Glitter, Grit, and Gold Trophies: A Deep Dive into Competitive Dance (with Gary Pate)
Leave It On The Dance Floor
Abby Lee Miller
3.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2025
⏱️ 102 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Leave It On The Dance Floor, Abby sits down with longtime friend and industry icon Gary Pate, founder of Starpower and the Star Dance Alliance. Long before Dance Moms, Gary knew Abby as a fierce competitor and respected studio owner. Together, they stroll down memory lane, talk behind-the-scenes of dealing with the show’s producers, and how the spotlight helped Gary launch even more successful competitions. It’s an unfiltered look at the business behind the sequins—don’t miss it!
Join us each week as we rewatch and recap your favorite moments/episodes of Dance Moms, Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition and Abby’s Studio Rescue spilling behind the scenes secrets, exclusive never-before-seen content and more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Get up, get on the dance |
| 0:02.6 | My world is with my girls. |
| 0:05.6 | Living on the dance floor. |
| 0:11.3 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:12.9 | Welcome back to Leave it on the dance floor. |
| 0:15.2 | I am currently on location in Orlando, Florida. |
| 0:19.2 | And this particular area is beautiful. |
| 0:21.9 | It's called Windermere. |
| 0:23.3 | And I am with Gary Pate. |
| 0:26.8 | Yes, the man, the man of the hour, I'm telling you guys. |
| 0:31.7 | Gary is a mogul. |
| 0:35.1 | He is a dance competition mogul. He got in at the beginning. He created an amazing product. |
| 0:44.0 | With the help of many good people. Well, he's, he's riding the waves like pandemic and back stronger |
| 0:52.4 | than ever and this and that. And you've done it all. and you've done it all and you've done it |
| 0:56.8 | well you've done it the best and so have you I mean we go way back we go we go way we go way |
| 1:04.3 | we go way back I mean what 35 years maybe I know we know we know that you were that much older |
| 1:09.8 | than me though because you look so young oh so stop thank you thank You know that you were that much older than me, though, because you looked so young. |
| 1:11.9 | Oh, stop. Stop. Thank you. Thank you. But when you were probably 25, I thought you were 15. |
| 1:18.1 | I didn't even start Star Power until I was almost 40. Yeah. I mean, 36. 36 years. Yeah, but you had a dance competition first. |
| 1:28.8 | Let's, okay, let's go back. |
| 1:30.5 | So I want to know more about your dance studio. |
| 1:34.3 | And I want to know why you started to go to dancing school. |
... |
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