Music Excerpt: “Second Baghdad,” from the CD Friendship, composed and performed by Rahim Alhaj with the Sadaja Quartet. Mickela Mallozzi: Bare Feet is a TV series on public television where I experience the world one dance at a time. What we want to show, is that travel isn’t about ticking off these boxes. There’s my selfie at the Eiffel Tower. Done. There’s my selfie at the Coliseum. Done. Travel is about the people you meet along the way. And for me, that’s through dance and music.> Jo Reed: That’s Mickela Mallozzi, the creator and host of the public television series, Bare Feet. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Mickela Mallozzi had a successful career as a PR specialist in the music industry. It was the kind of job many people aspire to, but Mickela missed creating art herself. She was classically-trained dancer, as well as a musician, and she had long been entranced by traditional folk cultures—like the one her parents brought with them from Italy. Mickela upended her life, quit the music industry, and began teaching dance in New York City. She also took her appreciation of authentic folk culture, combined it with her love of travel, and in 2010 created the Bare Feet project. It began as a blog, which documented her travels around the world, learning the dances and music of each place she visited. The blog morphed into an Emmy-Award winning public television series, called, Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi. Mickela has gone from asking passersby to hold her camera as she danced to having a real budget and a talented videographer who now works with her. And along the way, she’s found great stories and deep connection through dance. Mickela Mallozzi: It’s more than just a TV series. It’s really this idea of traveling the world and immersing yourself in the culture by meeting with local people. And the way that I can connect with people, especially if I don’t speak their language, is through dance, because dance and music, they’re universal languages throughout the world. Every community, every culture, every heritage has their own dance and music, and I just fall in love with it. And that’s what Bare Feet is. It is going to a place with bare feet, sort of this naked canvas, and taking on the cultures through their music and dance. Jo Reed: This is an extremely unusual way of traveling around the world. I mean, we’re used to food travel, by now, but dance is still quite different. Mickela Mallozzi: It’s very niche, obviously. No one else is really doing this. And at first it was, people looked at me, like I was crazy. Like, “You’re going to go what? You’re going to go travel and dance around the world? Okay. Good luck with that,” you know. And now everyone’s like, “Oh, my gosh! I want to do this. This is so exciting.” And I think it shows different aspects of cultures that people forget exist. You know, Anthony Bourdain is a pioneer in everything that he does, but especially in the fact that he brought food to the forefront of tourism. You know, going to a destination for the purpose of trying their cuisine. Alongside telling these incredible stories and digging deeper. To me, I think the only thing that’s more intimate that sharing a meal with someone is sharing a dance with someone. And my approach is the same way, is that dancing and learning these dances with people, that it’s something very important to them. They’re very proud of this. And people don’t usually take the effort to learn these things about their culture. The second you do that, other doors open. “My sister’s getting married tomorrow. Come to our wedding.” You know, that happens. That actually happens. And I was doing this before the camera was even there, and that’s what inspired me to continue it, because there were these magical moments of meeting complete strangers, especially if I couldn’t even speak the language, of all of a sudden I’m part of their family or I’m part of celebrating these traditions with them and I have no idea what they’re saying. But you’re smiling, you’re sweating, you’re-- you know, it’s very, it’s very intimate, but in a very respectful way, and a very humbling way for me especially. Jo Reed: Right, because you’re the student. Mickela Mallozzi: Right, exactly. Exactly. I’m not going in there expecting to become a professional tango dancer all of a sudden or… Jo Reed: Oh, and I do want to talk to you about that, but we’ll get there. <laughter> Mickela Mallozzi: I approach it in the sense of -- even if they’re not a professional dancer, but most of these dances are folk dances. But they grew up doing this. It’s in their blood. They’ve been doing this their entire lives. So they are the expert. And I go in there, “Let me try. Let me just take a taste of this.” And I want to approach it as the pupil and the master. Immediately. So they understand the humility, and also the fact that I’m really excited <laughs> to want to learn their dances and music. Jo Reed: When did you start dancing yourself, because you are a dancer? Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. I started when I was three. Started taking lessons. Jazz, tap. And then when I was seven I started taking ballet. And sort of fell in love with learning, especially with ballet, there’s such a strict regimen. It’s a lot of structure, which I really liked and really enjoyed. But having that dance vocabulary my entire life really helps with me to connect with people. Jo Reed: You also play instruments, correct? Mickela Mallozzi: Yes. So I started dancing first, and then I started playing music. And I did everything by ear as a child, and then people would see me playing little Casio keyboard and they would say, “You should probably give your daughter music lessons.” <laughs> So over the years I learned piano, I learned how to play the violin, I learned how to play flute. And eventually decided to go the music route for university. So I went to NYU for Music Composition and stopped dancing for that whole time. Because when you’re at music school or at a school like NYU, you’re either a dance major or you’re not. So it wasn’t sort of great dance opportunities. But I was in New York City. So there were opportunities to kind of find ways to dance otherwise. But--worked in the music industry for about six years, got burnt out, and then rediscovered dance again and it’s… It’s how we ended up here today. Jo Reed: And the rest, as they say, is history. Mickela Mallozzi: Yes, exactly. Jo Reed: One thing I love about Bare Feet is your interest is in traditional arts. Mickela Mallozzi: Right. Jo Reed: I’m curious about your parents. Your parents were born in Italy. Mickela Mallozzi: Yes. Jo Reed: Was music an important part of life in your home as you were growing up, and were Italian traditions important? Mickela Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. Growing up in an immigrant family had, and has, a huge impact on Bare Feet, on my life, on my daily life. And that’s what inspired me to do this. My first project was deciding to go back to my family’s roots in Southern Italy in a small town called Minturno. It’s on the West Coast of Italy, between Rome and Naples. Beautiful little town. And I decided I couldn’t go on this journey to discover other people’s cultures until I rediscovered my own roots. And yes, my family, we grew up speaking a dialect of Italian, we are very much rooted back to Italy. Because my family came in the ‘60s, so they still spoke the language. Both of them are immigrants, and what I realized is my story of having immigrant roots isn’t unique to the United States, but it was unique, I think, for the Italian-American community in the United States. A lot of people are third or fourth generation Italian. So little did I realize that I was extremely lucky to know, to have family, still in Italy. My grandparents still live there. I have aunts and uncles and cousins and so many people. But the beautiful thing about my family immigrating to the United States is they moved to Stamford, Connecticut, which is the sister city of Minturno, and-- Jo Reed: I didn’t know that. Mickela Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. It’s a huge population of Mallozzis and people from Minturno and the surrounding area. So it’s this little bubble of Minturnese people. So we knew the songs. We would do, you know, holidays. Christmas. Easter. Always big, big, big celebrations, especially my family, all of my aunts and uncles. We all lived within 10 minutes of each other. So every weekend we’d have big cookouts. My family is, part of my identity, of this growing up. And as a child I didn’t realize the difference that I had compared to other people that I had gone to school with. But then, coming to New York and meeting all sorts of people. People of Indian decent, Puerto Rican, everything that you can think of, because New York represents every single culture. And you realize everybody really holds onto their cultures in such a beautiful way, but one of the biggest ways of doing that is through song. Singing songs, telling stories, dressing up in costume, dancing. Having my parents be so proud of their culture, and maintaining that culture within our family, was one of the biggest inspirations for Bare Feet overall. I mean, I think that if I didn’t grow up in an immigrant family, none of this would be happening right now. My curiosity in the cultural and ethnic roots of other cultures just wouldn’t exist. Jo Reed: How did Bare Feet actually begin? How did you make it happen? You were just traveling around- not just. Mickela Mallozzi: <laughs> Jo Reed: You were traveling around and decided that you would learn dances in different places. Mickela Mallozzi: Sure. Jo Reed: And then how did the camera get involved? Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. So, my first time traveling solo, independently internationally, was through the NYU summer abroad program. And like I said, I grew up speaking, well, sort of speaking, not even that much of, but understanding the dialect that my family spoke. And my sophomore year of college I decided to take Italian. And I realized I wasn’t speaking Italian. <laughter> I was speaking this other language. And I wanted to really learn the proper language. So, I studied abroad that summer, and took Italian. And fell in love with my culture all over again. Back home it’s this Italian-American history, roots. It’s a different culture from actual Italy. So from that I was like, “I need to travel more.” I was independent. I was, what, 19, maybe just turned 20. And every year after that I made a point to travel. So I applied for a scholarship to study in Rome the next summer, and every year after that I found a friend of mine was fulfilling a Fulbright in Budapest. Stayed there. A friend of mine was backpacking in South America. I said, “Where you going to be this week?” He goes, “I’ll be in Buenos Aires.” “Okay, I’ll go there.” You know, you can make travel accessible if you really try. You know, you don’t have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. Just do it on the cheap. So in all of these places I would go to, especially in the summers there’s all these festivals and religious holidays and religious ceremonies where people are in the streets, making music, and dancing together. And there’s food and there’s costume. So what I would do is just jump in with them. I would literally jump in and start dancing and they would grab me and we’d dance more. And I had this incredible high from that feeling of thinking, “I want this to happen more often.” You know, at that time I wasn’t even a professional dancer. I was just still in the music industry and just loved doing this. And I had this, like, itch on me. I had this idea over and over and over again. Quit my job with music and became a full-time dance teacher throughout New York City. And kept having this idea. And I told it to a friend. And he said, “Why don’t you start a TV show?” I said, “Okay.” <laughter> And that’s how it started. The next-- Jo Reed: That’s so Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland. Mickela Mallozzi: Right, right. Jo Reed: I have a barn. <laughs> Mickela Mallozzi: Right, exactly. I started an LLC. I started a production company. I, you know, decided to approach it like a business right away. I had no production background, I had no TV background. Nothing. Just knew that I loved this idea of combining travel with dance. Like I said before, “I don’t want to start this journey until I rediscover my own roots.” So the idea was in January, and I realized that that same year in July is the annual Sagra delle Regne, which is the wheat harvest festival in Southern Italy in Minturno, my family’s town. I said, “Let me hire some friends.” Because I had friends who worked in the industry. “We’ll stay at Nona’s--“ Nona Pina, my grandmother. “We’ll stay at Nona’s farmhouse, and we’ll film and I’ll reach out to the dance group and I’ll get to dance for the first time in the actual town where my family’s from.” I spent all my savings. <laughs> In retrospect, now I know. It’s like I spent way too much money, didn’t know what I was doing. But just <claps> did it. Just went for it. And that was in 2010. I signed with a third-party production company to pitch it to Travel Channel and that got dropped and I couldn’t touch my footage even though I owned it and for a whole year. So within that process I said, “Forget this. I’m not doing this to be on TV. I want to do this because I just want to travel and dance.” So I started the blog. Started making little YouTube videos. And then eventually was able to take my footage back. And hired a friend to start editing little web series episodes and then started pitching it out and found a contact at NYC Life, which is the local public television station here. And after a couple years of creating content and starting to build my name in the travel industry, all of a sudden they said, “Yeah, we want to start airing your TV show.” And I’m thinking to myself, “I don’t have a TV show.”