For the past six years that "Dance Moms" has been airing, it is safe to say that Abby Lee Miller's dancers have won nearly every competition they've been to. Granted, the dancers of the Abby Lee Dance Company are very gifted and talented, Abby has a much different tactic up her sleeve other than just choosing the best of the best to add to her team.
So what is Abby Lee Miller's deep dark secret to winning nearly every dance competition?
A lot of fans have already noticed what the Lifetime dance coach's secret is to winning just by watching the show.
So I guess it's not too much of a secret, but it's a tactic that has popped up many times throughout the entire series. Of course, Abby wants the best, the most determined, and the ones who are most willing to work, but what she's really looking for is all of these qualities in the younger dancers who, because of their age, compete in the mini division portion of the competition.
Notice how when her dancers reach around 13 or 14-years-old, she stops giving them so much attention and starts looking for younger dancers, and how she's never looking for teens to add to her team. This is because if she has older dancers, she has to place them in a higher age group at competitions.
At dance competitions when you enter a group, the age of the group is determined by the average age of all the dancers.
So even though Abby has Kalani Hilliker, who is 16-years-old, on her junior elite team, by adding Maesi Caes, Elliana Walmsley, and Lilliana Ketchman who are of or near mini age, it lowers the average age immensely. If Abby didn't have the minis, she would have to enter her group into the teen division rather than the junior division.
How does this help Abby's team win dance competitions?
The difference between the junior division and the teen division is a big one, meaning, when entered into the teen division, it is much harder to win. If Abby can pull a few minis and throw them into her junior elite team, it puts the team in the junior division rather than the teen division, thus making it a whole lot easier to win considering they'll be against 9 to 11-year-olds rather than 12 to 15-year-olds.
Is this cheating? Technically it isn't, but Abby Lee Miller definitely knows what she's doing by casting minis onto her team.
We have seen her do this ever since the beginning when she wouldn't let Payton Ackerman onto the team because she was, at the time, 14 and very tall, while the rest of the girls in the group were around 8 to 11-years-old and very short. But once those girls reached around 11 to 12-years-old, she started hunting for those minis to throw in to keep the group out of the teen division.
All of this goes along with the claims by the mothers that Abby doesn't train the girls beyond the junior division and that she holds them back. Why train them when you can just manipulate the game to keep your teen dancers competing in the junior division against younger dancers?
