Just as most people are finally getting the chance to relax after a busy holiday season, about 60 members of the northshore’s Bad Moms That Dance krewe will be packing their bags and heading across the pond.
The group, which started on a whim in 2021, is gearing up to perform in the London New Year’s Day Parade alongside other dance groups, marching bands, cheerleaders, larger-than-life inflatable balloons and other performers from across Europe and the world.
But they aren’t the average Carnival dance krewe. These moms won’t be wearing leotards or waving pompoms to pop music.
“We’re in hip-hop pants with varsity jackets and Dunks,” said Whitney Hebert, 39, one of the founders of the group. “It’s a more comfortable, laidback vibe.”
And they will be bringing their brand of hip-hop beats and dance moves to the streets of London as they strut from Piccadilly Circus to Westminster on New Year’s Day.
Moms band together
Hebert and co-founder Alyse Renz never thought they would be able to bring their group to such a celebrated world stage when they met for the first time and got started in March 2021.
The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic had started to ease, and both moms happened to join the same moms group on Facebook. By chance, someone shared a viral group of dancers performing to a hip-hop song, and another mom asked if anything like that existed in the New Orleans area.
No one knew of any, so Renz, who had spent most of her life dancing, offered to lead a class.
“I meant it just to be something fun,” said Renz, 39. “I missed dancing. I had danced my whole life and figured if I can get five women to take a class with me, at least I’d get to dance again.”
Instead, 50 moms, including Herbert, signed up. What was supposed to be a one-off class on the northshore quickly became a weekly event. It got so popular that Renz was able to leave a career in real estate to lead the group full time with Hebert.
From class to Carnival
From the beginning, with most of the attendees being moms in their 30s and 40s, they knew they wanted their class to be a bit different from the average dance class.
“We had both been to adult dance classes,” Renz said. “What happens is you get in there, it’s fluorescent lighting, there’s a 20-year-old teacher, and it’s really just not what women our age are looking for.”
They wanted something more fun. They turned the lights down low, played uncensored music and brought drinks and snacks.
For about two years, the class remained just a weekly session to blow off steam and find sisterhood. Then about three years ago, a couple attendees pitched the idea of creating a Mardi Gras krewe. Renz and Hebert resisted at first but gave in, thinking they would bring about 30 women to do a choreographed dance along the parade route.
Instead, they got 120 women to sign up. They chose the first 60 and hit the streets. By the second year, they had 450 members and could only bring about 150. For the 2026 Carnival season, it’s even bigger. More than 1,200 women signed up, and Renz and Hebert said they will dance with about 300.
At the same time, the classes kept growing. Now there are classes and rehearsals in Covington, Slidell, Metairie, Hammond and even Chalmette.
‘A lot of women need this’
Melissa Rouse, 49, attended that first class in 2021 and still dances with the group. She said she joined when she had just moved to the northshore from the West Bank and barely knew anyone. Her daughter was in high school and didn’t need Rouse to shuttle her around to activities anymore. So Rouse figured it was a chance to make a few friends and do something just for herself.
“I think a lot of women need this,” she said. “I don’t think we realize how many women can’t find friends in today’s modern world because they’ve been too busy being a mom.”
Many of the women have become close friends, attending events for one another’s kids, providing support through health scares, lunching in New Orleans and day tripping to Hammond.
These days, Rouse said the tables have turned. Her daughter, now 19 and in college, and her husband get a kick out of “chaperoning” her Bad Moms activities.
International ambassadors
Despite the group’s growth, the invitation to dance in London still came as a surprise.
Hebert thought the email was spam. On a lark, she and Renz called the person who claimed to be the recruiter for the London parade. He said that after seeing the group perform at the Irish-Italian parade in Chalmette, he thought they would be perfect for London.
When they accepted, London parade representatives flew to New Orleans to formally present their invitations.
“Winston Churchill’s great-grandson comes in in his very, very formal British outfit with all his medals, and I’m cracking up because here we are the Bad Moms,” Hebert said laughing, adding that she still finds the invite a little surreal. “It was such a funny thing to me because he was so proper and we are so not.”
Bad Moms That Dance founders Alyse Renz and Whitney Hebert shake hands with Winston Churchill’s great-grandson Sir Duncan Sandys, left, when he visited their Covington dance studio to invite them to perform at the London New Year’s Day Parade on Jan. 1, 2026.
But the London group loved them.
“They said that we are ‘very colorful’ and that we are going to bring a different vibe to the parade,” Renz said laughing, adding that she decided to take that as a compliment. “We’re just going to do our thing out in the streets of London.”
The Bad Moms will perform from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. London time on Jan. 1. Those at home can watch them via livestream on the London Parade YouTube channel or on PBS starting at 7 a.m. in New Orleans.
And they’ll also be marching in 22 Mardi Gras parades across the region, from Lafayette to Mobile, Alabama.
