Back to the Barre

“This show is just about you and me being assholes,” says Kelly about the latest episode of ‘Dance Moms,’ where the girls prepare for and perform in Abby’s annual recital, which Kelly and Christi both admit is incredible. Less incredible is the girls’ ability to dance hip-hop, and since Paige’s foot is still broken she has to figure out how to dance from the waist up. Abby brings Payton in to join the “Light My Fire” group number, which means Leslie is back and lashing out at everyone. She tells Kelly she needs to be in both therapy and AA. Knowing she is being set up by producers to look like a fool yet again, Kelly storms out and Christi curses at producers in her defense. She is also put in charge of gathering together the ALDC alumnae class of 1985, even though most of Abby’s former students want nothing to do with her. She also has to throw a party in which Cathy crashes and tries to steal one of Abby’s potential new students. The more fun task was playing guest bartender with Christi at a local club and seeing Jill get wild with patrons. Holly, of course, refused to step behind the bar. Since this was the first recital since the show had aired, the audience was suddenly packed with adoring fans. Christi describes the feeling of hearing everyone go wild for the girls when they took the stage for their first number. She also explains why for years, she found countless pairs of underwear under the seats of her car. Quotes“At this point ‘Dance Moms’ had been airing. So if any of Abby’s alumni wanted to be found they would have crawled out of the woodwork. Those people did not want to be found.” (25:10-25:20 | Christi)“At this point, I am over being made to look like an ass, based on lies. If you want to air the truth about me, whatever, I live up to what I do. But when you start lying, and have other people saying it on national television, I start to have a problem.” (1:11:26-1:11:50 | Kelly) “I remember us sitting in the audience, sobbing. I think at that point, we thought, ‘How did we get here?’...That's one of my favorite memories of Dance Moms’” (1:22:46-1:23:27 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

17 Apr 20231h 45min

In this episode of Dance Moms, the girls are headed to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to compete and they are joined by the Candy Apples. This is the episode where Jill and Cathy truly start to despise each other. It’s a hatred that lasts to this day, though no one can say just why. During rehearsal, Christi and Melissa get into a fight and Melissa pulls Maddie’s solo. She decides she doesn’t have to show up for filming even though Kelly shows up when her girls are out with injuries. It’s part of the contract to be on the show. Still, once they arrived in Myrtle Beach, Melissa and Christi were taking pictures together on jet skis and going out to dinner. The Moms had no choice but to fight with each other, and they had no choice but to get along. Kelly misses going to the competitions and watching the girls dance, although during filming those were the longest and most grueling days. Others aren’t so fond of their time with the ALDC. Chloe, Paige and Brooke were too traumatized to continue to dance, and many of Abby’s former students message Christi and Kelly to share their horror stories. Quotes“I was watching it yesterday, and I actually missed it. I don't know if it’s because I was sick or what, but I was just sitting there watching us on our way to a competition, thinking, ‘Oh, I miss watching them dance.’ It was our life. Since our kids were two. There was probably not a day that went by that we didn't sit and watch them dance. It's crazy.” (10:40-10:59 | Kelly) “All the former students that weren't on the show will DM me and say things about Abby. And they have stories that are 15 times worse. I saw one girl…who said, ‘I was in my kitchen cooking, and ‘Dance Moms’ came on in the background. I heard Abby’s voice and I dropped my plate on the floor. It just shattered everywhere. Just hearing her voice’… And she was there a long time ago. She was a senior when our kids were babies.” (16:00-16:44 | Kelly and Christi) “I don't know if fans know that. The Candy Apples and the Abby Lee Dance Company kids were friends...It was lunchtime, and we’d say, ‘Look, Kelly's hungry. My brain hurts. We're not on camera, so we don't have to fight.’” (1:09:40-1:10:21 (Kelly and Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

