Kalani Hilliker

Hilliker started dancing at the age of two. Her mother initially enrolled her in dance classes because she thought it would be fun to dress her daughter up. Hilliker then furthered her training at Club Dance in Mesa when she was five-years-old and began her ballet training at the Master Ballet Academy in Arizona at the age of 10. In 2011, Hilliker and several of her dance friends entered Disney Channel's Make Your Mark Ultimate Dance Off contest, vying for the prize of a featured role on the hit show Shake It Up. Her group, AKsquared, won the competition, and was featured in the Shake It Up episode "Camp It Up." The on-camera experience left Hilliker knowing she wanted to pursue being a professional dancer. In 2013, Hilliker became a series dance regular on the ABC Family show Bunheads, appearing in multiple episodes as Baby Bun. That same year, she took part in Lifetime's Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition, a dance reality competition series. Hilliker made it to the final four, having finished in fourth place. Following her top four finish, Hilliker and her mother were invited by Abby Lee Miller to join the cast of Dance Moms and to replace Brooke and Paige Hyland on the Abby Lee Dance Company team. They first appeared in the season four episode "Big Trouble in the Big Apple." After several weeks with the ALDC in season 4, Hilliker became a permanent member of the team at the beginning of the competition season during season five. She danced as part of the ALDC until the second half of the seventh season, when she left to form The Irreplaceables with Nia Frazier, Kendall Vertes, Chloe Lukasiak, and Camryn Bridges, which was led by Dancing with the Stars alum Cheryl Burke. Following the season finale, she departed from the show entirely.

In December 2017, after the seventh season of Dance Moms wrapped, Hilliker, Kendall, and Chloe embarked on The Irreplaceables Tour, holding workshops and dancing in cities across North America and abroad.

In 2018, she began starring on the web series Dirt.

Currently, Hilliker has a sock line called "Pretty Feet by Kalani", which is sold at Claire's. She also has a prom dress collection, which she helped design in partnership with PromGirl.

In July 2020, Kalani was photographed with a Blue Lives Matter flag. Then, in November 2020, Hilliker publicly announced that she would be supporting Donald Trump's presidential campaign in the 2020 United States presidential election.