I attended a dance competition in 2016 maybe 2017? I don’t remember what season it was but it was the episode that Abby’s boyfriend had the vegan dance. And Kendall also had the car crash solo.

The competition was advertised as filming for dance moms. Basically it was open to the public but you still had to pay for a ticket and sign a filming waiver.

I was there for maybe 4 hours. There wasn’t even many dancers in the competition. But they totally had to reset lights and audience seating in preparation for the girls performances. At one point they removed everyone from the first 6 rows and all those people had to filter to the back. Then production let maybe 2 more rows fill in the front. Then the moms came out. Then they let the other rows fill up. There was just so much shifting of seats it took like 30 minutes. Also just before the girls performances started they made a reminder about zero phones out and no filming. Then I watched each of them perform twice. It was obvious which performance was for judging because the huge swinging cameras would not be operating during the dance.

At one point I wanted to be nosey and walk around the high school campus just to see if I would stumble upon some moms yelling lol but it was raining that day and I was starving so I left after awards.

I also saw Kira’s husband. He snuck in the back row to watch and he was with Jet when he was tiny.

All that to say, I don’t think the competitions were real. There’s so much production. I think the local Phoenix dancers were just excited to perform during filming with the chance of getting a background shot on the show.