10 Apr 20231h 36min

“I held it in this whole episode but then I went balls to the wall,” says Christi of the explosive fight that ends the latest episode of Dance Moms. This week’s competition takes place in Philadelphia, where the girls dance a ballet routine despite not having had a ballet class in three years. Chloe remembers this as the hardest dance she’s ever had to do. Christi remembers that they had a really nice steak dinner at Palm. Brooke has an acro solo called “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and Kelly says she’s pretty sure Anne Frank wasn’t doing cartwheels. Since Paige has broken her foot, Abby puts Kendall into the group dance even though she is not part of the team. The other Moms are mad because their girls have given up so much of their time and energy not just to dance but to the show. The Moms joke that everywhere Jill goes one of the dancers mysteriously breaks a foot, first Taylor and now Paige. Meanwhile, Brooke’s back has gotten so sore it hurts for her to breathe, and Kelly finally pulls Brooke’s solo. Ever the opportunist, Jill asks if Kendall can take Brooke’s place. Christi shares the story behind Abby calling Chloe a sneak and her a whore who sells t-shirts in a bar. The truth is, as usual, much different from Abby’s twisted narrative and production’s deceptive editing. Quotes“They showed Jill and Kendall trying to make it over the greatest crater I've ever seen. I mean, at this point, it's like a shelf in the ocean. If the parking lot were full of water, you would drown in that bitch.” (26:12-26:27 | Christi)“That's the third time Abby has said Brooke broke her toe, not her foot. Like she’s trying to downplay it. I mean, every time I say something to somebody, am I supposed to say ‘Oh, it was her third metatarsal or whatever?’ It's her freaking foot.” (31:42-31:58 | Kelly)“Abby says that she sees a lot of mistakes and their ballet steps are definitely not up to par. Because we haven’t had ballet class in three years and only a five minute rehearsal. Yeah. ‘Well, we touched the ballet barre this week. We're magically all Anna Pavlova now.’” (1:01:43-1:01:58 | Kelly and Christi) LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

3 Apr 20231h 27min

“I can’t believe this is real life,” says Christi on this latest episode of Back to the Barre, “We’re standing there arguing on national television over a bow.” Jill and Kendall are back, having left Candy Apples, and Jill is being accused of stealing a two-dollar hair bow at the Starpower competition in Lancaster, PA. Before that though, at the beginning of the episode, she is accused of stealing Kelly’s hairstyle. Meanwhile, Abby criticizes Nia’s hairstyle, telling her to fix it, and Holly fires back at Abby to fix everything about herself. Seeing famously stoic and diplomatic Dr. Holly act more like Kelly and Christi has all the girls in hysterics.The casting director of Drop Dead Diva calls to say–to no one’s surprise–that Maddie has been chosen for the role that all the girls auditioned for the week prior, even though the part was promised to Paige.A young man named Nick joins the girls this week to perform the part of the vampire in a Twilight-themed group dance and Abby openly directs him to bite the girls and vice versa. She has also given nicknames to both Brooke and Mackenzie’s bellies, which is why Brooke always wears a shirt over her leotard. Still the most shocking part of the episode is that Abby is wearing white in one of her interviews. Quotes“I would pay all of the money in the world to see Abby do an arabesque. And not because of any weight thing. I'm just saying, she can't do it.” (30:07-30:16 | Christi) “That's why Brooke always wears a shirt. Abby had names for both Brooke and Mackenzie’s bellies, which is a horrible thing. ‘Take your belly out of here,’ she tells Mackenzie. But then people get mad at me when I say to Abby, ‘Oh, stop eating. That's why you’re fat.’ But she says that to my daughter and other girls in the studio every day.” (42:54-43:21 | Kelly)“And I love Holly in this moment. I want more of this Holly. Show up, please. She said, ‘I'm entitled to my opinion because I'm 42 years old and a free American citizen. I get to say what I believe, what I want, andI stand on my credentials and my knowledge, something you can never take away.’ Do you see what happens right then? Well, Abby cannot go toe-to-toe with Holly. So she goes after Nia.” (47:03-47:28 | Christi) LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

