Behind the Scenes Minis: Ballet and Anchovies

Tracy and Holly discuss their preferences in ways the Nutcracker should be staged, and their love of it from the audience and performer perspectives. Then they compare notes on Caesar salads, anchovies, and the troubles with Sylvester Graham.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about the Nutcracker
on the show this week. Sure enough something I've watched
a bunch of times and you have danced in a

(00:23):
bunch of times. That is correct. Has your experience as
a dancer the Nutcracker given you strong opinions about how
the Nutcrackers should be staged? Because I sure have them. No,
In fact, I like seeing all the variations a whole lot.
I remember as a kid, I had a unique experience

(00:44):
in that I was part of a ballet company that
was kind of in its infancy, and I was part
of the ballet school there, and so I started out
doing it one way, and then the ballet company, as
it reached a certain level, got a new artistic director
that was much more experienced. And that person came in
and was like, what have you been doing? And really
went back like they were doing much more of like

(01:05):
an original interpretation of it, which I didn't realize, and
then it flipped and became much more akin to the
Balanchine version, And so I already have that like, oh
you can actually do this different ways kind of mentality
about it. So I've always liked seeing how other people
did it. Yeah, the things that I feel really strongly

(01:26):
about some of them or are more minor than others.
I really want the Christmas tree to physically get bigger,
and I will say I have that is a thing
that has to happen. I also really want the Grandfather
clock to like menace Clara in some way. We need
a growing Christmas tree, we need a menacing clock. I

(01:48):
really prefer it when Clara and the Nutcracker prints are
both children who are on the stage the whole time.
I don't like it when they murdered the Clara role
and the sugar plum Ferry role. It's just my own
personal preference. Um, and I didn't even really realized that

(02:09):
they're just In terms of choreography, that's like stretching back
to nineteenth century Russia. I did not know that there
was this uh schism between like traditional dressed as peasants
or Cossacks, Russian dancers and hoops. I really like the

(02:29):
like very athletic, leaping, jumping Russian dance as it is
often staged and the first time that I saw one
with the hoops, I was like, what was that? Not?
I was not pleased. I think I saw hoops first. Yeah,
I had already written this outline and I watched the uh,

(02:52):
the Marie Sendak version that we talked about, um, and
that one just totally changed a bunch of stuff. Is
totally different in that in a way that I thought
was pretty cool, Like, instead of what I grew up with,
which was, uh, the Arabian dance, basically a harem not
a great thing to be having on the stage right now,

(03:13):
it is instead a beautiful bird um, which I felt
like was a lot better. But my husband was in
the room with me and we got to the end
of the ballet and he was like, where were the Russians?
They were there, just looked a little different. I used
to get really frustrated by like the local additions two things,

(03:35):
And part of it was when I was living in Atlanta.
The Atlanta Ballet had a panda bear costume and celebration
of the panda at the zoo that had been born,
and a dancer got very badly hurt, and I got
really angry about it because I was like, there's not
even supposed to be a panda in the Nutcracker. But
having researched this and realized, like, how many places really

(03:58):
kind of are adding their own local touches, I don't
I'm no longer so angry about that, as long as
the costume is safe for the dancers to be dancing it, right, right?
Do you have a favorite of the Kingdom of Sweets
or a favorite segment of the ballet period? I have
always really loved the snowflakes just before the end of

(04:22):
act line beautiful, that music is beautiful. That yeah, that's
another thing. There needs to be real snow happening on
the stage as a dancer. That's a no. I just
always found it dangerous now that you mention it, right,
I mean when you think about how much time I
mean this, this happens with any performance space, right, how

(04:46):
much time dancers like kind of prep their shoes to
be the way they like and have the level of
grip that they like. And then often you get in
a performance space and it's not like the space you
have been practicing in it all, and so to throw
another element in there is like, oh, for heaven's sakes, what, yeah, Okay,
how are we gonna have to how are we going

(05:06):
to deal with this substance on the stage. So for me,
I'm always like, that's okay, I don't need the snow
because I just think about those poor dancers being like
how much do I have to restrain the steps to
make sure I don't slip or Now. I'm sure lots
of companies have a way that they manage it that
makes it very, very safe. I don't want to make
it seem like people are being willy nilly, but there's