<laughter> “But I can do this.” So I repurposed online content. I started shooting more stuff. And some of these episodes that first aired, no joke, I’m holding a DSLR camera on a monopod filming myself and then asking strangers to hold the camera on the monopod while I’m dancing with these groups. And it worked. And we got it done. And it just was telling the story. And then from there, of course, it’s just grown and we have now two New York Emmy awards and now national distribution on PBS and it’s growing even more. And international distribution. So it started as this crazy idea. I still think it’s a crazy idea. But I just did it. And that was what it comes down to. I wasn’t waiting for someone-- because I did pitch to production companies, and they said, “It’s a great idea, but you’re not going to be the host.” You know, I don’t fit that, your idyllic travel host. Not blonde-haired, blue-eyed, leggy. Not at all, you know. But I thought, “This is a really good story. This is a really good thing, and I want to do it. And you know what? If I fail, at least I tried. “I’m really glad I did. It was a huge chance that I took, but-- Jo Reed: It paid off. Mickela Mallozzi: It paid off. Jo Reed: So with Bare Feet you’re taking the time to be authentically where you are, and that’s a different way of traveling. Mickela Mallozzi: Yes, Bare Feet is bigger than I thought. In the sense of the idea of it’s bigger than I thought. You know, there are people that come up to me and say it inspired them to reconnect with their own roots. It’s inspired people to follow their dream of creating their own business. It’s inspired people to finally travel. You know, a lot of people are scared to travel. And it’s like, “I want to go to these places, and I don’t have to spend a lot of money.” And “I didn’t realize Turkey was so beautiful and the people are so wonderful”. And that’s what we want to show is that travel isn’t about ticking off these boxes. There’s my selfie at the Eiffel Tower. Done. There’s my selfie at the Coliseum. Done. Travel is about the people you meet along the way. And for me that’s through dance and music. Jo Reed: I have a couple of questions Mickela Mallozzi: Sure. I’m sorry I’m going on so long. <laughs> Jo Reed: No, no, not at all. And the first is now when you travel you have a camera person who’s with you. But at first, as you said, you were traveling alone. How was that for you as a woman? Mickela Mallozzi: I just had this conversation with a friend yesterday; it’s about being adventurous, but being smart, and not being reckless. It was an incredible experience traveling solo, because you’re forced even more to talk to people. You have no one else to communicate with. You know, sometimes I miss having those experiences of just being dumped in a place, jumping off somewhere, and kind of exploring on my own. Physically it was exhausting, and I also didn’t know what I was doing. So I was constantly filming. You know, there’s a lot of storytelling and creating segments and producing an actual show with a storyline, you know. I know how to do that now, but before I would just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot, and then look at the footage after, which is hours and hours of footage, and try to put a story together. But it was incredible because, like I said, you’re on your own and you meet characters everywhere you go. And your eye for things start becoming a little clearer, because you’re thinking, “How can I tell this story? This amazing thing just happened and I want to capture it.” But what I love now is that we intentionally, you know, we meet with people, I call people and set up interviews. Jo Reed: Yeah. That was my next question. Go ahead. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. Jo Reed: Yeah. Mickela Mallozzi: But I like now being able to turn the camera off and just enjoy the moment. Because not everything has to be-- Jo Reed: That’s so good. Mickela Mallozzi: Ah. To be honest, I try and keep my phone off. I try and keep-- you know, we’ll take some photos, but then I put it away, and I think to myself, “I want to remember these moments not through the screen of my phone, but for what’s actually happening.” All senses. How does it smell right now? How does my body feel right now with the movements I’m doing? What does it look like not looking at a two-by-four screen? And I come from that background before, when I had to make the web series, of constantly looking into the world through a screen. And granted, I couldn’t always be behind the camera, and I was in front of the camera and doing things and I had incredible experiences, but it’s made me realize even more the value of not documenting absolutely everything. And we get everything we need for the show now. We’re very focused, but also as succinct as possible too. So we get the shots we need. We get the moments we need. But then when it’s done we put it down and we enjoy. Jo Reed: I want you to talk about some of the places you’ve gone, and also to give listeners a sense of the breadth. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. Jo Reed: Because even if we look through Season One, it’s really kind of extraordinary how many places you’ve been. