Oh Crap. I just realized I am two episodes behind on Dance Moms. Sorry. I’m catching up now. I am not excited about the title of this one. It’s time for pyramid and everyone expects it to go well because they beat Cathy and the Candy Apples the week before. However, there pyramid has everyone on one row except for one top spot. Lord knows the top spot will be Maddie and the last spot will be Nia, so lets just see what happens in the middle.
This week the moms are pushing for a non-lyrical routine. This is nonsense because we know that Abby already has the routine selected. Apparently, the girls were asked to list pros and cons about Jo Jo being on the ALDC dance teams. The girls basically tell her that she is loud and sometimes her timing is off, that she takes things away from other dancers. Jo Jo stands there and takes it. Abby gives her an ALDC jacket and promises to let Jo Jo be on the team for the rest of the season. Spoiler Alert, she went to Australia so she is also on the team for next season. Everyone is on the same line of the pyramid because they all did well on the group dance. Maddie is on the top because she is better than anyone in the whole world.
This week they are going to Philadelphia. This competition critiques the performers live on the stage. The group dance is a musical theatre piece called Decadent Darlings. The three soloists are Maddie with a contemporary solo, Kendall who also has a contemporary solo, with a prop. And Nia has a solo called The Color Purple. If she does not place, she may never see another solo. She should do fine, she has a lot of experience with ethnic dances. BECAUSE THAT IS ALL ABBY EVER GIVES HER!
OMG All the girls carry in Louis bags to the competition. Finally, I have actually seen more than one bag in a scene. This has been driving me nuts.
Nia’s solo is shown first. The category here is age 13-14. I can hear the not so subtle theme in my head “All my life, I’ve had to fight…” as Nia does her dance. The music is weird. The choreography is weird. I don’t get it. Lawd knows I’m a Nia fan, but I am not a fan of this solo. Nia gets positive critique from the judges. This is great. She never gets positive feedback from Abby that’s for sure.
Maddie is shown next, she is dancing in the 11-12 age group. So since she is only 12 she is not in the same group as Nia. Maddie’s solo is called The Mannequin and she is carried out on stage by a guy like a prop. It’s kind of creepy already. It was really good and will win first place. It was a cross between the Chandelier video and the Toy Soldier Dance in The Nutcracker. OMG. One of the judges critiquing Maddie calls her out for bent knees. Abby may erupt. Maddie got suggestions for improvement from both judges that critiqued her. Wait, MADDIE ISN’T PERFECT?
Kendall’s performance was cute. One of the judge says she needs to connect more with the audience. The other judge’s critique was retarded and made no sense.
The group dance was adorable. The judges seemed to love them.
Okay the awards that Abby is going to count are the top five OVERALL performances. Oh shit. We are up to top two and no ALDC has been called yet. That means someone did not place in top five. Please don’t let it be Nia. CRAP second place also went to some other team. They had a score of 297+ out of 300! This competition is no joke. Maddie wins first overall. The group won third overall. The points for these scores are UNREAL. Abby says that the moms are to blame for losing the competition because they did not do a lyrical. She also says no more solos for Nia.
Jill throws Holly under the bus with Abby for no reason other than the script.
I’m going to go ahead and knock the other episode out so, grab a snack for the double feature!
In the next episode, Maddie’s second video with SIA , Elastic Heart was released. There were some idiots who freaked out about Maddie dancing with a grown man. Because Maddie’s video was a duet, Abby is entering 3 duets this week. Because? Whatever. It’s Maddie and Kalani, Jo Jo and Kendall, and Nia and MacKenzie.
TMZ calls Cathy for her response to Maddie’s video. Cathy takes the high road and… oh wait. No she doesn’t. Her quote was, “I almost threw up!” Meanwhile Holly compares Aubrey O’Day to Sia. WTF? Then Holly calls Aubrey O’Day during the group dance rehearsal. This causes a conflict between Holly and Melissa. Then Entertainment Tonight shows up to interview Abby and Maddie. Jill says all these disruptions could cause them to lose to Candy Apples.
Candy Apples has a brand new team. It’s all girl who tried and failed to get on the ALDC team. The moms and dance teachers act like fools. Mike Shouhed is shitfaced. Oh wait, wrong show. But I’m sure somewhere Mike Shouhed is shitfaced.
Kendall and Jo Jo are up first. It was a cute dance. Jo Jo stole the dance. They took a bow out of each other’s hair in the dance. Jo Jo practically snatched Kendall bald-headed. Jill says the dance was cute, but does cute win? We all know the answer is no.
Nia and Mackenzie are up next. Even if they win McKenzie will get the credit. IF they lose, it will be Nia’s fault. This duet was way better than Nia’s solo last week. This should place high.
