Dance Moms Cast Says Reunion Was ‘Healing’ and ‘Therapeutic’ 

The Dance Mothers forged as soon as left their strikes on the dance flooring, and now they’re leaving their feelings out on a reunion stage.

Lifetime enlisted the OG actuality stars — save for Nia Sioux, Maddie Ziegler and Mackenzie Ziegler — to return for a particular sit-down and revisit their collective Dance Mothers tenure.

“I sort of closed it out, blocked it out of my thoughts. So I used to be like, ‘OK, I’ve to return and give it some thought and speak about it. Do I actually wish to do this?’” Brooke Hyland solely instructed Us Weekly forward of the Lifetime premiere. “However I used to be like, ‘It’ll be therapeutic, it’ll be therapeutic. We must always do it.’ And Chloe [Lukasiak] was saying this yesterday, but when we didn’t go, folks have been simply going to speak about us regardless. So at the very least we will be there to talk up for ourselves and voice our opinion and the way we felt and why we did what we did in these moments.”

Brooke and her sister, Paige Hyland, have been two of the unique forged members on Dance Mothers, which aired between 2011 and 2017. The present adopted the junior elite competitors workforce — additionally consisting of Maddie, Mackenzie, Nia and Chloe — at Abby Lee Miller’s eponymous dance firm in Pittsburgh. Brooke, now 26, and Paige, now 23, left the workforce in 2014 earlier than Kendall Vertes, Kalani Hilliker and JoJo Siwa finally took their spots on the squad.

In response to Kalani, 23, Lifetime tried to reconvene the troops for a reunion a number of instances to no avail.

“They only reached out to us and stated, ‘Would you have an interest?’ And I really feel like now’s a superb time as a result of we’re all loads older and we’re all adults and we are able to all have grownup conversations,” Kendall, 21, added. “So I feel if not now, it most likely would’ve by no means occurred, solely as a result of our lives are solely getting busier, and so fortunately it labored out.”

Kendall additional famous that they revisited many traumatic present moments in the course of the reunion particular.

“Loads of [the] reminiscences I’ve locked away as a result of a whole lot of them are trauma or one thing that I don’t wish to speak about,” Kendall, who joined the present throughout season 2, stated. “So I feel that [was] the toughest half. We will all say it was bodily and mentally draining after filming it. I imply, as a lot as we had enjoyable, clearly, it was actually arduous to must look again in your childhood and be like, ‘Wow, that was not a traditional childhood.’”

Brooke and Paige, in the meantime, weren’t all the time on board with returning for the reunion after their season 4 exit.

“We by no means had a voice on the present,” Paige defined. “So I really feel like to have the ability to say what we wish and present the world who we at the moment are was essential as a result of if we didn’t, they might’ve made their very own narrative about us.”

The Dance Mothers ladies have been joined on the reunion by their respective mothers: Kelly Hyland, Jill Vertes, Kira Girard, Christi Lukasiak and Jessalyn Siwa. The reunion was a uncommon time for all the women and their dad and mom to get collectively. (Dance teacher Abby Lee, in the meantime, didn’t seem on the TV particular.)

“How we keep in contact is thru our group chat,” Brooke defined to Us. “We’ll ship movies right here and there, but it surely’s arduous. All of us reside in numerous cities and all have very totally different lives and busy ones. We attempt to meet up once we are collectively or in the identical metropolis, but it surely doesn’t occur usually, sadly. However we’re nonetheless speaking behind the scenes.”

Dance Mothers: The Reunion premieres on Lifetime Wednesday, Might 1, at 8 p.m. ET.

With reporting by Aileen Bergin