Normally, one would not expect dance competitions to address gruesome, real-life murders of children. But that is exactly what happened on Dancing mothers. Dance Moms: A New Era faced a heated backlash after doing a number on the disappearance and murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Even though it was decades ago, I don’t think there’s been a cooling off period when it comes to child murder.

In the episode “Glo Don’t Give with Both Hands,” Glo Hampton assigns Ashlan a JonBenet number. She has to portray the murdered six-year-old in a dance number.

“I want you to know everything about her, everything about her family, and everything about her tragic end, okay?” she asks. Her mother then explains exactly what happened to Ramsey. She reveals that Ramsey was kidnapped and murdered.

Ashlan said, “It’s going to be hard to act like a beauty queen. But you’re also going to act like you’re strangled.” She later adds, “Oh my God, this is really not for me, but I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.”

The routine itself is pretty terrible. At the end of the dance routine, Ashlan pretends to strangle herself as she leaves the stage. Many viewers were left scratching their heads, wondering what Dancing mothers thought. Just go to this Reddit forum and you’ll see that viewers were shocked.

“Dance Moms” faces headwind

They found it tasteless.

One wrote: “I find it extremely disturbing to see cases like Jonbenet and Gypsy Rose, which are incredibly public and have had multiple documentaries and films made about them… people blur the lines and forget that these are real children. I don’t think a dance about Jonbenet could ever be in good taste. Simply because there is no happy ending, it just highlights the gruesome murder of a child. They could have easily done a beauty pageant routine without exploiting Jonbenet’s murder.”

Another wrote: “I think it was super tasteless and also somehow had literally nothing to do with the case. They could have made it about beauty pageant kids in general. I think it was just said to stir up controversy like Electricity Dance did in the original’s first season in rural Pennsylvania.”

Another wrote: “The worst part for me was Ashlan’s mom telling her the whole story. It obviously upset her. I couldn’t believe how much Ashlan looked like Jon Benet.”