27 Mars 20231h 22min

“I guess everyone is just happy for me to be born!” says Kelly. In this episode, the Moms gather at her house to celebrate her 41st birthday, the only one the show seems to celebrate, she points out. Leslie shows up late and continues to be entitled and to insult everyone before throwing her mic pac across the room and leaving. Christi continues to be annoyed by Leslie but can’t tell if she’s rolling her eyes in annoyance or from all the wine served in Kelly’s Lolita glasses. Christi says it was hard–particularly for their kids, who felt like they had to defend their mothers–to be called drunks on TV when it was so far from reality. Still, her favorite picture is of herself and Kelly standing next to a sign that says, “No Alcohol Beyond This Point,” which college kids across the country have blown up into banners and hung in their dorm rooms. Kelly rolls her eyes in this episode, too, but not at Payton dancing on stage during the Starbound competition in Atlanta like the show made it seem. Early on in the series, the Moms used to try to control their facial expressions so they couldn’t be taken out of context, but they gave up trying because the producers misrepresented them anyway. Chloe returns from her school camping trip with a whole new confidence. Abby keeps calling her park ranger and Yogi Bear, despite the reference clearly going over Chloe’s head. She makes a dig at the Girl Scouts even though she was a Girl Scout herself and recently put her uniform up for auction. Quotes“Leslie was like a woodpecker just pecking at your brain the whole time she would set up there. And I think that we knew when to give each other a minute, the main cast. Sometimes like even when you're fighting, somebody just needs a minute. Like, let it breathe for a minute. She's just relentless. It's like a teenage boy when he first kisses you. And you think, ‘Whoa, whoa, buddy.’ Not so intense. Give me some breathing room.’” (46:34-47:11 | Christi)“I don't know if I rolled my eyes at Leslie or my eyes were just rolling around from all the drinking. One of my eyes was over here and the other one was this way, it was terrible. It was embarrassing to watch.” (1:21:23-1:23:25 | Christi) LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

20 Mars 20231h 59min

“It’s like Cinderella:” says Christi of the latest episode of Dance Moms, “You can go to the ball if you get your work done, but I’m going to give you a lot more work.” The girls are headed to Akron, Ohio to compete against the Candy Apples including Kendall, who has recently joined after leaving Abby’s studio. Abby gives Paige a solo so that she can try for a title and thinks Paige should be thrilled, but Paige knows–like everyone else–that a solo means a week of torture. Especially since Abby does everything she can to make sure Paige can’t rehearse, including holding a random gymnastics class. Kelly notices that Abby was starting to make the Moms confront her in pairs of two so that she can use the camera time to say something nasty about both Moms’ children to the audience. Kelly decides to choreograph Paige’s dance herself with the little knowledge she has left over from her own years dancing with Abby. They have to practice in the dreaded Studio C because if they get caught in Studio A, Abby will get mad and not let Paige compete at all. Watching Paige perform her routine on stage, Christi says she never wanted someone to win so badly in her life, as she wanted Paige to win at that moment. Kelly thinks Paige should have won for going up against Abby and for all the times she was set up to fail for the sake of drama. Viewers figure out that Abby listens to the Back to the Barre podcast and has signed up to their Patreon just to keep insisting that she never threw a chair at Paige. Between Jill’s apple ring, Abby’s necklace that looks like bubble gum from a vending machine and her cheap orange rhinestones–that match Christi’s!--this episode gives the Moms plenty of reasons to drink.Quotes“It’s like Cinderella: You can go to the ball if you get all your work done, but I’m going to give you a lot more work.” (51:31-51:37 | Christi) “Here we are, now Chloe got practice all week, and now she's getting all these corrections in the pep talk. And Paige got, ‘Look at the judges.’ No practice all week and the only thing she's told is ‘Look at the judges.’ And Chloe's not going for a title. It’s just… it's bullshit. It's bullshit.” (1:12:38-1:13:01 | Kelly)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