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah, yeah. So, season one consists of 13 episodes, and that starts with my hometown in Southern Italy, Minturno. I go to South Korea, to celebrate the Jeju Fire Festival. We’re in Turkey, in the hills, the caves in Cappadocia and I’m doing belly dance in traditional Turkish dance, folk dance. I go to the Cook Islands, to experience their-- their dancer of the year competition. Croatia, I dance in Croatia with former refugees who started dancing again, after they came back to Dubrovnik .Dubrovnik when it was 80 percent bombed, and the way that they overcame this devastation was through dance and music. Scotland, I celebrate Hogmanay in Scotland and learn highland dance, and Scottish step dance. You go to Montreal, and not only am I learning Quebecois trad, but I dance with a woman who is a quadriplegic professional dancer because to me, Montreal was an accessible city for people with disabilities, and they made that very apparent, and it’s an artistic city. And I wanted to show the openness. Where else did we go? Obviously, tango in Buenos Aires. We did two episodes in Malaysia. And then we did two domestic destinations, we did the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina, which is not a federally recognized tribe. So it was a very emotional episode for me, that these people let me in, and I attended a pow wow, and really dug into their history. And then also we did a Nashville episode, which was really fun, buck dancing and flat footing, as well as line dancing, traditional blue grass music. Jo Reed: I want to talk to you about some of the memorable moments you’ve had. Mickela Mallozzi: Sure. Sure. Jo Reed: And I have a feeling this would be one for you, but I want you to talk to me about the tango. And how that happened. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. So I decided to go down to Buenos Aires, and that trip-- that I funded myself. That was really early on in the series. And through friends, which is how I usually find people to connect with, is I reach out to friends first, or I reach out through social media first and we shot that episode in 2012. And connected with tango dancer, who just took us into her community, she’s young, and she was a student, and she danced with a company. She was a teacher, so she’s like, “Come out. Tonight we’re dancing here, and tonight we’re going here, just come.” So, I had a week in Argentina of interviewing people, and taking a few lessons here and there. And then at the very end, I knew, I had connected with this tango production, tango house called, Tango Porteno which is the very big, elaborate productions, you go and you have a huge steak dinner, and you’re sitting there, and there’s a two-hour long show. Huge production, and I knew I was going to be in the show. I was told I was going to be a backup dancer, no big deal. I show up two hours before the show, and the producer of the show, comes to me, he goes, “We’re so excited to have you here. And this is our choreographer, and he’s a world renowned dancer.” And they say, “You’re going to be our featured dancer tonight.” And all the blood rushed out of my hands and my legs, and I thought, I just learned tango, basically, five days ago. And here I’m going to be on stage as a featured dancer. Dancing in front about 1,000 people. So it was really nerve racking, and it’s all real, everything you see on that episode is real, I’m in tears basically just from my nerves. And then at the end, I’m about-- I’m getting dressed, and I’m so nervous, and so-- just so-- I want to represent their culture to the fullest, and to my best ability. And I’m sitting there nervous, trying to calm down, and I thought to myself, “Holy cow, it’s really happening. This is Bare Feet. This is exactly what I wanted to happen.” The whole goal of the show is to jump in and be a part of this, and I did it. This is real, and all of a sudden, I had this huge smile on my face, my body calmed down, and I was like, I actually am living this. And the lights came on, and I had to go on stage, and I had the best time-- of course I was still nervous. But I was like this is real. This is real. And I got off stage, the producer came to me and hugged me back stage. You see it all, you see everything. I got such a high from it and I realized, okay, I can do this. It’s not going to be the end of the world if I miss a step. But guess what, there aren’t a lot of people that can say, “I have an idea, and I tried to execute it, and I did, and it’s actually happening.” Since then, now I feel totally comfortable not getting things perfectly because that’s human, that’s real. And a lot of times people ask me, “Wow Mickela, how much-- how much rehearsal time do you have?” Sometimes I have ten minutes, sometimes half an hour. But we show the whole process. I never have a prior rehearsal before the cameras. I like to get everything on camera. Jo Reed: Yeah, that was really clear with the tango. