‘Dance Moms: A New Era’ Continues a Dangerous Legacy — Yet Fans Still Watch

When it comes to “Dance Moms,” everyone and every thing is replaceable. That’s true even of Abby Lee Miller and the controversial teaching methods she pioneered for the notorious reality TV show, which aired on Lifetime from 2011 to 2018.

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In its original iteration, the unscripted series followed a studio of young dancers and their moms — perpetually at war with Miller and each other — as they competed for the spotlight and various national titles. Released as a ten-episode binge on Hulu on August 7, “Dance Moms: A New Era” brings that drama back to the forefront. Unlike several other “Dance Moms” spinoffs, the reboot stars an almost entirely new cast. Gloria Hampton (AKA “Miss Glo”) is the Abby-type now, berating a fresh crop of performers, all ages 8 to 13.

With “A New Era,” Hulu has knowingly modeled a toxic environment that did real damage to real kids. That’s an especially bad look in a day and age when lawsuits are mounting across reality TV and documentaries like “Quiet on Set” ( problematic in their own right ) reevaluate the harm endured by child actors and the parents who helped them get famous.

The similarities between “A New Era” and “Dance Moms” are striking. Like the Abby Lee Dance Company, Studio Bleu Dance Center pits its performers against one another with near-constant threats of getting cut. A weekly “pyramid” of headshots ranks the girls each week, with the child dancers publicly pelted with both praise and criticism. Once again, that tension boils over, resulting in countless kids and parents crying. The girls are bullied by Miss Glo, bullied by each other, and even their own mothers when the stress becomes too much.

“I’ve never yelled at you before,” says one mom to her daughter. Both crying on a green room couch, the 11-year-old Gina and her mother Jing are late additions to the team — explicitly introduced to spur competition. Jing apologizes to Gina for raising her voice after her daughter refuses a hug. But just an episode later, while backstage at a competition, Jing calls Gina “a disappointment” in front of everyone. Supposedly, the stage mom was helping her kid get into character for a solo that has Gina dressed up like a literal monster. Even so, the performance doesn’t place, and she walks offstage sobbing.

That’s just one example of the callous indifference the “Dance Moms” franchise continues to show to its underage talent. Throughout “A New Era,” children are belittled and mocked by adults, women who themselves are buckling under extraordinary stress. They’re all vying for a spot on a stage that has indeed turned industry outsiders, like pop star and TikTok sensation JoJo Siwa, into real celebrities. Verbal altercations and even physical fights break out between the moms, as they lambast not just each other’s parenting skills but also the dancing talents — and, in some cases, general worth — of their children’s teammates.

Producers and other Studio Bleu employees appear to shepherd the girls away from some of the more extreme scenes, but within a single episode, the 13-year-old Audrey is reduced to tears when her mom Tammi is called “crazy.” Later in the season, dancing on pointe, Audrey slams into a cameraman and requires medical attention for a hurt foot. Tammi rushes to her daughter’s side and, in classic reality TV fashion, the pair disappear into a haze of ambulance lights.

Still, the next episode starts with the other moms questioning if the injury was real — or a convenient excuse to bow out of the group number — and Glo’s 24-year-old daughter and assistant Kaeli Ware pointedly tells Audrey to push through it. It’s an astonishing instance of gaslighting, particularly for a girl whose mom has been called “crazy.”

“I danced on a broken foot for a month,” the professional adult dancer says, criticizing a child 11 years her junior.

“A New Era” is packed front to end with these poisonous exchanges and, much like “Dance Moms,” it includes some outrageously inappropriate themes for the choreography. That seems designed to fuel the emotional fire. Min and her 8-year-old daughter Mina reveal they lost a family member — Min’s 13-year-old son — in a tragic car accident just a few years ago. Nevertheless, the little girl is pressured to give up her real teddy bear in a dance number designed to make her “grow up.”

Throughout the season, children are tasked with acting out everything from portions of Mark Mylod’s R-rated “The Menu,” which is bizarre, to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, which is repugnant. For the season finale at nationals, Glo designs a group number about — wait for it — the fentanyl crisis and twists that macabre concept to further devalue her young dancers. There’s at least some context given, with the girls getting educated about the drug epidemic via another grown-up “Dance Moms” alum who lost her brother to an accidental fentanyl poisoning in 2021.