Maddie and Kalani’s duet was lovely. As expected. The will likely win.
The group dance was good. But it wasn’t anything special. There were too many props and the premise wasn’t really clear. The judges may be wondering WTF the deal was with the candelabra and then noose etc. Candy Apples certainly has an opportunity to beat ALDC this week. The Candy Apples group dance looked just like an ALDC group dance without the Maddie feature. They could win.
Kendall and JoJo get third in duets. Nia and MacKenzie came in second. Kalani and Maddie take first.
ALDC group gets first place and Candy Apples gets third place. Cathy thinks they were robbed. I agree to an extent. Cathy trashes Jo Jo and Kendall. Next week Cathy is going to try again. And the ALDC will be without Maddie again.
I was soooo glad that the tone of the show was back to moderate. The interactions between the moms and with Cathy were jabs versus knock down fights (and no megaphone). For some reason I was very taken with Maddie and Nia. First Maddie, I watch with focused dancer and when interviewed how humble and confident she is. You forget that she is still a fun loving kids. She got excited about going to Hollywood, was spinning Mack Z around, and later met each dancer as they came off stage. She seems to truly love her time with the team in the dance studio.
I watched the last 3-4 episodes again and was very impressed with Nia work in the group numbers. In some of them she was very visible as she was in the middle. She always shows me that she knows her limits as a dancer but is confident in what she can do. She has the unique skill to block out the fights between Holly and Abby, and not get down with the results of her solos. She is a real professional and takes on the next dance with all her heart. Has anyone notice that there is less yelling at Nia regarding her dance skills.
Kendall and Jojo – I did not see much in this dance. As always both girls looked great. Just a thought, if one dancer was graceful and the other was doing (sorry folks) the hurky-jerky moves of the Mannequin dance and they switched styles during the dance it could have been AMAZING (that was a Jill comment).
Nia and Mack Z – Nia was the star in this dance. The contrast between Nia’s strong persona and Z’s graceful persona was on point. Nia used her face and powerful body movements to make this dance the best it could be. I was glad for both of them to win their age category and get 2nd overall.
Maddie and Kalani – Best dancers, best dance. Of course this was setup by the comment in the audience. My guess is that one of the staff yelled at M and K to get them to look at the camera. This is why I love DM’s because it is truly reality TV. We know that the video was released 10 weeks ago, was controversial, and was the hot topic at dance competitions.
Group Dance – Did not connect with me. Abby kept saying you need to act. Were the girl’s lovely, yes. Did the girls show dance skills, yes. Did the girls demonstrate acting skills, NO.
Note – There is a video of Nia (with an appearance from Jojo) doing her new song in Melbourne on March 20th.
I love Nia. I will have to re-watch, but I kind of think Nia is getting less criticism because Abby is “shunning” her.
I also admire all the girls with their (seemingly) sincere support of each other.
I can’t wait until Maddie ditches Abby and the show ends with Abby inhaling cheetos in her car. Ha ha ha!
ROLFMAO at the random Mike is shitfaced comment.
It’s a test to see if Xanadude reads my Dance Moms recaps. 🙂
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 7:28 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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I may not read them as you type them, but I read them 🙂
It was interesting to watch DM and then watch the UK version. First off, they are allowed to use actual recognizable songs. Second, the kids are actual students and not competibots. But the best is that the mothers are not camera pretty, but crank up the cunt satchel factor to 11, and not in the passive aggressive US way – its physically aggressive with lots of closed captioned swearing. AND YET, the Abby-manque (look up “manque”- its a good vocab word, esp when dealing with Bravo HWs, who are all drag queen manques, but I digress) makes a point NOT to make out her anger on the kids. Even after the team loses, she compliments the kids, says she is proud of their hard work, and next week they will work harder and on specific things. She tolerates none of the moms nonsense, but even after suspended a mother, made a point to not say anything bad abut the mom in front of the kid or hold the kid responsible for the moms bad behavior.
Unlike Abby.
Meanwhile, Mike is shitfaced.
I am sort of fangirling out over XanaDude acknowledgement of me on my own blog. I’m off to bed happy now. And shall return later like tomorrow… /swoon.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 9:29 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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Xanadude: you liked melbourne? It was so pathetic watching a competition of 4 groups in that tiny room with their terrible, shakey dancing… it was too low rent for me.
I can’t Stanton the snarky look on Abby’s face after Nia dances. It’s the same way she used to look at Chloe last year. She will smile and clap after Maddie or Mackenzie. But never looks pleased with Nia even when she’s done well. Cathy’s group dance was much better in my opinion. But I knew it wouldn’t win. It will next week though cause Maddie is not there so the lose will be blamed on that.
