Lifetime

Dance Moms fans, if you’re counting down the episodes and fearing the fast-approaching finale, take heart. You won’t have to go without for long. In fact, you won’t have to go without at all. Lifetime announced today that its newest member of the Dance Moms franchise, Dance Moms: Miami, will premiere April 3 at 10:30pm ET, immediately following the 90-minute spring finale of Dance Moms. • DANCE MOMS music guide According to the network, “Dance Moms: Miami will go behind-the-scenes at Miami-based Stars Dance Studio, where the school’s owners and renowned contemporary dance instructors Victor Smalley (pictured at left) and […]

Does this mean we can be done with shows about Jill now? That Kendall can dance, happily, supported, victorious and unhindered by her mother’s ego? That Nia can dance happily and supported, victorious and unpunished for her mother’s work-life balance? That this show can actually become an eensy-peensy bit about dance again instead of the low blows of high-heeled moms? I’m guessing no on all accounts, but a girl can dream. Because I want my old Dance Moms back. The ones who ultimately played yakky but reasonably harmless second fiddles to their joyfully dancing daughters. I want to believe that at least […]

First of all, let me say how thrilled I am to be wrong in saying last week that Paige would not be at the top of this week’s pyramid. Paige earned her spot, and Abby rightly gave it to her. Then let me say how not pleased I am to be right that she would be made to pay in some regard for winning last week’s competition, which we’ll get into more in a bit. Suffice it to say for now that Abby’s ferocious vitriol toward a wisp of a girl whom she knows has one nervous-wreck cell for every […]

We learned something right out of the gate, didn’t we, Dance Moms Nation?! We learned that the floors in Abby Lee’s studios cost a whopping $68,000. Thus, like the dancers upon them, they are precious and heels are not allowed. Naturally, Jill shows up in gray suede boots with not-allowed heels. It’s OK, she tells Abby Lee because she’s standing on her toes. Rules dribble off Jill like water off a duck, but Abby lets it slide for now,  ‘cause she’s got stuff on her mind. Namely this week’s competition, which is Dance Explosion in Secaucus, NJ. It will be riddled […]

We begin with this episode with a field trip, Dance Mom Nation! Because Brooke has invited Abby out for tea and creme puffs at a place that looks like a dollhouse and is called “Flowers In The Attic.” I’m going to take a momentary pause here for those of you in my age demographic to skeeve out over the part where someone in Pittsburgh felt compelled to name their posey-shop-slash-café after the 1979 V.C. Andrews novel that made catastrophic familial dysfunction a middle-school must-read and caused us all to be just slightly nervous about our mothers and grandmas for a […]

Dance Moms fans, if you’ve got some time — and feelings — to spare, Lifetime.com has a brand-new app that allows you to place yourself, or your own little dance darling, right smack into a Dance Moms dance, black bobbed-wig, alarmingly teensy red bolero and all. […]

Forgive me, Dance Moms nation, but I must begin this one with a big bucket of editorializing. I just must. Is it just me, or has this season begun to give off wafts — OK, big ol’ smoggy clouds — of having been stripped of the one thing that made all of the adult theatrics palatable (or at least survivable)? That is, the dignity of the little girls who — no matter what behavior in which their parents or the truly insufferable Abby Lee indulge — go out there and dance with preternatural grace and maturity, and treat one another with […]