A mother and daughter from Fairfax, Virginia, are about to dance their way into TV stardom.
Corinne Bolno and her 12-year-old daughter Lily are featured as main cast members on Lifetime’s new reality series “Dance Moms: A New Era,” which drops all 10 episodes this Wednesday on Hulu.
“I’m very excited to watch it,” Lily told WTOP. “I just think it’s going to be so cool to see us on TV.”
“We’re gonna be watching just with our immediate family, then tonight we’re having a big watch party with our friends,” Corinne told WTOP. “We’re excited, but we’re also scared because we haven’t seen it yet, so we don’t know what’s going to be on it. We don’t know what’s going to be included because we shot 40 hours a week.”
Corinne grew up in Fairfax where her mother was a teacher at Barbara Sheppard Academy of Dance.
“She had three studios throughout the ’80s and ’90s here in Fairfax, so it was a big presence here,” Corinne said.
After Lily was born in 2012, she began dancing at age 3 and competitively dancing at age 8, training at Buffa’s in Fairfax and Powerworx in Chantilly before winning the Nexstar National Dance Competition in Sandusky, Ohio.
“I just got really interested in it during COVID and decided I just wanted to work really, really hard and I just enjoyed it,” Lily said. “I usually train in jazz, lyrical, tap, hip-hop, contemporary, ballet, afro, all sorts of styles.”
Lily loved watching the original “Dance Moms” when it aired on Lifetime for eight seasons from 2011-2019.
“I watched a lot of the episodes and I actually really enjoyed the show,” Lily said. “I’m a big fan. I obviously love the dancing and I loved all the characters. It was really inspiring to me to see those girls and how hard they worked all those years and I wanted to be just like them.”
Lily’s chance would arrive when she enrolled last year at the Studio Bleu Dance Center in Ashburn, Virginia, run by Gloria “Glo” Hampton, the esteemed Teacher of the Year who was previously featured on “Dance Moms.”
“Shortly after we switched to Studio Bleu, the owner approached us about auditioning for the show,” Corinne said. “Gloria Hampton had been on the show previously with her daughter Kaeli Ware as Abby [Lee Miller]’s replacement. … Now we have this full-circle moment where Glo is the new choreographer and the new coach, while Kaeli, her daughter, is now a professional ballerina who comes back and helps with the choreography.”
The 10-episodes were filmed over four months at various dance competitions across the country.
“Every week is a different competition,” Corinne said. “Every Friday, we would get on a bus and travel to a different competition in a different state. At the end was our nationals down in Miami, Florida — and that’s the finale.”
What was Lily’s favorite part of filming the series?
“For me, the most fun part was obviously learning a new dance every week, I just thought it was a really good challenge and it was a lot of fun,” Lily said. “Also, getting to be with my friends because we were all close before, but definitely as the 10 weeks went on, we definitely grew closer.”
What was the most challenging part?
“We had to learn a different dance every single week,” Lily said. “We would learn one or two dances in two days then competed on a Saturday. There are kids who have known their dances for a full year and they’re competing against us, but we only learned it in like two days, and that would happen every single week.”
In her spare time, Lily is an ambassador for Dance Hope Cure fighting childhood cancer.
“Lily and I became involved with Dance Hope Cure, which is an arm of the Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation,” Corinne said. “They spread awareness for childhood cancer, raise funds to help fund grants to fund cures for childhood cancer, as well as participate in CureFest, which is actually coming up in September, it’s the annual childhood cancer event on the National Mall.”
After the world binge watches “Dance Moms,” the sky is the limit for Lily’s career.
“I do want to become a professional dancer someday,” Lily said. “I would also love to be in other TV shows, other acting jobs and I would also love to be in movies.”
