The Dainty Little Ballerina Expertease

Our audience tonight is composed mostly of ballerinas. And Clare Sera, that's your... Expertise! You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Le Dongs and Billabongs, welcome to the program Expertise, which is the knowledge podcast for people who love their knowledge in podcast form. I'm your host, Danno Sullivan, and my very special guest today is an expert in the dance, the ballet, Clare Sera, ballet expert.

Welcome to the bar, the show. G'day, mate. I was not expecting a cockney. Clare, are you a cockney? Well, I am not a cockney, nor am I an Australian, the authentic accent that I was just performing. I was not expecting a cockney doing an Australian accent. I was making a little bit of an inside joke, Danno, because within the ballerina community, we consider Australia to be a wasteland of culture and that ballet has not reached the Australian shores. I see, so by putting on a mocking Australian accent, you would convey that to our listeners? You know, to the bunheads that are amongst your listeners, that was just a little nod to them.

And bunhead is slang for a ballet dancer. For a ballet dancer, that's correct. Yeah, they do really pull it back into a bun, don't they? A tight, tight bun. I have a nephew who wears his hair back in a bun. I wonder if he's a ballerina. Well, you can tell not just by the form of movement, the elegance of limb. Yeah, this is my nephew all over. Oh my goodness. And the bun serves two purposes. One, of course, is to keep the sleek lines sleek, but also to stop you from thinking deep thoughts. Yes, yeah. It's an external extraction of the brain itself, right? It's a pulling, tense, anxiety kind of creating tension that reaches from your skull into the actual cerebrospinal fluid, causing a kind of a type of paralysis of thought.

I think that's wonderful for a dancer to have that feeling of inadequacy that the inability to think might invoke in a person. Absolutely. And to think of nothing but the move, the next move. To dance, to live. So Claire, I have to confess, I am not a fan of the ballet. I can tell by your shoddy, shabby hairstyle. Well, I think that's not fair to say because I have no bun, I'm automatically not a fan of the dance. Dance is a feeling more than anything else. You are conveying your feelings to the audience through movement and time and space of your limbs. Does that not undermine the importance of the choreographer who designs the dance?

There has been a bit of a movement of recent times, and I don't mean a dance movement. I mean a movement of people's desires towards phasing out choreographers. Because it's the man telling you what to do. It's the man coming down on the bun head saying, step here, Jean de Grey there, Grey Poupon there. All those dance moves like that. Dano, you have actually hit the nail on the head because choreography, whether it is done by female, male, non-binary. Oh, you can be a woman and still be the man. You are absolutely correct. And the patriarchal push of movement is of the past.

So as I mentioned, I'm not really a fan of the ballet, Claire. Right. I can see why you would have me on the podcast. Do you have any other interests or hobbies? I do have a hemp farm in Montana. So I don't want you to feel like I've brought you on under false pretenses, Claire. But your hemp farm in Montana sounds so much more interesting than spending another 20 minutes talking about ballet. We are changing the world one hemp seed at a time. Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to say through the dance. So we are advocating that on every Wednesday, which instead of being Hump Day, we'll call it Hemp Day.

Hump Day, Hemp Day. And I'm asking, is Engelbert Humperding somehow involved? Would you call it Engelbert Hemper Day? He has actually written a type of anthem for folks to get behind hemp. Yeah. So that's all that we're asking is like, take one day a week and devote it entirely to hemp. So what happens on Hemp Day? On Hemp Day, you wake up in your hemp sheets, you roll out of bed in your hemp pajamas, you roll a big hemp doobie, and then you roll back into bed and hemp it down. That's the whole day. Yeah. And is hemp night any different than Hemp Day or do you just roll another doobie and get back in the sheets?

Those are the words from Engelbert Hemperding's song. So Claire, now that we're not talking about ballet and we are talking about your hemp farms instead, do you have any scuttlebutt about what goes on in the ballet? I picture backbiting all the time. Ballet, look, it's beautiful. It is the height of craft for a dancer. And they have to work incredibly hard. They lie on those beds that stretch bones. Oh, the rack that was called. The rack, which is actually where Nordstrom's rack comes from because Nordstrom was the original creator of ballet outfits. Catering to the ballet trade.

That's exactly right. And they also created the racks to stretch the dancer's limbs and bones. So what was the advantage of being stretched? Was height a desirable quality or was it a looseness of limb? Well, it was both, but it was length of limb. And for a while, in the early 1920s, as ballet was reaching its zenith, you would have some, you know, like the top ballerinas would be, say, 4'5", 4'6", but their limbs were the span of, you know, the San Francisco Bridge. Wow. Yeah. So their legs were actually longer than they were tall? Is that possible? Well, for ballerinas, we don't measure the torso.

Oh, I see, which would account for Nordstrom's not selling belts. That's exactly right. Gosh, you did your research. Well, as much as I really don't care for the ballet, I do feel like it's just a politeness to my guests to do a little bit of research before we start the podcast. But back to your hemp farm, if you may. Yeah, oh gosh, yeah. So if Nordstrom's was stretching the ballerinas and doing that so that they would be able to sell the outfits to the ballerinas, wouldn't it have been simpler and safer for everyone involved to simply make the outfits smaller than to make the ballerinas longer?

I think you're speaking of the tail wagging the dog situation. And by the way, we did stretch some dogs' tails while dogs were in the ballet. You know, the ballet version of Annie is one of my, it's one of the few things I do enjoy about the dance. It was unfortunate the opening night of that ballet of Annie, the dog's tail did sweep off about 14 of the players into the orchestra pit. It had been stretched ahead of time? Oh, deeply stretched. It was about 13 feet long. Wow. And you can't take the wag out of a dog. No, no, no, no. It's not a dog if it doesn't wag.