I must agree Cheychey, I was so hoping Cathy’s group would win. I was hoping all the dances for the ALDC would lose.
I notice Cathy and her also reject moms criticizing Abby’s choreography. That’s funny, ’cause the last thing Cathy choreographed was a mermaids dance in season 2, and Vivi was used as a prop. What is with Cathy’s make up? She looks like she is a vampire extra from True Blood. Notice the face and neck don’t match?
This show seems soooo overly staged and scripted to me. Like more than usual for a reality show. They seemed to even get Kendall in on the snark deriding Jojo for being from NEBRASKA. (Ewwwie) that makes me mad. Pay the adults to act like fools but let the kiddies do their thing and just dance. At least I wanna believe Kendall is a little angel and would never badmouth her fellow dancers. I do love the dancing though. The rest of it though is just ridiculous. I am really missing the reality in my reality tv these days. 🙁
Also, did Abby get gastric bypass? She’s losing a ton of weight!
I know this show is fake, BUT, if it was real, I would have this to say to Cathy:
Try googling Sia’s background, and her lyrics. If you do, then the videos will make sense, and you will see how artfully they are done. The sets, the choreography, and especially the costumes make perfect sense.
Maybe you keep losing because your hate is clouding your artistic sensibilities?
Cathy is losing competitions in the scripted reality narrative that is Dance Moms. Really, the competition parts of the show are at best highly edited portions of either noncompetitive or soightly attended portions of a recital and at worst entirely staged.
And it just bothers me that either Abby hasn’t had her buildings exterior painted in all these years OR Lifetime has not updated their interstitials in all this time.
Meanwhile, MISF.
damn autocorrect.
MISD. although F could work as well I guess.
I keep thinking her damn studio looks like a dump.
It would be awesome if Abby went all Black Swan and the moms were all, “The girls need to practice! Where is Abby?”
I know I’m gonna get slayed for saying this but here goes. I know it’s prudish so I’m gonna own it ahead of time. I understand the artistic value of Sia’s video. But as the mother of girls in that same age group who have taken dance classes, if their dance teacher was to ask them to be in a duet with a grown man where both were in nuditards with her legs wrapped around his neck it would tell her to kick rocks. I have read Sia’s interpretation of the video and understand that it was in no way meant to look sexual in any way. But I think sometimes we can go to far in the name of art where kids are concerned.
I think you have to separate nudity from sexuality when it comes to art…and breastfeeding. /MISF
The nude costuming represents vulnerability. It has nothing to do with sex.
I agree the costumes are nude in color therefore exposed in an artistic way a concept to mature for a child but that’s just my opinion. But the video did one thing and that’s get people talking and opened dialogue. So I guess it did it’s job. I really don’t find it offensive. I just wouldn’t do it for my kids. I do understand what she was going for and can respect that. Art is all about pushing boundaries it’s just a fine line when children are involved.
Just like CheyChey said, I know ill get slayed, too, but HELL NO. Would never let my child do that, especially with a guy who has had a highly publicized strange breakdown over the last year. Actually, any guy, no, they wouldn’t be allowed. Those unitards represent whatever, but their bodies are still way too close for comfort. Someone else’s kid can take that on.
The video just didn’t sit right with me, yes I read about Sia, her background, the obtuse meaning of the video, and her own point that it was largely intended for the viewer to find their own meaning in it. I read editorials on both sides, I love art, I see both sides of the controversy, etc all day long… it just gave me the heebie jeebies. (I don’t really get the heebie jeebies very often, as the saying bugs me.) 😉
I see both sides, too. I hated the first video when TT blogged about it. And my comment on that blog clearly states how disgusted I was. Now, it’s my favorite video.
Everyone has a right to their own feelings about it. That’s what Art is all about. I respect everyone’s opinion on this, and will not slam or try to persuade.
I love nia, and I know she’s a kid.. but she seems to be developing a very muscular build… the kind that doesn’t look graceful doing ballet, but would be amazing at hiphop or acrobatics… I think she should get into martial arts or play volleyball.
I don’t watch the show just read the recaps and comments for entertainment….and of course expanding my voculabary. Thank you Xanadude.
Would it be nice if Chloe, Brooke and Paige went to Cathy’s to dance and compete against the ALDC. Abby would lose her mind!
I would love to see it especially if they won. Maybe they need to join candy apples new group wouldn’t that put a Abby in pickle. Then we could still see them dance again as well. It would be the ultimate revenge to make Cathy’s team stronger and more competitive against Abby’s.
I laughed so hard when Cathy squeeled in breathless excitement that TMZ came a calling. Never mind that the reason for calling was to get a comment on one of Abby’s kids. I think that was kinda lost on her though. Lol