[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
It’s been a few years since the world saw the fierce, pint-sized dancers of Dance Moms twirling and fighting their way across Lifetime’s small-screen stages in their youthful primes. But now, even more of the show’s BTS drama is coming to light.
In her new and deeply personal memoir Bottom of the Pyramid, former Dance Moms fan favorite Nia Sioux has come forward with shocking allegations of racism against former dance teacher Abby Lee Miller.
Nia, now 24 and thriving as an influencer, performer, and model, isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to what she claims she endured on the Abby Lee Dance Company’s competition team back in its reality TV heyday from 2011 through 2017.
Of course, as you might recall, racism accusations swirling around Dance Moms first came to a head in 2020 when Abby Lee apologized for insensitive remarks — but Nia was NOT mentioned in that apology. And now, here we are…
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In her book, which hit newsstands on Tuesday, Sioux claimed Miller made racially insensitive remarks during filming and created a very difficult environment that chipped away at her confidence and identity. In the book, Sioux recalled a disturbing on-camera moment from Season 2 when Miller criticized her hair. The former child star wrote:
“Abby told me that I needed to fix my hair because it looked awful. She said — on camera, no less — ‘It’s like a log coming out of the side of her head.’”
Even worse, Nia claims comments like that were NOT isolated. Off-camera, the dance teacher allegedly took her ignorance a step further one day when she asked the little girl:
“Don’t you just wish you had white-girl hair?”
Uh, WTF?! Seriously, who says that? And to a child, no less??
But even though she was so young back then, Nia remembers standing her ground! She wrote:
“I was taken aback by her question, but I responded, ‘No.’ ‘Oh really?’ she said. ‘Like, you don’t think it would be much easier?’ Again, I told her no. It didn’t matter what she said — I knew I didn’t want to be white. Unlike the other exchange, this one never aired.”
As if those exchanges weren’t bad enough, Nia claimed Miller also made repeated comments about her body, criticizing everything from her “muscular legs” to her thighs, butt, feet, and overall shape. She alleged Abby Lee perpetuated stereotypes about Black dancers and used them as justification for constant ridicule, too. The dancer-turned-author wrote:
“She would say, ‘Well, you know your people have flat feet.’ This struck me as ignorant; I know plenty of Black dancers with perfectly arched feet! Yet, despite the fact that she actually believed this ridiculous generalization was true, she’d threaten punishment for my perceived shortcoming. ‘If you don’t point that foot,’ she’d warn, ‘I’m gonna come out there and break it.’”
Seriously?! “Your people”?? That’s BEYOND despicable.
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Nia also added that the now-60-year-old dance teacher’s seemingly over-involved focus on the innocent little girl’s body went far beyond dance critiques. She recalled:
“At one point in Season 6, Abby talked about the size of my thighs in the dressing room. She implied that I was fat because I was not working hard enough. This was just one of many comments Abby made to create an illusion that I was lazy or just not strong as a dancer.”
According to Nia, Miller even opted to choose and choreograph routines with disturbing racial undertones. Her first solo, titled “Nattie of the Jungle,” was about a child raised by monkeys. Uhhhh, yeah. seriously. That storyline was deeply offensive, Nia now recognizes as she looks back on it in the book with hindsight. No kidding!
And that’s not all! In addition to the release of her memoir, Sioux appeared on Page Six Radio this week to talk more about the emotional toll of reliving these memories while writing the book.
Speaking to hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real, she said:
“We’re very candid about that in this book, which I thought was really powerful. Something that I cover a lot in the book is just like how I was seen. I was seen as the weakling, the bad dancer. Some of the things that were said about me, they tried to make the narrative like the little black girl couldn’t dance, and that was the narrative that they ran with.”
And she went on to say:
“They had seven seasons to turn that narrative around, and they never did. They failed to do so. And that’s part of the reason why I had to write the book, because that’s not the whole truth… I started in one place, but by Season 7, by the end, I was a completely different dancer, a completely different person. I wasn’t weak. I was a very strong dancer.”
That’s just brutal. And Nia’s honesty cuts SO deep. Especially for fans who watched her grow up on television under such intense scrutiny. We honestly can’t even imagine.
To cap things off, the dancer admitted during the interview that when she first joined Miller’s team, she was filled with excitement and admiration… but slowly, it all eroded. She said:
“Just the things people would say, the negativity, the toxic environment, like it definitely got to me, especially by the end. I was definitely kind of burnt out.”
Sadly, that makes perfect sense. Especially after hearing all this.
For the record, Nia says she has no relationship with Miller today. And after reading her recollections, it’s not hard to understand why. (BTW, Page Six noted that neither reps for Miller nor Lifetime responded when asked about Sioux’s allegations.)
For so many of us, Dance Moms was a fun guilty pleasure for years! But Nia’s memoir is another knock against the show, and should force yet another reckoning over what was allegedly happening behind the scenes.
All we can do at this point is send ALL the love and light for what she reportedly had to endure.
To learn more about civil rights issues, check out https://www.splcenter.org/.
[Image via Dance Moms/YouTube/MEGA/WENN]
The post <i>Dance Moms</i> Alum Nia Sioux Accuses Abby Lee Miller Of Awful Racism In Memoir appeared first on Perez Hilton.