That's right. And I think that we thought at the time that the dog could be trained to be only elegant. But unfortunately, it got happy on stage. It got happy and began to wag. Which, that's not allowed in the field of ballet. Right. Same with the girls, right? That's exactly right. There can be no happiness. If you have an emotion, ennui. Only ennui. Only ennui. Only ennui. Only ennui. And it should be expressed only through movement. That's exactly right. Your big long arms sweeping the stage, sometimes the audience expressing your ennui, the feeling, and the feeling alone.

Now, Claire, I've mentioned that I don't really care for the ballet that much. You have mentioned. But I'm starting to get the sense that maybe you don't care for the ballet that much. Most of the comments you've made have either been about your hemp farm or somewhat denigrating to the dancers of the ballet. Now, I think denigrate is too strong a word, Dano. I, myself, was a ballerina. Oh, you were? I did perform in Nur Yakov's... Annie? As the dog. Oh, so you've got a little bit of a chip on your shoulder, I'm guessing. It was tough. Was that your only dance role?

Yes. As Rags the dog? What was the dog's name? You know, I've never seen the show. Oh, you've only portrayed from within. Yes. And portrayed ennui, no doubt, from within. I portrayed a lot of feelings from within that dog costume. Now, once you've rolled a big doobie, does that help overcome the sensation of ennui at all? Does that sort of mellow you out and help transform ennui into mellowness? I suppose. I suppose if you're digging like you podcast journalists do, I suppose that's what I was hoping. I suppose I escaped to my hemp farm in Montana to forget those years as the dog in Annie in a costume in which I was stretched to uncomfortable proportions with a bun on my head that people thought was a third ear on the dog.

Claire, I don't care for the ballet, but I care for you now more than ever. What you have undergone is inhuman. I don't want to denigrate all of ballet just because all the people in it are bad. Does that extend even to the employees of the Nordstrom's, who would do your ballet attire shopping? Look, Daniel, obviously you did your research into my background, and you found that I had some questionable treatment by the ballet. And because of your own prejudice about ballet, you brought me on here so that it could be a gripe session. It's not that I want to gripe about the ballet.

It's I want to vent about the ballet. I want to know why does the ballet exist? What is it providing in terms of entertainment, art, that we don't have in a superior form through some other method or technique? Give me an example, and I'll tell you why it's better than ballet. Jazz hands. Jazz hands is related to ballet. Next. Trombone playing. Trombone playing, it underscores literally ballet dancing. You can't ballet dance with any integrity unless you have some music, which might very well be produced by a trombone player. I have a feeling that you are referring to the 18th century where Mozart did the silent ballet.

Is that what you're talking about? The silent ballet offended you so badly? Yes, Claire, that's what I'm referring to. And I don't know why it would be that something from 300 years ago would still haunt me to this day. Let me guess what you did. You bought the record, and you listened to six minutes of silence. If you could have seen little Danny dancing around the living room with his man bun on and his pink Nordstrom tights, dancing to the sounds of that silence, that Mozartian silence, for minute after minute, wishing and hoping and a dream fractured in a young boy's heart, and Mom slaps once, Mom slaps twice, and before you know it, Dad's involved, the whole family, there's treatment.

It's down to the Nordstroms with the boy, down to the Nordstroms. Have him stretched, have him stretched, see how he likes it. Claire, can you turn me on to some really good imp? Look, I'm so sorry. Everybody does have a traumatic ballet experience in their lives. It's one of the reasons that keeps this dark art going forward. If you would like to join the cause of stopping ballet. Oh, how do I sign up? Is there a form to fill out? If only, if only there was a form, but ballet is a feeling, Danno. But what is feeling without form? See, you did have a ballet background. I knew it.

I can't help exposing myself. I guess I'm more of a dancer than I ever realized. You know, I think, Danno, that what we have come to hear is what ballet is all about. You had feelings as a child that nobody could handle. If everyone had been properly trained in the form of ballet, you could have expressed to each other without words, without those harsh words, without the slapping, a few pas de deux, a jeté, jezon. I think maybe little Danno wouldn't be carrying around that big fat wound in his heart. But if you would like to help me stop the ballet. I've changed my mind.

I'm no longer against the ballet. You've won me over with your line of argument. Because it has made a lot of sense. I want more dance in the world. I want more ballerinas and balleroos. What's a male ballerina? That's an Australian dancer, which is what we started with. Oh, and we're right back to the beginning. So you were very insulting to our ignorant Australian brethren on their lack of the dance. And yet I feel like I was no better than an ignorant Australian myself. I feel like on your behalf, perhaps I should apologize to our Australian listeners, to all the ballet dancers in the audience tonight, to my mother, my father, and I guess, Claire, I need to apologize to you for bringing you on the program and just kind of wasting your time like this.

You know, it wasn't a waste of time. I think both of us have done a 180 on ballet. I think it's a lifetime process. If you have touched the ballet, getting that touch off of you is a long, hard road. Well, to all my listeners at home, I'd like to personally thank you for sitting through today's heart-rending episode and promise you that we'll be back with Mary Hijinks again soon, but hope that in the same way that I've grown today, perhaps you've grown with me just a little bit. And Claire Sarah, thank you for making that possible. It's been my pleasure, and I would like to say that you've stretched my own thinking.

And a very happy Engelbert Humper Day to you. Thank you. The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.co and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Make it on a hump day. Hemp it up. Say it, say it. Doobie yaw, doobie yaw, ballet day. That's what I was waiting for.