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah. I mean, I’m in tears. Jo Reed: You mentioned you went to South Korea, and you went to Seoul. But you also went to an island where you met some extraordinary women. Mickela Mallozzi: Yeah, we did a whole day in Seoul, and then we head to Jeju which is a small island. It’s considered the Hawaii of Korea. The first night, I see these beautiful women, and they’re all between the ages of, I would say 65 to 80, dancing on stage. Singing these beautiful songs, and I ran up to them, and I’m bringing the man who’s with me to translate, ‘cause I don’t speak Korean. And this was 10:30 at night, at the end of the festival, I said, “Can we meet with them? I would love to dance with them.” And they let me dance with them at 11:00pm at their community center. These are women that dive for shellfish. And it’s a lost tradition. It’s a dying tradition, literally. But that’s what these dances in music are trying to pass along these songs that they used to sing when they would come to sell the fish after they had picked all the fish. And so they just let me jump in, and by the end of it, I’m singing with them, we’re dancing together. They’re hugging me. And they say, “You’re one of us now.” And just that moment, where it’s like, I’m in tears, because these people took the time to let me come in at 11:00pm when they’re going home. They’re ready to go to bed, it’s been a long day. And then they share this music and then they kept wanting to sing more, and dance more, and I want to do more. Without dance, that would have never happened. It really is this magical moment. Jo Reed: You’re having magical moments all around New York City as well, because it’s like around the world in five boroughs. You have Bare Feet, New York City. How did-- how did that come to be? Mickela Mallozzi: So NYC Life, the-- the local station here, I love working with them. I appreciate them so much on taking a chance with airing my show to begin with. And I said to them, “Okay, what if we did Bare Feet in New York City, and I’ll write a pitch and we’ll come up with ideas.” And they loved it, they absolutely loved it. And because I was a dance teacher in New York for so long, and I danced in New York for so long, and wrote about other performers, for the blog for Bare Feet. I had a huge community of people that I could reach out to immediately. Not only were they my friends and my colleagues, but these were people who I admired and respected. And it’s been a huge success. It’s now the number one show on-- on NYC Life. And we just have fans reaching out all the time saying, “You sure you’re in New York? It feels like you were in Serbia, or feels like you were in Mexico, or it feels like you were in India, and that’s the beauty of New York City.” When I was writing the blog, I couldn’t afford to travel this much. But because I lived in New York, which is one of the most diverse cities in the world, I had access to dance and music every single night. It was really fun to dive back into that. It was really fun rediscover my own city in this magical way. And, it’s just been this really fun journey of traveling the world within the five boroughs of New York City. And I think the biggest response we get from people is, “Man, I had no idea our city had all this to offer.” Which is the best response because it-- it inspires them to go and kind of dig a little deeper into-- into their own city. What really touched me, and really pushed me to do Bare Feet in NYC, is the idea, which goes back to my family. I’m-- come from a family of immigrants. And we really feature, first, second, third generation immigrant families, and how they preserve their culture through music and dance for Bare Feet in NYC. So it was a direct correlation with how I grew up, I wanted to meet people who had the same experiences in other cultures and to see how they’re still preserving. I found my-- my voice truly in this new season. So this will be our season two for national PBS. So for those of you who are not in New York City, you’ll be able to watch this starting next year, on all the PBS stations. Jo Reed: And we look forward to it. It’s-- it’s just fabulous. Mickela Mallozzi: Thank you. Jo Reed: Oh Mickela, thank you so much. Mickela Mallozzi: Thank you. Jo Reed: I so appreciate it. Mickela Mallozzi: I really appreciate it. Jo Reed: And thank you for coming in, and thank you for this fabulous work. Mickela Mallozzi: Thank you. That’s Mickela Mallozzi—the creator and host of Bare Feet. You can check your local PBS station for air times for Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi, or go to the website travelbarefeet.com. The music we’re listening to is “Second Baghdad” produced and performed by 2015 NEA Heritage Fellow, Rahim AlHaj You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.