On last night’s episode, a Broadway casting agent traveled from New York City all the way to Abby Lee’s dance studio in Pittsburgh to attend their annual dance showcase. It put everyone on edge, particularly Abby, who turned into Corky St. Clair, demanding more effort, more time, more rehearsal, and more money out of the moms in order to make this production the best it could be. She even required that the moms put on a dance performance for the casting agent, which made no sense, really. One of the moms—the best dancer of the bunch—dropped out of the number at the last minute because it conflicted with her PhD graduation ceremony, leading another mom to scream, “Do you guys realize we’re dancing tomorrow night!?” Which was very much like when Parker Posey yells, “It’s the day of the show, y’all,” after Johnny Savage quits the play. Corky took Johnny’s role in the play, and likewise, the moms tried to get Abby to fill in for the absent mom, but Abby said, “I don’t even dance to my own choreography, let alone someone else’s.” And then she mentioned some bullshit about not being able to do it because of insurance purposes.
The casting agent also went to the studio for one-on-one auditions with the girls, but Abby was disgusted with their lack of reading comprehension when it came time to recite monologues. But as one mom put it (while laughing), Abby always told them that dance comes before school, so the girls aren’t necessarily spending a lot of time working on their reading skills.