‘Dance Moms’ star Nia Sioux accuses ‘ignorant’ Abby Lee Miller of racism in new memoir

“Dance Moms” star Nia Sioux accused her “ignorant” former dance teacher, Abby Lee Miller, of making racist remarks while filming the hit Lifetime show.

The dancer — who starred on the series from 2011 to 2017 — made the shocking claims in her new book, “Bottom of the Pyramid.”

Sioux, 24, claimed Miller, 60, criticized her braids during filming for Season 2.

“Abby told me that I needed to fix my hair because it looked awful. She said — on camera, no less — ’It’s like a log coming out of the side of her head,’” she wrote in the book, which came out Tuesday.

The influencer wrote of another incident — this time not captured by Lifetime cameras — where Miller allegedly asked, “Don’t you just wish you had white-girl hair?”

“I was taken aback by her question, but I responded, ‘No,’” Sioux wrote. “‘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.” 

The controversial comments didn’t end there, as the former reality star went on to claim the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company owner also criticized her body.

Sioux wrote that Miller “believed Black people were physically predisposed to having flat feet,” as she was often heard on camera criticizing her “bad feet.”

“She would say, ‘Well, you know your people have flat feet,’” Sioux penned of the alleged incident. “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 generalization 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.’” 

The model continued to claim she was criticized for her “thighs,” “butt” and “muscular legs.”

“At one point in Season 6, Abby talked about the size of my thighs in the dressing room,” Sioux wrote in the book. “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.”

Also in the memoir, Sioux claimed many of her solos had racial undertones, which would be featured as a storyline on the Lifetime show.

In one example, Miller titled Sioux’s first solo on the competition team, “Nattie of the Jungle,” which was about a child left in the wild and raised by monkeys.

On Tuesday, Sioux chatted with Page Six Radio about how “painful” specific topics were to write about, including the claims of racism she faced.

“We’re very candid about that in this book, which I thought was really powerful,” Sioux exclusively told hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real.

“Something that I cover a lot in the book is just like how I was seen. I was seen as the weakling, the bad dancer. Some of the things that were said about me… they tried to make the narrative like the little black girl couldn’t dance, and that was the narrative that they ran with.”

Sioux continued to claim, “They had seven seasons to turn that narrative around, and they never did. They failed to do so. And that’s part of the reason why I had to write the book, because that’s not the whole truth. I started in one place, but by Season 7, by the end, I was completely different dancer, a completely different person.”

The influencer added that she “loved” being part of Miller’s competition team in the beginning, but that changed “little by little” as the seasons went on.

“Just the things people would say, the negativity, the toxic, sick environment, like it definitely got to me, especially by the end. I was definitely kind of burnt out.”

Sioux continued that she doesn’t have “any kind of relationship” with Miller today.

Reps for Miller and Lifetime did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

Sioux isn’t the first student from the series to speak out against Miller and her harsh teaching tactics.

Lifetime held “Dance Moms: The Reunion” in 2024 with Sioux’s co-stars Chloe Lukasiak, JoJo Siwa, Brooke and Paige Hyland, Kendall Vertes and Kalani Hilliker. Sioux and show standouts Maddie and Kenzie Ziegler did not appear on the special.

Lukasiak said on the reunion of Miller pitting her against the eldest Ziegler sister on the series, “I always thought I wasn’t enough. Like, in every single way.”

Miller claimed on the “Just B with Bethenny Frankel” podcast in 2024 that she wasn’t invited to the reunion because her former students couldn’t “face” her.