(05:29):
just always any time you add an element that's not
part of rehearsal. Sure, obviously they rehearse with all the
tech stuff, that's what a tech rehearsal is for, but
like it's still like a whole difference. You're still learning
it without that. Yeah, just as my time as an
audience member, like never never saw anything go wrong with
the snow part. What I did see the last time

(05:50):
I saw the Nutcracker, which was here in Boston, during
the scene where the children fight over the nutcracker and
the nutcracker breaks, a part of the nutcracker flew into
the orchestra pit, and it it was like that scene
in the Lord of the rings when they knocked the
bucket down into the well. It went on for so

(06:14):
long of this piece of nutcracker rickiching all around the
orchestra pit. Uh And during intermission, like as the as
the orchestra was filing out, I saw somebody with this
nutcracker piece in their hand, and I was like, man,
that's I have seen. I've seen a clear as shoe
go into the orchestra pit before, but like this was

(06:35):
the loudest, most most disruptive orchestra pit incidents. That's funny.
Of the sweets, I always really loved coffee, and I

(06:56):
had seen it primarily for a long time, not as
a harem style, but as like a pod to do
like a duet. Okay, that was just I find that
music very, very beautiful, and it's one of those things
where if the right dancer is cast and the choreography
is right, it just becomes this incredibly beautiful, languid study
of like what the human body can do with somebody

(07:18):
who is an absolute maestro at managing their own limbs,
you know what I mean? Um, And so for me,
I'm I'm like, as a kid the first time I
really saw it, danced beautifully. I was like gobsmacked. I
swear I literally had like the mouth a gape, like
what wonder was that? Um? And so as that has,

(07:39):
you know, as I've gotten older and that becomes a
thing that is more critically examined, it's there's that part
of me that's like, oh, I wish it could. I
don't want ever to see a woman in a Harem style,
but like I just I wish I could divorce all
of the critical and necessary critical thinking about it and
just retain that wonder of youth. But that is the
unfortunate thing about being a thoughtful right, not that I'm

(08:02):
always but I know the School of the Arts has
updated a lot of their choreography and I don't know, uh,
like I have seen I feel like a televised production
with newer choreography once from the North Carolina school Yards,
and I do not know the details of how it
has been updated. But when I was a child, it

(08:24):
was very problematic, like the Arabian dance was. It was
a very Harem scenario. There was a hookah involved. Um.
The Chinese dancers had like the the like the stereotypical
ballet posture of having their index fingers raised, so I

(08:44):
definitely that. Yeah, the Spanish one was like very very
like castanets, kind of like a Flamenco situation um, and
then the Russian dancers would bring the house down with
their leaping up in the air and doing splits and that.
But yeah, like looking in hindsight at the way those
were staged when I was a kid, I'm like, yikes.

(09:07):
I have also always had deep, deep funness for Waltz
of the Flowers. I just love that. I love everything
about it beautiful When I was a child and I
wanted to take piano lessons, but I also did not
have the discipline to practice. That was I think that
was the piece that finally led to me not doing

(09:30):
piano anymore because I wanted to. I wanted to learn
Walts of the Flowers for my piano recital, and like
what was available was harder than I really I could
have done it if I had really applied myself to it,
but it was just harder enough that I didn't want to.
But yeah, that's like another nod to help my deep

(09:52):
love of the Nutcracker as a child. I picked my
piano recital piece as a thing that came from The Nutcracker. Yeah,
it's funny. As you're doing this, my brain it was
like flashback after flashback, Like I remember, you know, being
huddled under Mother ginger skirt one year, and how sort
of thrilling and delightful that one was to perform as
a kid like that was when everybody wanted to do.

