"Bunheads" Won't Have an Encore Adam Taylor/ABC Family ABC Family's "Bunheads," which drew rave reviews but a modest audience, is being canceled. The life of a dancer is sufficiently challenging, with its demands for rigorous exercise, restrictive diets and single-minded dedication, not to mention the fact that there are few television shows about the dance world. That minuscule number shrank even further with the announcement on Monday by the ABC Family network that it was canceling "Bunheads," its comedy-drama series about aspiring young dancers and their unconventional mentor, after only one season, during which the series had developed a modest but passionate fan base. "Bunheads," which began in June 2012, starred Sutton Foster, the Tony Award-winning actress, as a former ballerina turned Las Vegas showgirl who, through a series of farcical and tragic circumstances, finds herself helping to guide the futures of four young ballet students in a fictional Southern California town. The students" hairdos provide the show's title. The series carried the pedigree of its executive producer and co-creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who brought with her a reputation for smart dialogue and rapid repartee, which she had built on shows like "Gilmore Girls." But the show was hampered by an unusual broadcast schedule: the first 10 of its 18 episodes were shown last summer, while the remaining episodes were shown last winter, with no episodes in the fall. While the audience for "Bunheads" was smaller than that for other signature ABC Family shows - it attracted about 1.1 million viewers for each of its final eight episodes, compared to the more than 2 million who tune in for the teenage thriller "Pretty Little Liars" - its reviews were often outright raves, rarely seen at that network. Reviewing "Bunheads" for The New York Times at its debut, Jon Caramanica praised Ms. Foster for making her character "a cause worth rooting for" and Ms. Sherman-Palladino who, as the creator of "some of television's sharpest and most idiosyncratic female characters," was "an obviously wise choice for the network." Mike Hale revisited "Bunheads" in The Times in March, when the absence of a renewal announcement for the series was an alarming sign for its future, and wrote that canceling the show would be a disappointment "because "Bunheads," beyond being a charming and funny show, has the great merit of being unlike anything else on television at the moment." The ABC Family network said in a statement: "Bunheads is a wonderful series that we are very proud to have aired. The series had amazing storytelling, the most talented cast and a passionate and loyal fan base. Recognizing all of this, we took extra time to try and find ways to bring the series back for another season, but in the end it simply wasn't possible. Ms. Sherman-Palladino did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. In an e-mail to Vulture.com, she wrote that the show "was a labor of love" and offered her thanks "to anyone who chose to play in our sandbox for a while," adding: "All you can do is try right? And drink.