Five Things You Need to Know About Dance Mom’s Abby Lee Miller

Abby Lee Miller at NewNowNext Awards

Lifetime’s reality TV series, Dance Moms, has been a hit since its debut in 2011.  The show, which is set at the Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh, PA, focuses on the company’s owner, Abby Lee Miller, and her relationship with her young dancers and their mothers.  Since the show began, Miller has developed a reputation for being a villain, and has received a lot of negative attention for her tough teaching practices.  However, n 2014, when Miller published her book, Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class, Miller made it clear that she wasn’t going to let a little bad press change her.  Miller stated: “When you walk into my classroom. I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world.” Now on the brink of its fifth season, fans just came seem to turn away from the drama-filled series.  Here are five things you need to know about Dance Mom’s Abby Lee Miller.

5. Abby Lee Miller refuses to see herself as a villain.

Throughout Dance Mom’s run, Abby Lee Miller has become somewhat of a reality TV villain.  However, she refuses to see herself that way. On several occasions, Miller has defended her method of training and has stated:”Dance teachers do not have a license in the United States, there’s no governing body. But I deal with membership organizations that I’ve been tested — oral, demonstrative, written — that I belong to … I’m not some fly-by-night teacher.”  During an interview Miller also expressed that she is hard on her dancers because she wants them to succeed.  She stated: “I have bigger dreams for these kids than they have for themselves. I want them to be better – I want them to win… Life is a competition.”

4. Abby Lee Miller was bankrupt before Dance Moms.

In 2010, just a year before Dance Moms aired, Abby Lee Miller filed for bankruptcy.  According to reports, Miller was approximately $400,000 in debt after falling behind on her income tax and mortgage payments.  Miller claims that her financial setbacks were the result of a lack of demand for her dance classes. Fortunately for Miller, the success of Dance Moms allowed her to regain financial stability.

3. Abby Lee Miller was not originally meant to be the star of Dance Moms.

Although Abby Lee Miller has emerged as the star of Dance Moms, she was not originally intended to be the show’s main character.  In the beginning, the show was meant to follow five young dancers and their mothers living in five different states, and Abby Lee Miller was not included at all. However, producers found a “whole lot of crazy in Pittsburgh,” and as a result Miller’s dance company was suggested, and the concept was changed.  Due to her larger-than-life personality and tough teaching style, Miller quickly became the show’s star.  However, her on-screen behavior has rippled into her real life and several mothers have pulled their children from Miller’s dance studio.

2. Abby Lee Miller was sued for assaulting a teenage student.

In October 2014, reports began to surface that Miller was being sued by one of her teenage students as a result of assault. In a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, one of Miller’s 13-year-old students accused Miller of “intentionally engaged in conduct that caused Plaintiff Paige Hyland to reasonably believe that she was about to be touched or harmed in an offensive manner.” The student went on to claim that Miller had been emotionally abusive, and that she believed Dance Mom producers allowed the violent atmosphere to continue in an effort to boost the show’s ratings.  The young girl also stated that Miller is “paid to be abusive and bullying to her students and provoke arguments with the mothers in front of the children.”  However, in November 2014, a superior court judge threw the case out.

1. Abby Lee Miller thinks many dance moms are ungrateful.

Due to her intense coaching style, Miller has developed a love-hate relationship with many of her dancers’  parents.  In 2012, during an interview with MTV, Miller said that she felt like many of the mothers on the show were ungrateful, and stated: “You would think that the mothers would see things a little clearer now, now that they’re on a television show and now that they do have fans, that they [wouldn’t] be a little more respectful of me. I just think that they don’t want to recognize the fact [that] if it wasn’t for Abby Lee Miller and the Abby Lee Dance Company and having their children enrolled in my studio that they would be on a show.”  Miller has since gone on to say that today’s parenting methods have done nothing but enable children, and she stated: “I think parents today enable their children to fail. Years ago you had to actually work for something. When dance competitions first started, there was a first, second and third prize, everybody else went home with nothing. Nowadays kids get a trophy for being born. It’s ridiculous.”

(Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images for LOGO)

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