(10:13):
I started out as a mouse. I was low tier initially,
and then like you know, following years, I got to
be one of Mother Ginger's children and then eventually got
to do Um. I was part of the core for
the Snowflakes and the Flowers and did some of the
acting parts in the first act that were that were
minor characters. But after that, I um developed if my
body was not good at bealt anymore. Oh yeah, puberty

(10:37):
pretty much ended my my plot for ballet. But um yeah,
I still think about it so lovingly in many ways,
even though it was, um you know, sometimes grueling to
work on those shows. But I don't know, I credit
the years that I did The Nutcracker, particularly the early years,
with really being a pretty influential aspect of like my

(11:00):
love of the visual arts in general, theatricality. Like, right,
I remember the first time during a tech rehearsal that
the tree worked and being like, oh, wow, you can
do some cool stuff in a theatrical setting that really
impacts people. Well, that is neat and I want to

(11:22):
always have this in my life. Like that was a
big um. I literally remember the tree jerking and not
working and then working and being like, oh, success looks amazing.
Yeah cracker, um did you see? Oh they may do
it still. I haven't checked for it in several years,
but they used to do for a while, at least

(11:44):
on our local PBS station, a thing where they had
several nights of Nutcracker that were different iterations of it.
I don't know, but that sounds really cool. It was
amazing because you would have the very traditional balancing style
you would have like one that I saw, and I
don't I feel terrible because I cannot remember um to

(12:05):
attribute credit who choreographed it or even what company was,
but it was very modern and I remember thinking, I
don't know that this will work, because as much as
I said I love seeing different versions, they're still for
me it's very much rooted in like traditional ballet. So
to be like, oh, a modern dance version, no, but
in fact it was amazing. So so if you get

(12:27):
a chance to see something like that, especially when you
see like three different ones in three nights, it just
kind of expands how you think about it, and like
how different people can take a thing in the kernel
of the thing remains the same, but like it blossoms
in different ways and that's always really beautiful. Yeah, we
love it, we do, we do. We did some more

(13:00):
eponymous foods this week we did. I love these, They're
so fun, but I definitely have some thoughts about Salvester Graham.
But I do want to mention that I love a
good caesar salad so so um. Last time we did
one of these, I said, I like all the component

(13:20):
parts of a Cops salad, but I don't think I've
ever ordered a Cobs salad from a restaurant menu. Opposite
experience with Caesar salad. But it's embarrassing because, uh, at
two different periods of my life, one in high school
into college and then the other not that long after college.
For periods of years, I was a vegetarian, and let

(13:42):
me tell you, vegetarian options in sin on the ground
they were not like they are today. Correct. Um, And
so in the nineteen nineties. If I were in a
situation where I needed to get a meal at Matt
mcdonne olds, what I would get was a caesar side

(14:03):
salad which did not have chicken or anything on it.
I would like leave the bacon bits. I think it
came with, not put the bacon bits on there, and
French fries. There's two problems with this scenario. Problem number
one is that caesar dressing a lot of the times
has worcesters or sauce in it which contains anchovies that
is not vegetarian. And the other thing is we learned

(14:23):
as a society after all of this that McDonald's French
fries were flavored with beef flavoring, a thing I did
not know when I was shoving them into my face,
and that's why they were so delicious. It's one of
many things that I thought I was eating as a
vegetarian option in my teams in early twenties that I
learned later we're not actually vegetarian. But man, I think

(14:45):
that's embarrassing. I think a lot of people are in
that boat still do love a caesar salad. Nough me too,
I am I need a little more protein than a
blank Caesar offers, I gotta have some chicken or something
on that. Yeah, stop shrimp on there. I like it.
I sometimes will just throw also, um, like a handful
of stachios in there. Probably mortify Caesar Cardini. But how

(15:07):
do you feel about the anchovies. I'm down with anchovis.
I love them. Yeah. I love an anchovy on a pizza.
I love an anchovy right out of the camp. I mean,
I know they're not for everybody, but I love them. Yeah,
I'm into them. The first time I had them, I
was on a Caesar salad, I'm pretty sure, and I
just did it for kicks, and I was like, oh,
this is actually pretty good. I um. The first time

(15:29):
I ate anchovies I remember super distinctly because it was
one of those times that very clearly illustrates how if
kids have no knowledge of a thing, they just will
engage with it without And I had found in our
cupboard when I was like little six or seven a
can of anchovies, and I just popped it open and

(15:50):
ate them. And one of my older sisters came in
and discovered this and was like, WHOA, Like, I may
as well have been eating live spider. She was horrified
and I was like, what, they're salty and delicious, And
so that was just one of those things where I
was like, I loved anchovies from a barrier um, and
I continued, man, anchovies on pizzas where it's at delicious.

