Dance Moms is an American reality television series that first aired in 2011 and is still airing today. This reality television show is about the dance instructor Abby Lee Miller, the moms and their six young daughters. At the Abby Lee Miller studio, she trains young dancers as young as two years old. However, in the pilot of the reality show, we see Miller train six years old to thirteen years old. The goal of the moms is to make their child appear on the list of good/professional dancers. They want the instructor Abby Lee Miller to put their daughter on the map. In each episode, we can see the young girls practice, their moms arguing with either Miller or among them (mostly harsh and violent arguments) and at the end of the episode we can see the preteens at the competition.

 

The cultural performance theory argues that we can understand culture within some everyday life activities. In the case of Dance Moms, cultural performance is strongly present. For the dance instructor and the moms, it is all about performing. The girls are encouraged to perform and to win. At the competitions, the girls receive a significant amount of pressure to perform, but also to win.  For Abby, losing is not an option, and it is important that the girls win because they represent the Abby Lee Dance Company. In this type of situation, in order to win and perform, the girls are less treated as a child, but more as an adult. While watching this reality series, we can note that the girls are not always interested in performing and winning. Most of the moms are more interested in winning than the child’s interests. They might be forcing their child to dance and perform for their own interests.  The girls are a significant example of the youth we can find in our society nowadays. The way the moms and Abby make the girls dress is typical beauty pageant style. The girls are sexualised, and they use some inappropriate dance moves, as hips and posterior movements.

 

On this reality television show, we can observe cultural reproduction as the role of the family, in this case, the role of the mother. The female image that the moms are providing their 6 to 13 years old is not realistic because it is not through sexualisation that they will get anywhere. Regarding competition, the girls are using sexual dance moves and sexual clothing to reach the judge, which is well seen in the industry of dance competitions and beauty pageants. The mother-daughter dynamics in Dance Moms are transformed by Abby, which is due to the fact that Abby always confronts the moms in front of their daughters and discredits the moms. If you keep watching Dance Moms, you can observe that the moms have less power over their daughters due to Abby. Throughout the seasons, we can notice that the girls are more and more docile towards Abby. The girls know that they need to please and satisfy Abby first, to continue performing. The moms themselves let go their own influence and part of their authority because they force their daughters to act as Abby wants. Therefore, the girls almost look at Abby as a mother figure.

 

Cultural performance can include cultural hegemony. Hegemony refers to the way that our society, its values, and beliefs are shaped. Likewise, hegemony is the way in which certain groups can dominate. In the case of Dance Moms, we can observe youth, elites, and parents. In the very first episode of Dance Moms, the coach, Abby introduced her concept of the pyramid in her studio. She started by saying: “ You know why you are here? You are here because girls… you are the cream of the crop. I can make you or break you. Everybody is trying to get on the top … of course”(2011).  According to Abby Lee Miller, the pyramid is a way to rank the girls on her dance team. The girl who appears on top of the pyramid needs to have good behavior, work ethics, attendance, and she also needs to follow the rules. However, sometimes, Abby changes the pyramid according to the moms. In that scenario, she punishes the girls to reach the moms. At first, we can see in the first episode that the moms completely disagreed with the pyramid, because it was not their daughter who was on top and they judged that their daughter deserved better. They also disagreed with this method, because only one girl is on top of the pyramid and it is mostly the same girl who is on top on the pyramid weeks and weeks. Nevertheless, if you keep watching the show, the moms seem to appreciate the pyramid and they started to change their education towards their child in order to put their child on top of the pyramid. They finally accept Abby’s method because the moms’ desire that their daughters should be at the top is stronger than everything else.  They start acting as the pyramid wants them to perform and act in order to reach the top. The pyramid that Abby Lee Miller uses in her dance studio is the best example from the show to explain, understand and describe cultural hegemony because the moms finally complied themselves instead of not following the system present at the Abby Lee Dance Company.

 

To conclude, Dance Moms is a part of the current popular culture. Nowadays, we can see more reality television series on young girls being created to entertain the American viewers. Like Dance Moms, there are Toddlers and Tiaras and Honey Boo Boo, who are hegemonic and resistant.