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Nevertheless, the girls are lined up with plastic corpses onstage and assigned to die according to their skill level. “That’s why your kid is in the body bag first ,” says one mom to another. It’s a sound bite that should send chills down your spine, but for “A New Era,” it’s all in a day’s dance.

When mom Lisa discusses a family member of hers who died of an overdose, her 11-year-old Ashlan scores the lead role. Believable in her onstage grief for reasons that should be obvious, Ashlan delivers a stunning performance and they win first in the competition — but the moms seem surprised when Ashlan is spotted still crying backstage. It’s painful to witness, particularly in the context of the rest of the episodes, which frequently include adult women calling the child “a cry baby” as she melts down in the face of increasing turmoil.

Maddie Ziegler, now 21, is among the more successful entertainers to come out of “Dance Moms” and she has spoken out against the production in recent years. Neither she nor her mother Melissa, nor her sister Mackenzie, appeared for “Dance Moms: The Reunion,” which aired on Lifetime in May. The TV special spun that fact as a drama unto itself, but the Zieglers’ absence should shock no one. For several years, Maddie has said the manipulation and abuse she endured while appearing as Miller’s supposed golden child fundamentally hurt her and her relationship with her mom.

“I called my mom, and things were coming up from the past, and she apologized to me,” Maddie said last year in an episode of Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast, “High Low.” “She was like, ‘I’m so sorry I put you through that.’ It’s so sad because she would never want to hurt us, but none of us knew how crazy it would get.”

The multi-hyphenate Hollywood talent has described blacking out portions of her troubled childhood and feeling profound discomfort watching clips of what she experienced as a kid reemerge on social media. In some cases, these snippets depict events Maddie says she can no longer remember. The Zieglers don’t speak to Miller (who, it’s worth noting, used to be friends with Glo but reportedly won’t speak to her either after “A New Era” stole Miller’s thunder) and Maddie has worked to steadily distance herself from the show.

So has Nia Sioux, another original “Dance Moms” cast member who is still involved with both the TV and dance worlds but is also attending college to study literature and culture . Nia didn’t appear for the “Dance Moms” reunion episode either, stating plainly on TikTok , “I just didn’t want to do it. Some people think it was because I had sorority stuff. Nope, I didn’t … I just didn’t want to do it. That’s a good enough answer, and that’s a good enough reason.”

In an earlier interview with Forbes from 2021 , Sioux also said, “Whenever I think of ‘Dance Moms,’ I know that I learned so much from the show, and I am so grateful for that opportunity to be able to dance, [to] meet so many amazing people, to travel, and to be with my mom. I was put through a lot. As a child, it was a lot to endure: a lot of yelling, a lot of swearing, being put down all the time. And not only being put down by people in your physical life, but also being put down by people on the internet. The show was super negative, but I try my best to turn it into a positive. I look at the great things that I got from it and focus on those instead of dwelling on the negative stuff, because, honestly, that’s just going to hold me back.”

That nuanced mentality is shared by several of the ex-“Dance Moms” girls, who when promoting the reunion, told Entertainment Tonight they would never “invalidate” each other’s experiences. JoJo Siwa is the most outspoken defender of Miller, attributing much of her current success to her “Dance Moms” teachings and criticizing “A New Era” for copying Miller’s method. It’s worth noting that, earlier this year, JoJo and her mother Jessalyn were accused of creating a toxic work environment for the members of Siwa’s children’s pop group XOMG Pop! They have denied all allegations and, in standard “Dance Moms” form, instead argued that the accuser’s mother created the situation.

As addictive as ever, “Dance Moms: A New Era” seems to have broken through to its intended audience. Related social media, including the show’s popular subreddit, is especially active in the wake of the binge-style release, and diehard fans are already champing at the bit for an unconfirmed Season 2. Cast members have come out reflecting on their experience in moderately good spirits. The girls describe having plenty of fun off camera in scenes that didn’t make the show, but the adults have confirmed that everything else that took place was “absolutely real.”

For better or worse, this reboot is more of the same — an encore performance of the worst kind with the potential for consequences we already well know.