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Lennon Torres is an advocate and former competitive dancer, who rose to fame as a child star on Lifetime’s Dance moms. In a unique essay for Weekly USLennon looks back at her experiences as a competitive dancer and on reality television and accuses the show and industry of ongoing child abuse. Us has reached out to Dance moms star Abby Lee Miller and the production company of the series for comments but not heard back at the time of publication.
It’s been three years since a story broke that The Dance Mega Company breaks the floor productions open for child abuseAnd I have still haven’t seen the progress needed to ensure that these atrocities stop forever. As a former cutting man of the innumerable conventions and competitions of the floor, the news that breaks a pool in my stomach and triggered a reflective walk through some of my own experiences during my dance career. In fact, I am depressed, but not surprised, of seeing that new dance competitions Continue to pop up. And even less surprisingly that the same person who built the reproachful culture, abuse reported by the Associated Press, is the trademark owner of the new competition. This continues to create mature environments for abuse.
Competition dance in the United States is indigenous exploitative and the industry is bigger than ever, as young dancers across the country are building towards this summer’s dance awards, a national competition held in Las Vegas. I have no doubt that customs with young children will wear close to nothing, with covered cosmetics, and perform provocative choreography on stage. But what I am very interested in unveiling is that the inappropriate choreography is just the tip of the iceberg.
I filmed Dance moms During my early years and spending most of my adolescence as a competitive dancer. He was the norm left without an adult guardian in casinos, hotels and convention centers, spending time with fellow dancers of all ages or even older choreographers. Dance moms Nationalists in 2013 Pulls out to me. I can close my eyes and still smell the old, cigarette-delivery hallways and template rooms in New Orleans. I remember that we were close to Bourbon Street because our choreographer and one of the moms went out to party some of the nights, leaving her son in the care of my mother.
On one of the previous nights, we decided to stay in as a team, kicking back in a room with our choreographer and the dance mother he went out with the same week. The two adults in the room smoked cigarettes in a hotel without smoking. I remember being scared that we’re going to struggle with the security of the hotel, while also wrapping my brain trying to find out how not to smell like cigarette smoke when I went back to my room.
The cast Dance Moms has mixed feelings about how their former dance teacher Abby Lee Miller treated them on the series. “I think there are many things I don’t agree with whether Abby did as a dance teacher,” Kalani Hiliker, now a dance teacher, told ourselves only weekly ahead (…)
That evening continued at a similar speed, with a few Instagram posts asking for the choreographer hoping to win more followers and evil -the name, something most of us had children from the show. TApparently ancers who travel, on and off TV, have experienced something similar to this. Whether after hours in a hotel dancing room teaches the combinations to be learned the following day, or in the choreographer’s hotel room you assist, we were often left to feel that opportunities could be missed if we could “hang in,” fit in or without boosting the choreographer’s popularity by posting on Instagram. In the worst scenarios, lots of dancers experienced sexual abuse. Looking at middle schoolchildren I am around as an adult now, I can say with a 100 percent assurance that much of what I – and many of my friends – tested as a child dancer is unacceptable.
Earlier the same season of Dance momsI had the opportunity to compete in a duo with my fellow team, an opportunity I remember not to be delighted because more time on stage means more time in hostile practice environments. After a long week of rehearsals, and many tears, my duo partner – now a dancer for Sabrina Carpenter – and I was ready to perform a duo on the theme of our father and son. I was the Father.
I came off stage and remembered feeling proud of the performance. That reality was crushed when my mother told me she heard guidance Dance moms. Abby Lee MillerSay I look like a pedophile, right after the routine is over. And he went further, saying that the duo was inappropriate. I remember feeling ill to my stomach, knowing that I have just been called one of the worst things you can call someone of any age, at the age of 13. And that flying on TV to the world could see it. Fortunately, that was not included in the final edit, and, by random, is one of the chapters conveniently left away from HuluBut the effect was still stuck with me and is often one of the first things I think about when remembering my time on the show. That and the fact that I was encouraged to stage a “romance” between me and one of the other Costars, triggering a host of conversations about my sexuality before I was ready to have that conversation myself.
Who is at the top of the pyramid? Jojo Siwa, Maddie Ziegler and more stole the spotlight on dance mothers – and their parents were not afraid to bring the play. The Lifetime Reality Series performed for the first time in 2011 and followed the Junior Elite competition team Abby Lee as they practiced and performed thorough new customs (…)
I am not trying to sink the entire dance industry and prevent children from being able to artistically and independently express themselves from their parents. I also don’t say that Dance momsOr even the specific people referred to, are the only villains in my story. However, there is a more question that we have to ask for ourselves: Why is the first instinct of one of the largest Famous Dance Teachers To see two children dancing together in a sexy manner?
I asked myself the same question and decided to write this. I consider myself retired in terms of my dance career, but as I remember much of my childhood through a child sexual exploitation lens, and the work I do Heat InitiativeI’m disgusted. Our children deserve better, and dance deserves better.
If you or someone you know are experiencing child abuse, call or text the Help Help Line at 1-800-422-4453.
