On a Sunday afternoon in May, in a rented theater on the Brooklyn waterfront, a group of 12 women in black sequin cocktail dresses stood in a confused clump at the center of the stage, awaiting instruction.

After eight months of preparation, this was the last dress rehearsal for the beauty pageant that night. It was not going well.

The women had only ever practiced the opening number — a dance medley that featured sensual body rolls to the Weeknd’s “Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)” and up-tempo shimmying to Beyoncé and Ciara — in backyards and rehearsal rooms, and they were having trouble adapting to the larger space. For one thing, they had to run a lot farther to grab their dogs.

This is the way it was supposed to go: When Ciara sings, “You know you want this yummy, yummy all in your tummy,” each woman would gracefully peel away and scurry to the wings to find her dog, which she would then promenade across the stage.