Welcome back to my series, Dance Moms Uncovered. This week I'm going to be answering quite possibly the most commonly requested video idea. Are the Dance Moms competitions fake?
I have found evidence online which suggests that some of these competitions are much faker than you would expect. So let's just say that there's definitely more to the competitions than the producers care to show. Feel free to share your thoughts on the following evidence. Today's first piece of evidence are the competitions that the ALDC was banned from. In season one of Dance Moms, the ALDC was banned from two different competitions because the competition directors felt manipulated and misled by the producers.
The first one they were banned from was in season one episode two, when the ALDC attended Starquest. The competition director Michael Ian Seder revealed in an interview with TMZ that they banned the ALDC for two reasons. The first reason was that they made it look like Maddie and Chloe were competing against each other, when in reality they were in different age categories. And secondly, the producers led him to believe that the show was about young girls in the dance world, not a drama-filled reality show about their mothers fighting. In season 1 episode 9, the ALDC attended Thunderstruck, however they were registered under the name Collins Avenue, not ALDC.
Unsurprisingly, Thunderstruck also banned the ALDC for this deception. 2. Competitions owned by the same company. This is the longest and most interesting piece of evidence.
I have discovered that some competitions were owned by the same people. Let me explain. First, we have the Star Dance Alliance competitions, which include the following competitions. Star Power, Wild Dance Intensive, Nexstar, Believe and Imagine.
I personally believe that the producers decided to attend as many of these differently named competitions as possible, to make it seem like the Dance Moms cast are attending a greater variety of competitions. While this is a clever trick used by the producers, I do still believe that these competitions are legitimate. The company also owns other competitions that weren't featured on the show, they existed both before and after Dance Moms, and are all listed openly on the Star Dance Alliance website.
And in case you've forgotten some of the most important things that happened at the Star Dance Alliance competitions, here are some of them. Secondly, there's Sheer Talent, who also owns Devotion to Dance. Gianna Martello is actually listed as one of the faculty members of Sheer Talent on their website, which explains why they have such great ties with the ALDC.
The Sheer Talent and Devotion to Dance Instagram accounts are also filled with clips of the Dance Moms cast. So, although they did continue running after Season 7, it's clear that Sheer Talent somewhat favors them. Once again, I'll show you some significant things that happened at these competitions. Next, we have all the competitions owned by the founder of Intensity, Jacob Flynn. The competitions associated with Intensity include Powerhouse, Masters of Dance Arts, and Expression.
Abby revealed in an AfterBuzz TV podcast that the producers used to have an agreement with these competitions to host individual events in whichever cities they were going to travel to. However, this stopped when the competition known I didn't want to do it anymore. New Jersey. Every dance competition is intensity.
No, not anymore. Why not anymore? Because last season, it was always intensity.
I know, but the guy that owns intensity, his wife had twins. Oh. So he's busy.
Oh, I bet. Taking care of twins. So he's not just throwing extra competitions in whenever they need them in whatever city. Oh.
And here's a reminder of the important things that happened at the intensity competitions. Then there's Starbound, which also created New York Dance Experience. They are both run by Sandy Coit, however, it seems like New York Dance Experience in particular has been made up for the show.
I say this for several reasons. Most of the judges have previously been on the show, their Facebook page only lists dance moms filming invitationals, and the live critiques seem to be a convenient way to stir up drama for the show. Here are some of the things that happened at Starbound and New York Dance Experience.
Lastly, we have the strangest of them all. The company called Backstage Boss, who owns World Class Talent Experience, Center Stage, Dance Kids USA, Dream National Dance Competition, and Energy. This company was formed in 2013, when Season 3 was being filmed, and the ALDC started visiting fewer and fewer legitimate dance competitions.
Ami said in the AfterBuzz TV podcast that Energy is quite dodgy. It was energy. Oh, I didn't say that, don't go there. Bad, bad, bad competition. Yes, yes, that's what it was.
That's what it was. And shady things happened there. No! Oh boy. And here are some of the significant and also dodgy things that happened at the Backstage Boss competitions.
Now I'm not saying that in all these instances the girls didn't deserve to win, however the timing of these wins and the fact that they're always at Backstage Boss competitions is really weird. And that makes me really sad because I want to see the girls have their victorious moments. The three. How the invitational competitions worked. I discovered exactly how the invitational competitions that the ALDC attended were orchestrated.
Let me note that these are just for the invitational events, and that some of the competitions in earlier seasons were in fact real. Firstly, the producers would pay someone to create a competition for that week. Brandon Pentz'mum Diane took a picture of an email from Abby and uploaded it to Twitter.
It states that Collins Avenue paid a man $10,000 to host a competition. The email was from the 9th of March 2013, right before the ALDC attended the Masters of Dance Arts competition. When the producers pay someone that much money to host a competition, it's quite possible that they might have a say in who wins.
Furthermore, during these invitational competitions, Only a few studios are invited to compete against the ALDC. Back in Season 6, Episode 6, someone who went to the competition claimed that the Mini Group Dance and the Junior Elite Team were the only two group entries in the competition. There were also rumours that sometimes the producers got audience members to sit on stage to make it look like more people competed against the ALDC.
Overall, we can't really trust that the invitational competitions are real in any way. 4. Variety of competitions I went through each season and listed the competitions that the ALDC competed at. And it became pretty clear that after season two, the variety of competitions dropped significantly. And this is what it looks like if you combine the competitions owned by the same company.
As you can see, after season two, the ALDC attempts the same competitions over and over. And these don't even take into account the competitions that I think were completely made up altogether, which are my next pieces of evidence. There are some competitions that seem to have been completely made up by the producers. They don't have a website or any recorded history before the show. These include Innovation, Fierce Dance Competition and Fearless Dance Experience.
If you eliminate these from the list of competitions the ALBC attended, you will see the true variety of competitions on Dance Moms. Once again, I'll show you some significant things that happened at these competitions. While the fakeness of each competition is hard to judge at times, I've done my best to summarise the most important information I found. One thing I know for sure is that I'll be keeping an eye out for these dodgy competitions in Season 8. So what do you guys think? Is everything we thought we knew a lie?
Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye!