Dance Moms, Christi vs. Melissa

"Dance Moms"--Stealing the Show

Does anyone else have a massive problem with Christi? For one thing, who in the world thinks it's appropriate to yell at lots of other people in front of a group of your children and theirs. Apparently Christi thinks it is perfectly fine, and that really worries me. I am concerned about the impact it has not only on her child, but on all the other children as well. And it certainly did have an impact, almost every girl who was in the room when Christi started to scream burst into tears.

Christi also has unreasonable requests. She wanted Melissa's daughter Maddie to only dance one solo (and not two) because all of the other girls in the troupe were only dancing one solo. However, as both Abby and Melissa explained, Maddie has an extra private tap lesson once a week, and the second solo she was dancing was choreographed by that teacher within the confines of that class. Christi claimed that Maddie should only dance one solo because it gave her an "unfair advantage" in terms of increasing her chances to win. But these dance competitions aren't based on quantity. Christi may not want to believe this, but even if her daughter (Chloe) had danced three separate solos I don't think she would have beat Maddie. Maddie, this week at least, was a more technically perfect dancer. You just have to see how Chloe fumbled during her dance to see that. So, who in the world cares about the number of dances each child does?? It truly does not increase their chances. In fact, I would say that the more dances a child has the more likely it is that she will lose, because she is having to remember double the material accurately.

However, that is not to say that I have no problems with Melissa. After Maddie and Chloe had gone on stage to receive awards, and Maddie had won, Melissa provoked Christi by turning to her and saying, "Still undefeated! Aren't you happy?". When she knew how upset Christi was about Maddie's two solos (regardless of whether that was justified or not) I don't see why she felt the need to continue to antagonize another mother.

Now onto Kelly and her daughter, Paige. They did repeatedly ask Maddie's mom (Melissa) for Paige's dance music. And she didn't get it until 8 pm on the night before the competition. Regardless of how hard the music was to get, that is completely unreasonable. She is a nine-year-old child, and she is supposed to dance successfully based only on counts? Please. Kelly certainly has a point that someone dropped a ball, and we all saw how badly that turned out. Paige froze on stage. And Abby, rather typically, blamed Paige! She was not as well prepared as the other girls, because she did not have her music in time, and that showed.

Finally, I agree with all of the mothers that doing a six hour Acro class the night before a competition is lunancy. However, I also agreed with Abby (this is truly shocking!) that if the children didn't know it at that point they wouldn't know it. Still, I think it would have been far better to run each child through her dance once, and then to send her home to rest before the competition. The mothers are wrong that their children need endless practice in their routines before competition, but Abby is wrong that they need endless practice in something new. Don't make them practice! Let them actually get some sleep.