Dance Moms was a cultural phenomenon when it first premiered on Lifetime in 2011. The reality series followed a group of young girls under the guidance of controversial dance instructor and choreographer Abby Lee Miller as they trained and competed at dance competitions around the country. The mothers were also a key presence — their combative dynamics with Miller, their daughters and rival dance moms often produced fireworks on the series.
Nearly five years after Dance Moms ended, Lifetime officially announced a reunion, bringing back six memorable mother-daughter pairs. Taking part in a two-hour special on May 1 are JoJo Siwa, Chloé Lukasiak, Brooke Hyland, Paige Hyland, Kendall Vertes and Kalani Hilliker, along with moms Jessalynn Siwa, Kelly Hyland, Jill Vertes, Kira Girard and Christi Lukasiak.
“The second my mom told me [about the reunion], I was on board,” Vertes, 21, who was on Dance Moms from 2012 to 2017, told Yahoo Entertainment. She left Miller’s dance company at the end of Season 7 for the newly formed Irreplaceables dance crew before formally exiting the series. “I knew it was going to be an amazing experience for us, whether we were crying or laughing.
“We’ve been through so much together,” she continued. “We’re basically trauma-bonded and that bond will never break. It was another great experience for us to get closure, tie up loose ends, close the book and move on as a whole.”
Now in their early 20s, the six dancers featured in the reunion were children — many as young as 8 or 9 years old — when they first appeared as members of Miller’s Abby Lee Dance Company’s Junior Elite Competition Team. They, along with the other dancers on the show, often suffered emotional, mental and physical trauma during their time under Miller’s guidance. Many have been candid about the toxic environment Miller created on Dance Moms. Some previously filed lawsuits against Miller.
The reunion special, filmed over two 14-hour days in Los Angeles, puts Siwa, Lukasiak, the Hyland sisters, Vertes and Hilliker through a roller coaster of emotions as they relive painful memories, pivotal turning points and headline-making controversies during their time on Dance Moms.
“I think a huge reason why we all came to do this reunion is to show our viewers and the audience our true personalities and who we are as adults,” Vertes explained, “and how we would respond to a situation that we weren’t even old enough to fully understand.”
Maddie Ziegler, Mackenzie Ziegler and Nia Sioux, all popular Dance Moms alums, were invited to take part in the reunion but chose not to. Their absences are acknowledged early on in the special. In a brief scene from the trailer, Siwa addresses the trio’s decision to skip the reunion: “Them not being here is kind of like, ‘Let me erase my past, pretend it never happened, shove it down the drain,’ when it’s, like, that’s why you are who you are.”
Tears flowed almost immediately at the reunion, Vertes said. Digging into old wounds, suppressed feelings and unhealthy dynamics were catalysts for the group’s high emotions.
“We cried in almost every segment, only because when you see your friends crying, that makes you upset. But you also understand where their emotions are coming from because you went through it as well,” she explained.
Vertes’s portion of the reunion special primarily revolves around her being labeled, as she describes, a “crybaby,” though that characterization could be considered unfair due to the pressure she was under and the environment she was in. Over the course of her time on Dance Moms, Vertes was seen having panic attacks and struggling with anxiety.
“I was open about it,” she said, looking back. “I’m an emotional person. I don’t like seeing my mom fighting with my dance teacher. And after two days of filming [the reunion], we were physically, mentally drained because all of those memories that we had to bring up again [that] we have pushed so far down was really hard. I didn’t know if I wanted to revisit all of that trauma.”
At the reunion, Vertes said she and her former castmates saw some clips from the show for the first time.
“That brings a whole new set of emotions that we weren’t prepared for,” she explained. “It was definitely a very vulnerable experience for us, but I’m glad that the girls were there. We get each other. We can talk each other through any situation and I’m very thankful that I had them there.”
Almost seven years have passed since Vertes left Dance Moms. Now a junior at James Madison University, she’s studying political science and pre-law and is a member of the school’s dance team. With the benefit of hindsight, Vertes acknowledged growing up in the public eye through Dance Moms — and all the strife that came along with it — “wasn’t a normal childhood at all.”
“It was our lives. We weren’t acting, we weren’t told to do something. Those were our raw emotions. And those were truly our personalities that you guys saw — or half of our personalities,” she said.
Still, Vertes maintains a healthy perspective on her Dance Moms past.
“The one thing that I’ve learned from it is I have very thick skin,” she said. “Now with social media, there’s people who have different opinions of you or don’t really agree with the things that you said or your mom said. But I can just tell myself, ‘You know what? People have said so much worse and I shouldn’t let someone dictate who they think I am because I know who I am.’”
When clips of old Dance Moms moments resurface on her social media feeds, Vertes says “it’s crazy” to revisit traumatic moments from when she was 8 years old and “couldn’t speak up.”
“I’m like, ‘Oh, I didn’t remember that happened but I can just go watch my childhood on TV,’” she said.
As for where her relationship with Miller stands now, Vertes said she hasn’t seen her former dance coach “in a very long time.”
“If I were to see her, I would obviously be very happy that she’s still here, that she’s still teaching,” she said. In 2018, Miller was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma, a rare form of cancer that affects her spinal cord, and has been confined to a wheelchair.
“I do feel bad that I wasn’t there when she needed us because she really doesn’t have any family and we were kind of like her kids. I feel like the space was needed for us to move on,” Vertes said. “I’ll always respect her. She has definitely made me the person I am today — the good and the bad.”
Dance Moms: The Reunion airs May 1 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
