“A year ago, I was sitting on my porch with a Flip camera talking about how crazy my dance studio is,” says Christi Lukasiak, cuddling her toddler daughter, Clara, while on break from shooting an episode of the runaway Lifetime Tuesday reality hit “Dance Moms.” “A year later, we’re on national television and heading into our second season!”

Fans recognize the bold, blond 30-something as unofficial leader of the four put-upon mothers united by their daughters’ training at the Pittsburgh-based Abby Lee Dance Company – and the dressings-down they are regularly afforded by the company’s larger-than-life dictator of dance, Abby Lee Miller. When the show debuted last July, the mix of preternaturally talented girls thriving as competitive dancers even as the adults around them regularly lost their minds proved irresistible to everyone from dance-obsessed little girls and love-struck little boys to fellow dance moms and vocal detractors.

“I’ve always been a fan of reality television, so I think I personally knew what to expect,” says Lukasiak of auditioning for the series with her 10-year-old daughter, Chloe. “It’s unnerving to watch because you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m really putting myself out there, and I’m letting myself be judged!’ But I went into it with open eyes. I do everything full-out – that’s my personality – so I knew I was going to be someone who formed very, very divided camps. People were either going to get me or really, really not get me.”

Lukasiak does take umbrage to interviews Miller has given suggesting Abby Lee and her students were never auditioned and only came as a package deal with the nuttiest ALDC mothers the producers could find.

“The children absolutely auditioned, too,” she says. “I have Chloe’s audition tapes saved on my computer. They needed to make sure that the girls were talented dancers, and I think that they wanted to make sure that the girls were each someone that America could root for, too. I was a little taken aback when (Miller) said, ‘It had nothing to do with the girls’ talent; it was all based on the mothers’ crazy.’ That may have been her perception, but it wasn’t the truth.”