A trip to the Abby Lee Dance Company meant tears, tutus and grown women fighting over whose eight-year-old deserved the front row.
The 2010s reality show Dance Moms followed an elite group of young dancers — and their dramatic mothers — as they trained and competed under intense pressure.
But the real main event of the Lifetime reality hit was always Abby Lee Miller: a woman who built a career out of ripping apart little girls’ chassés and ranking them best-to-worst on a pyramid every single week.
Some of Miller’s chastising lines included “save your tears for the pillow” and “I wasn’t put on this Earth to make her feel special,” among many others.
Now, nearly seven years after the show ended, the show is getting the parody musical treatment
Titled The Pyramid: An Unauthorized ‘Dance Moms’ Musical, the show now in development all started with a simple question: What if Dance Moms was made into a musical?
That’s what college friends James Stryska and Isabelle Grace Blankenship asked each other while wandering through a Goodwill thrift store in Greensboro, N.C., several years ago.
Now they’re the show’s music and lyrics team, alongside a crew of fellow Dance Moms fans to help them bring the show to life.
What started as a college project turned into their first original song, My Little Kendall, which they posted in 2023 on TikTok. The video racked up more than five million views. The huge response wasn’t just coming from fans. Former Dance Moms cast members showed up in the comments with their support.
“It was a really great feeling,” Blankenship said. “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, Christi’s reaching out, Jill’s reaching out.'”
The viral moment also caught the attention of L.A.-based producer Logan Clark, who worked on Dance Moms during its original run. Tye Blue, director and co-creator of Titaníque, another hit parody musical built around Céline Dion, joined as creative producer.
Scrolling through TikTok, Clark said he stumbled across the video and immediately saw the potential.
“I kind of sat up and I was like, ‘Oh my God … this could actually happen.'” he said, describing himself as the Dance Moms‘ “pseudo-husband” back in the day.
As the show’s talent co-ordinator, he’d often help get the girls where they needed to be, manage schedules and even handle day-to-day emergencies around their homes — like clogged toilets.
For him, a musical made sense. Dance Moms was supertheatrical — a group of talented young dancers, a whole lot of drama and of course, Abby Lee Miller’s pyramid. Miller herself even showed up to an early showcase to offer support.
“Dance Moms was introduced right when social media was taking off,” Clark said. “It kind of ran so everybody else could walk. I think for generations it will stay in pop culture.”
Craving ‘that old school ridiculousness’
And that staying power is real. Long after the cameras stopped rolling, Dance Moms never disappeared. Miller’s jabs became viral sounds on TikTok. Old arguments between moms and kids became clips and new audiences became obsessed with the chaos years after it originally aired. Search for the show on TikTok and you’ll find more than one million videos.
“It’s the perfect kind of show to be clipped for TikTok,” comedian and pop culture critic Ashley Ray said. “You see one weird moment and suddenly you’re asking, ‘Why is this woman yelling at children?’
“I think people sort of crave that old school ridiculousness, that level of drama.”
The show’s stars continue to make headlines, too.
Maddie Ziegler went from Sia’s breakout music-video muse to Hollywood actor, starring in films like My Old Ass and Fitting In.
JoJo Siwa went from a kid-pop star with a multimillion-dollar hair bow empire to a viral personality, shocking fans with her “bad girl” rebrand, claims of originating gay pop and later nabbing a spot on Celebrity Big Brother, where she fell for a Love Island alum.
And Miller stayed in the headlines, too. In 2016, she pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud in Pittsburgh, Pa., and spent eight months in federal prison.
Back to the top of the pyramid
Ray says the show stuck around because it captured something that feels familiar to younger generations on social media: constant competition.
“Every week now, everyone gets to create their own pyramid.”
Whether it’s ranking celebrities, debating who is “flopping” or deciding who deserves the spotlight, Ray said the internet has taken on the same culture of public scrutiny that made Dance Moms so compelling.
The creators behind the new parody musical know audiences will come for the quotes and chaos — and promise them. But they also want to showcase the relationships behind the scenes.
“It’s a love letter,” Blankenship said. “The show is centred around … mother-daughter relationships and the intricacies.”
“We’re not trying to make a show that’s just all jokes,” Stryska added. “These are real people with real experiences.”
The team is documenting their progress on social media and crowdfunding the project, with the goal of taking Dance Moms back to the top of the pyramid and onto the stage.