13 Mars 20231h 53min

“This one’s interesting because Abby is nice,” says Christi of this special episode of Dance Moms, where Abby counts down her top ten favorite dances from the show so far. Unsurprisingly, Kelly and Christi can’t understand her choices. What is most surprising, though–shocking really–is the praise Abby heaps onto Chloe and Brooke during the episode. If she had spoken even a tenth of those words to them while they were still her students, Kelly insists, Brooke wouldn’t have ended up hating dance and may have ended up performing in Cirque du Soleil after all. Instead, she says, Abby always compared people, especially to their closest family members, something Kelly can’t understand and Christi knows still bothers many of those people to this day.Among the dances in the countdown is the “Pinup Girls” trio performed by Choe, Paige and Maddie that, Christi points out, is where it all began. In fact, the show was supposed to begin from a whole other angle, but the fighting and drama that stemmed from Chloe’s headband falling over her eyes was so good, producers knew they had to open with it. That, and Kelly reminds them, it featured the famous scene of the two of them sneaking off to the bar while Abby was attempting to organize things from the dressing room. Christi says the only thing that was remarkable about Chloe’s headband falling was that she still did a series of aerials while blinded. Discover which dances the Moms are sure would get them canceled today, which of Abby’s many annoying habits is one of Christi’s biggest pet peeves, and why Christi made Melissa sign a contract before she would work on Maddie’s costume. Quotes“Abby had great things to say. They must have offered her a bonus for what she was saying, because I'm telling you, it had to kill her. They said, ‘Every compliment you give, you get a $5,000 bonus. And she said, ‘Christie is my favorite and Kelly's smart.’” (10:17-10:39 | Christi) “Cathy, aka the hick from Ohio. Again, if I were from Ohio, I'd be so pissed. The whole show. Meanwhile, Ohio’s 30 centimeters over the Pittsburgh border, so if Cathy’s a hick, so are we.” (43:44-44:04 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

6 Mars 20231h 23min

“These girls were being micro-analyzed,” says Christi about the pressure the girls continued to face as dancers and reality show stars. They’re competing at Starpower this week, the largest competition in the United States, Abby keeps reminding everyone. It’s so big, in fact, it’s split into two venues, and Abby sees an opportunity to sign Maddie up for two solos. Once again, she and Melissa form a secret plan to get Maddie ahead, use bad acting to cover it up, and everyone else has to keep their mouths shut and pretend their daughters have a chance to win. Brooke has taken the weekend off to attend her first school dance, which Kelly had to fight with producers to allow. She always made sure her girls didn’t miss out on big events for the sake of dance–or Dance Moms. Still, she and Christi feel guilty to this day for what they put their daughters through–as well as the rest of their kids–for the sake of both.Kelly can’t share the moment with Brooke because producers need her at the dance studio to fight with Leslie. Payton returns to fill in for Brooke. And considering she had a costume custom-made for the competition, it is obvious that was a move planned by producers well in advance. Previously, Payton had pushed Paige flat on her back and producers saw it as an opportunity for Kelly to confront Leslie and start a fight with the whole group about bullying. Christi and Kelly discuss just how much these young dancers had riding on their shoulders, just from Abby alone. They suspect that immediately after every competition, producers showed Abby footage of each dance so she could analyze everyone’s mistakes. This is why Abby always arrived in the dressing room after everyone else with specific critiques that would have been impossible to see from the audience. Quotes“Isn’t it crazy to think that the baby from Dance Moms is now as old as the oldest from Dance Moms?” (35:35-35:42 | Christi)“We all know a lot of old routines. Why didn’t all the kids go over there and do them? We could have all done our real solos. Why couldn’t we do ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me,’ because that dance beat “Cry” a bunch of times in real life. Or Paige and Brooke could have done their solos that they didn’t get to do two weeks before.” (1:02:13-1:02:36 | Christi and Kelly) LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

27 Feb 20231h 47min