Eight Seasons Into Bare Feet, Mickela Mallozzi Finds There's More of the World to Dance Through

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Mickela Mallozzi dances with the same fervor that Anthony Bourdain brought to eating, that Sam Brown brings to vacationing, and that Rick Steves brings to doing Europe on a shoestring. She's tapped alongside Broadway's best, tangoed with Argentinians , and danced to the doyra in Uzbekistan 's UNESCO World Heritage City of Bukhara—to name just a few highlights from her PBS travel series, Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi , where she dives into the boundless world of dance.

When I sat down with Mallozzi to chat about the eighth season of her show, she illustrated the near infinite scope of her subject with an approachable comparison: "I get a lot of people that have found out about the show and ask, 'Are you ever gonna run out of styles of dance?' It's like asking, 'Are we ever gonna run out of dishes to try in the world?'" While some travelers get to know a place by studying its unwritten rules or tracking down the very best version of an iconic food , Mallozzi begins by listening for its rhythms. Since her show premiered in 2014, she has continued sharing what she had always done on the road—embracing the uniquely human impulse to move, and move with each other.

In season eight, that impulse carries Mallozzi from the shores of Cuba to the interior mountains of Taiwan and the heart of New Zealand 's Māori communities. Below, Mallozzi reflects on the healing politics of dance, building a platform on public media, her most memorable experiences from the show, and the past 12 years of dancing around the world with Bare Feet .

Season 8 of Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi is now available to stream on PBS and Amazon Prime . This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What unique perspectives does dance reveal about a place that exploring other avenues of culture might not show?

For me, dance is like a lot of things that are universalities—people need to eat , they have to cook, and there's a sense of identity in food, through taste, through a sense. The same thing is there with dancing. It's this very respectful way of tactile, physical connection with another human being where you don't have to speak. There's this thing called entrainment [the process of making something have the same pattern or rhythm as something else]. Entrainment is like, you're sitting on a porch and you start rocking a chair next to a person, then you realize you're both rocking together. Humans want to be in sync with each other, and entrainment is that natural state of synchronization. Whether you consider yourself a dancer or not, you feel an immediate connection that I don't think translates in any other way except through rhythm and dance.

What was your trajectory from being a professional dancer to a travel host who explores a culture through dance?

I grew up dancing and playing musical instruments, and I actually went to university for music. Then I worked in management in the music industry and quit cold turkey. But then I thought, this isn't where I want to be. So I found dance again, started auditioning to teach, and became this professional performer and teacher again in New York . Through that journey, when I would travel for fun, even when I couldn't speak the local language, I'd dance to connect with complete strangers. I would be in the street, and ask people to show me their moves. Then all of a sudden they were like, "My mother's cooking a meal, come over!" So before any cameras were around, dancing was this way for me to immerse myself in a culture. That was the magic of it.

Fast forward, and I had an epiphany where I saw what Bare Feet is today. The goal of the show is to get a taste of a culture and use that as a stepping stone to share. It's a show about dance, but it's really a show about culture.

What is the significance of having a travel program on public broadcasting to you?

The significance is huge. Number one, it's the only platform that has as many female travel hosts or female hosts in general. The main reason being there's no executive who is saying, yes, we'll sign you. [When you have a show on PBS] they sign you as an independent producer.

Number two, there's no barrier to entry. If you have internet, you can access our show for free. We do get grants for making our shows fully accessible with closed captioning descriptions for the visually impaired. My sister is disabled, so I've always put accessibility in the forefront of making our shows.

Number three is legacy. I grew up watching Reading Rainbow and Mr. Rogers and Rick Steves . To now be on the platform that has been such an integral part of my upbringing is an honor.

The fourth thing is, as independent producers, we own all of our content. There's no one to say, oh, we just shot 10 episodes, and all of a sudden they're gonna pull it, and no one's gonna see the light of day of that. As long as we can find the funding and make it move forward, people will see the show.

What is the scouting process like for Bare Feet ?

First, I look at a map and think of dances we haven't featured yet, both in New York City and in international settings we haven't been able to tap into and explore. Then we start to sort out stories. Usually episodes are five segments long—one, three, and five are dance/music related, and two and four are food, culture, nature, something interesting that's completely unique to the destination.

What I love to do is a call out to viewers. We get emails from fans like, "Hey, have you ever heard of this dance group in Brazil ?" And there are a lot of governments that want to work with us, but may not have the means to be able to help support us. I hate the fact that sometimes we have to say no because of that, but there was one special case in particular for season eight.

We went to Cuba for the season finale, and an old friend of mine, Rita McNiff [founder of boutique travel agency Like a Cuban ], reconnected with me. This episode is all dance, and it was our crew's favorite episode to do. We went through all these beautiful, diverse stories in Cuba. For one of the segments, we feature the history of the Chinese Cuban community because Havana was the second largest Chinatown outside of China until the '60s, which is sort of a lost history. Rita connected us to everyone that you meet in those episodes, and it's unbelievable. Pre-production is really reaching out to my community and figuring out how we're going to fund it. That's the hardest part.

At Traveler , we're always cognizant of the idea of travel as a political act. What political dimensions do you see in dance?

A lot of groups we feature are marginalized. In this season, we feature Cuba and its deep African history, the roots of which come from the Transatlantic slave trade. We danced with the Māori for two episodes in Aotearoa and also with Indigenous tribes in Taiwan that some people don't even realize are still there.

Another example was our Arab American episode for season six in Bay Ridge. Three of the five segments feature Palestinian stories . We filmed that in the summer of 2021, and it came out November 1, 2023. We went to a Palestinian wedding, and Balady, which is this beautiful store out in Bay Ridge that offers food from Arab countries: Moroccan food all the way through Israeli food, Palestinian food, and Lebanese food. "Balady" means home, and it's this one place where all these cultures can come together and feel like they're home with their neighbors. It wasn't done as a political act, but it was definitely done in a way to show [viewers] that these are your neighbors.

We hope what people take away from our show is that everyone needs the same thing—food, shelter, family, love, and a little bit of dance and music to get along.

Do you have advice for others curious about going down the path less traveled?

On the path less traveled, there's still value in the familiar. Whatever you like to do at home, do that when you're traveling. Say you like to go to a yoga class, or maybe you love to go on a walk through your neighborhood, whatever you do here, there's no reason why you can't try it in the place where you're going. In that act of joining the thing that you already love to do, you're also building a community. Maybe you'll be a little bit more adventurous, go out to dinner by yourself and start talking to the bartender, and then when you go back home, it sticks with you.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

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