Former Dance Moms star Nia Sioux has accused dance instructor Abby Lee Miller of racist behaviour during the filming of the popular series.
Sioux, who starred on the series from 2011 to 2017, made the allegations in her new memoir, Bottom of the Pyramid, recalling incidents that were both aired and left on the cutting room floor.
The 24-year-old recalled a moment from Season 2 of the series, where Miller said her braided hair looked “like a log coming out of the side of her head”.
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Nia Sioux was nine when she joined Dance Moms in 2011. (9Now)
Sioux also revealed an unaired incident, claiming Miller asked “Don’t you just wish you had white-girl hair?”
“I was taken aback by her question, but I responded, ‘No,'” Sioux wrote in the book.
“‘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.”
Nia Sioux at the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards in February 2025. (Getty Images for The Recording A)
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Sioux recalled solo dances under Miller’s training had racial undertones. For example, her first solo, before the show, was to a song called ‘Nattie of the Jungle’ about a child lost in the wild and raised by monkeys.
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She also alleged Miller made multiple comments about her body.
”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 generalisation 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,'” Sioux wrote, adding that she remembered comments “criticising my thighs, my butt, and even my muscular legs”.
The girls from Dance Moms. (Nine)
“At one point in season six, 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. Viewers and some of my castmates ate that up without question,” Sioux claimed.
Abby Lee Miller in Dance Moms season 2. (9Now)
Sioux wrote that her last interaction with Miller was in 2018, after Miller was diagnosed with cancer.
Despite their tense relationship, she asked to visit Miller who refused the olive branch.
Sioux also opted not to take part in a 2024 Dance Moms reunion series, Raised On Dance Moms.
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