(16:13):
But really, I have so many thoughts about Sylvester Graham. Yes,
it really does remind me a lot of John Harvey
Kellogg in terms of his mentality and the focus on
food going along with Yeah that um, they're often UM
kind of mentioned together as being part of that beginning

(16:35):
of the movement for for people to really carefully monitor
and um edit with their diet consisted of UM, which
I have to say, like living by Sylvester graham standards
made you live a long life. I'm not sure how
much you enjoyed it along the way. Yeah, there's also

(16:56):
the whole like beyond beyond the aspects of it that
are the idea of weight loss, there's like this whole
trend about the idea of food being clean or not clean.
It's really damaging to people. And I like this is
to me as an early iteration of that kind of
a dramatic iteration. I mean, like the level of morality

(17:21):
that he attached to every morsel of person consumes is
so extreme, and I just find myself wondering if he
was any fun to be around ever. I mean, he
clearly had some pretty serious hang ups about sexuality that
are unfortunate. You know. I also kind of I had

(17:45):
to chuckle at his whole excerpt that we read where
he talks about how bakers are the ruination of things,
and he's like, I don't want to bad mouth anybody,
but here we go like, no, no, they're everyone's really evil,
but let me just focus on bakers and everything they
do wrong. And you know, it's one of those things

(18:07):
where I'm like, is that really moral to just publicly
go after an entire sect of the population based on
their job. I don't know, Mr Morality, Maybe think about
that for a minute. Yeah, it seems very unpleasant. I
want a cozy bed, I want a warm shower, thank you.

(18:29):
I want to eat some s'mores just for spite. At
this point, I know we have told this story before,
but I kept thinking about there was an incident with
Tracy and Iron Smores Dear listeners when we were still
working in an office on like the how Stuff Works
website and Tracy was for you. I don't remember editorial directors,

(18:53):
website director, I don't remember what your title was. And
I was one of the editors. And we were like
the only two people working during the holidays. Yeah, it
was like over Christmas and everybody was off, and I
was out of vacation days I was working, and and
I hadn't worked for the company all that long, so
I either didn't or I just figured I'd work through
the holidays and use vacation at other times. But we

(19:15):
had this idea of, like, if we're going to be
here at the office together and nobody else is here,
we should at least make it fun. And so we
made the most ridiculous s'mores of all time, which were
Graham crackers, but then, um, if you have ever had
Coco peeps shaped like reindeer, yep, I highly recommend. And

(19:35):
then we used peppermint bark for the chocolate layer. And
I know people say the sugar high is a myth,
but we ran around those hallways screeching like banshees for
a good fifteen minutes, and I'm like, that's a sugar
high right there. That's so good. We did them in
a microwave, so we didn't have a stove or anything
in the office, so we got to watch them explode.

(19:56):
It was beautiful. Yeah, that is one of my fondest
work memories of all time, Like just so funny and
hilarious that we were just giddy to eat s'mores while
everyone else ha ha was off. Uh. Yeah. Yeah. We

(20:16):
talked about recreating them, and I don't think we ever
did the recreation of them, in part because I started
trying to take time off at the end of the year.
Right well, at some point when we are back in
the same place, I don't care what time of year
it is, We're going to car Base Moors. We're gonna
make it great. Yeah. If you are headed into a weekend,

(20:36):
a weekend that involves time off, we hope that it
is fun and that you eat something delicious, uh and
that you love. And if you do not have time off,
we hope you still manage to sneak in some delicious food,
but also that it goes as smoothly as possible. We
will be right back here tomorrow with a classic and
then on Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff you

(20:59):
missed in his Trenck class is a production of I
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