertently punishing everybody else on the team too. You sign a contract that you’re going to pay for ten months from September to June, whether your kid comes or not. You can’t call and say your daughter is taking the month off until she gets her grades up. The child needs to know that her grades have to stay up in order to be in these activities. That’s part of the commitment.

  Also, you’re punishing your kids by taking away something that could be their future. They might have been destined to become a professional dancer someday, and here you’re taking away that possibility through punishment. Kids love what comes easy. Not everybody is book smart. Not everybody is a scholar. It takes all types to make the world go around. You need to look at dance from all angles and realize that. I’ve had many parents tell me that the investment they made in dance—for tuition, costumes, traveling, and competition—could have paid for college. I’m sure that’s true, but not every kid’s best path is to go directly to college after he or she graduates from high school.

  From ninth grade to their senior year, when your kids are dancing twenty hours a week, that is their future. They’re already working toward their first dance job right out of high school. They’ve already put those years in and landed their first job on Broadway—their big break, making great money—while their friends are off at college and grad school. Dance is their first job, and it’s a vocation that they must take seriously. That’s why I say, “Don’t punish your kids by taking away things that are good for them.”

  ABBY LEE DANCE COMPANY WORKING DANCERS

  Allie Meixner

  Kendall Vertes

  Ashley Kacvinsky

  Kirsten Bracken

  Asmeret Ghebremichael

  Koree Kurkowski

  Bethenny Flora

  Kristi Grachen

  Brandon Pent

  Lindsey Hensler

  Brooke Hyland

  Lisa Shontz

  Chloe Lukasiak

  Mackenzie Ziegler

  Claire Taormina

  Maddie Ziegler

  Emily Burkhart

  Marissa Pampena

  Emily Shoop

  Mark Myars

  Erin Murphy

  Megan Kovitch

  Gianna Martello

  Michelle Pampena

  Heather Snyder

  Miranda Maleski

  Ira Cambric

  Nia Frazier

  James Washington

  Paige Hyland

  Jennifer Snyder

  Payton Ackerman

  Jennine Wedge

  Rachael Kreiling

  Jesse Johnson

  Sara Kosinski

  Jessica Ice

  Semhar Ghebremichael

  Jessica Sweesey

  Taylor Ackerman

  John Michael Fiumara

  Theresa Moio

  Katie Hackett

  Dear Abby:

  I run a dance studio and have one student who never makes it to class on time and almost never comes in the appropriate dancewear no matter how many times I remind the parents. I really see potential in this young dancer and don’t want to lose her as a student. Do you have any suggestions?

  I know you have compassion for this child, but unfortunately there are many children with potential. Does she have parental support? That’s the big question. I wish I could switch moms and kids around at my studio sometimes. In your case, I think giving her a gift of a brand-new leotard and tights would be nice, and arranging for a ride with another student could be helpful. But remember—sometimes the kids you do the most for are the ones who kick you in the ass in the end.

  Abby

  A CONTRACT IS A CONTRACT

  In the Abby Lee Dance Company contract, things like dyeing your hair, piercing your face, and getting a tattoo are not okay. Through my contract, I am trying to teach my kids what is acceptable in the dance world. If you go for an audition or a job, whether it’s to be in a commercial or a marketing campaign, you’re hired based on your photo. If you show up looking completely different, with a different hair cut and a different hair color from what you had in the photo, they won’t use you. Also, if you’re hired at a certain weight so that you fit into a costume and then you drop twenty pounds, they won’t use you anymore because you’re swimming in a costume that is just too big.

  It’s the same with being a Rockette. If they lose or gain more than fifteen pounds, they’re put on a list to be watched. They could be fined because they won’t fit into the costume. You’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of satin, sequins, and rhinestones that have to be altered if you lose or gain too much weight. Whether it’s a lease or a rental agreement, you have to teach your offspring to respect contracts and follow them—unlike dance mom Christi, who is teaching her daughter a different philosophy.

  If the contract says you can’t perform our choreography anywhere outside the studio or at competitions and you have your daughter doing our choreography all over the place to make money, what are you teaching her? Parents who disregard contracts are training their kids to skip out on their lease in the middle of the night when they get their first apartment. That’s what you’re teaching them.

  Selling cookies is part of your contract with the Girl Scouts. You don’t turn the cookies back in and say you couldn’t sell them. What if everybody did that? Like the kid who is the star player on the Pop Warner football team. While the rest of the team is selling candy bars to raise money, the star player, who is a natural athlete, doesn’t sell anything. If the contract reads that you have to sell a certain number of candy bars in order to play, then you should have to sell those candy bars or get benched and not be allowed to play. If the superstar player gets to play even if he doesn’t sell anything, this is teaching the young player that he can break contracts, and that’s not okay in my book.

  If there’s a contract set forth, it must be signed and honored by all involved. Although you don’t want to be a tattletale, teach your children that if they see someone breaking a contract, it’s important that they bring it to the attention of the authorities.

  Parents who lie about a kid’s age are putting the integrity of the coach, the teacher, or the president of the club in jeopardy, and could possibly ruin the career that professional has worked so hard for. You’re really playing with fire. If a wrestler is lying about his weight class, this could ruin his coach’s career. You should always take contracts seriously and teach your children at a young age that, for example, this piece of paper says you’re going to pick up your toys and if you don’t do that, then there will be consequences. If they don’t pick up their toys, then Mommy goes to the drawer to get the paper out and says, “Look, this is what you agreed to, and you aren’t holding up your end of the deal.” I don’t think parents want to raise young adults who are going to treat society with disrespect and try to weasel out of commitments. We don’t need any more of that in the world.

  Dear Abby:

  I am a teacher at a dance studio and I have one parent who is causing a lot of trouble because she feels her daughter should be moved to a higher-level class. I really feel this student would benefit from a few more months, if not another year, at the level she’s at. What should I do to calm this mom down?

  Parents always want their child to be in with older students or at a more advanced level. I don’t know why, but they do. I suggest you take the kid out of the group where she is currently, put her in the next advanced level, bury her in the back of the number, and be
as tough on her as you are on the others so the mother realizes she can’t keep up. You may lose a student, but it may be worth it in the long run. Stick to your rules—always. No child is worth bending your rules for, because whether that child leaves because there’s another issue, problem, or conflict, or they leave when they’re eighteen on a happy note, they still leave.

  Abby

  ABBY’S LIFELINE AT LIFETIME

  by Tim Nolan

  My first introduction to Abby was not in person but by watching a behind-the-scenes video of a promo shoot my team was filming for Dance Moms. I’m lucky to run the marketing department for Lifetime and I take pride in my amazing creative team, so when I watched the shoot I was astonished to see how upset Abby was and thought she was being too harsh and difficult. Well, it was the lack of authenticity of the wardrobe and choreography that upset her, and I couldn’t argue that, but I still had the impression that she was difficult. That would soon change.

  As I spent more time with Abby I began to appreciate her style. I love people who make me laugh, so when she asked me to fulfill one of her mother’s lifelong requests, how could I say no? Her mother, who was also passionate about dance, always wanted to go to the Tonys. So I worked my connections and was able to get four tickets—one each for Abby; her mom; my fiancé, Rudy; and me.