Abby Lee Miller

• 1. Introduction

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  Abby Lee Miller, the Pittsburgh dance teacher who became a fixture of reality television, once described what she had parted with in a very particular way. In December 2022, a newspaper reported that she had sold her original Pittsburgh studio for $300,000, and that the building would become a bus lot and a daycare. The following month she answered in an Instagram video. "I didn't sell my name. I didn't sell my brand. I didn't sell my life's work. I sold brick, mortar, cinder blocks and an amazing dance floor that is still in mint condition." Miller was born in 1965 and spent more than four decades teaching and choreographing. Her studio became the setting for the Lifetime series Dance Moms. This documentary asks how a teenager who started a dance team in her mother's studio became a television figure. It asks why some people cheered her and others condemned her. And it asks how a career built on a stage ended with a federal prison term and a very public reckoning.

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• 2. A Studio Family

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  Maryen Lorrain Miller, who lived from 1927 to 2014, taught dance and ran her own studio, and her daughter Abigale grew up inside it. Her father, George L. Miller, known as Salty, worked as a railroad yardmaster and lived from 1927 to 2000. The family lived in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, and young Abby studied at the Maryen Lorrain Dance Studio under her mother's direction. In 1980, at just 14, she formed a dance team at that studio and called it the Abby Lee Dance Company. Six years later, in 1986, she became certified by Dance Masters of America and joined its Pennsylvania chapter, numbered 10. At 22, Miller obtained a loan of $540,000 to build a studio of her own in Pittsburgh. In 1995 she took over her mother's studio and renamed it Reign Dance Productions. Within two decades, television producers would come looking for the classroom she had built.

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• 3. Cameras in the Classroom

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  In 2011, Lifetime began airing Dance Moms, a series that followed Miller and her dance team as they traveled the country to compete. The show held a viewership of 2.16 million during its second season. That success gave Miller her own spin-offs. In 2012 she fronted Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition, which ran for two seasons and 22 episodes. Abby's Studio Rescue followed in 2014 but lasted only seven episodes. That same year, in May, she was a guest judge on Dancing with the Stars. In July she published a book titled Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class. In September she announced that her main studio would move to Los Angeles, while the Pittsburgh location stayed open. Abby Lee Dance Company LA opened in June 2015, just as the series entered its fifth season. In 2016 she even turned up on the fourth-season premiere of The Eric Andre Show.

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• 4. The Critics Push Back

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  By February 2012, the teaching on screen had drawn fire from fellow professionals. Dancers and choreographers Derek Hough and Mark Ballas both posted on Twitter that her methods were abusive. That same month, Dance Masters of America ended her membership. Its national president, Phyllis R. Guy, called the show "a total misrepresentation of our dance educators and their students and is detrimental to the dance profession." Miller defended herself on The View. "Some kids you have to yell at. Some kids you have to take a baseball bat, which is foam rubber by the way, and straighten that knee," she said. Whoopi Goldberg answered by comparing her to Béla Károlyi. Students' mothers and ordinary viewers had complained as well. The complaints later moved into court. In 2014, former cast member Kelly Hyland sued Miller for assault and argued that producers encouraged violence to attract viewers. A related suit for $5 million named Collins Avenue Entertainment and accused it of staging arguments that ended in a fight between Hyland and Miller. Hyland's daughter Paige filed a $5 million emotional distress claim, which was later dropped. The filings listed bullying, a thrown chair, and a student pinched until she bled.

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• 5. A Secret Account

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  Years before the lawsuits, on the 4th of December 2010, Miller had filed for bankruptcy. She owed more than $400,000 in back taxes to the IRS. Federal prosecutors later said she used the bankruptcy as cover for a scheme. On the 13th of October 2015, the Department of Justice indicted her on 20 counts. The government said she had opened a secret bank account between 2012 and 2013 to hide income from masterclasses, television deals and merchandise sales. She also failed to file required monthly income reports with the bankruptcy court for 13 months. The charges covered bankruptcy fraud, concealment of assets and false declarations, involving some $755,000. Each count carried a possible fine of $250,000, a total of $5,000,000, and the case carried up to five years in prison. She pleaded not guilty in November 2015, and by February 2016 the case had been delayed a fifth time. Soon after the indictment she was also charged with customs fraud over undeclared cash from a Dance Moms Australia master class tour. On the 27th of June 2016, she reached a deal with IRS criminal investigators to plead guilty to reduced charges.

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• 6. One Year and a Day

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  Sentencing was first set for the 11th of October 2016 and then postponed three times. The new dates were the 20th of January 2017, the 24th of February, and finally the 8th of May. On the 9th of May, after a two-day hearing, Miller received one year and a day in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. She also paid a $40,000 fine and a $120,000 judgment, and she gave a DNA sample because of the felony charge. The show had already been shifting around her. In 2016, Aisha Francis temporarily took over choreography as Miller's involvement in teaching and production dwindled. In March 2017 Miller announced on Instagram that she had quit the series. Cheryl Burke came in during production of the seventh season. On the 12th of July she reported to the federal correctional institution in Victorville, California. That month her Los Angeles studio closed for good after only two years. In August, while she was incarcerated, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming premiered with Miller as a NATO scientist named Dr. Bramble. On the 27th of March 2018 she moved to a halfway house in Long Beach, California, and good behavior earned her release on the 25th of May.

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• 7. After Release

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  Miller has never married and has no children. She once said she "loved the studio more than family." Weeks before her release, in April 2018, doctors diagnosed Burkitt lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, following spinal surgery. By September the cancer was in remission, and she began physical therapy to relearn how to walk. In July 2018 she announced that she would return for the eighth season of Dance Moms. A new version, Dance Moms: Resurrection, premiered on Lifetime on the 4th of June 2019. Her Los Angeles studio came back in a far smaller form, with a single dance room and a merchandise shop. On the 4th of May 2020, she said on Instagram that she was leaving both Dance Moms and Lifetime after nine years. Within a month, a different matter would settle whether she could ever return.

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• 8. Summer of 2020

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  On the 2nd of June 2020, Miller posted a black square on Instagram for Blackout Tuesday. She was responding to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. The post prompted Adriana Smith, whose daughter Kamryn danced in season eight, to say that they had left the show because of Miller. Smith recalled a remark she said stayed with her. "I know you grew up in the HOOD with only a box of 8 crayons, but I grew up in the Country Club with a box of 64." On the 3rd of June, another mother, Camille Bridges, accused Miller of treating her daughter Camryn differently because of her race. Bridges described the environment as "extremely hostile" and told E! News that Miller tried to portray Camryn as the poor one on scholarship. Miller deleted the post and apologized on the 4th of June to Kamryn, Adriana and anyone else she had hurt. She wrote that racism can come "not just from hate, but also from ignorance." Smith said she did not find the apology sincere. On the 5th of June, Lifetime cut ties with her and canceled Abby's Virtual Dance-Off, a competition series announced in April. In June 2023, Miller began hosting the Leave It On The Dance Floor Podcast, telling the story of her time on Dance Moms.

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