I Traveled Around the World Because of a DNA Test: Women Who Travel Podcast

For the latest season of her PBS show, Mickela Mallozzi used her own ancestry to decide where she traveled.

There are plenty of ways to see the world: through food, through art, or even just by slipping on a pair of sneakers and taking a walk. But for Mickela Mallozzi, dancer and host of the award-winning PBS travel show Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi, there is no better way to connect with a new place—and its people—than by dancing, whether it be with the Gnawa tribe in Morocco or the Georgian National Ballet. This episode, we sit down with Mickela to find out how she got the idea for her show in the first place, where it's taken her since, and what to expect from her upcoming season, which sees her tracing her DNA across the globe.

ICYMI: Women Who Travel's 2020 trip lineup is here! We're still headed to Colombia and Mexico, but are also introducing Cuba as a brand new destination. Interested? You can find all the information you need here.


Read a full transcription of the episode below

Lale Arikoglu: Hi, this is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and with me, as always is my co-host, Meredith Carey.

Meredith Carey: Hello.

LA: And for this week's episode we're also joined by Mickela Mallozzi, professional dancer and host of the award-winning PBS travel show Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi, which has taken her pretty much everywhere I would say.

Mickela M.: A lot of places, yeah.

LA: And I have no doubt that she's full of stories to share. So thank you so much for joining us.

MM: Thank you for having me.

MC: I'm so curious how you got started with the project of going places to dance in the first place.

MM: So I studied abroad sophomore year, the summer of sophomore year at NYU, and like all of us that study abroad, you get that travel bug and it was the first time traveling independently. But when I really caught that bug of like I need to travel again no matter how it is, cheaply, inexpensively, crashing on people's couches, whatever it is. This was back in 2002. And when I would travel to international destinations where I couldn't speak the language, I used dance to communicate with people for fun. This is how I traveled for fun.

For me, it was so much fun dancing, but what came out of the dance was all of a sudden I'm invited to a family's dinner where their mother's cooking for me, or I'm invited to a wedding in Mumbai. It was this amazing key that opened every single door, and it was through music and dance and so I kept having this idea of there's something special about this way to connect with people.

And then fast forward to 2010, I literally had this aha moment where I woke myself up in the middle of the night and I was like, I'm going to start a TV show about traveling and dancing around the world. And that's kind of how it happened. It was this, I've said this before, but it's like a projection that came out of my eyeballs in the middle of the night of like this is what my show's going to look like, and it all has come to fruition. It's taken a while, but it's been an incredible journey so far.

LA: And so to rewind slightly back to that study abroad trip.

MM: Yeah.

LA: Takes quite a lot of balls to just walk up to some people and start dancing.

MM: Yeah.

LA: What was that first time when you did it and plucked up the courage and then were also like, "Huh, I'm like making a connection here. This will work."

MM: Yeah. Yeah. So I grew up dancing. I was a dancer. I started dancing since I was like three. We have old family stories that I've been dancing since a baby, just like I'm always on the dance floor, whether it's a wedding and I grew up—I'm first-generation American—so I grew up in an immigrant family where traditional dance and music my parents were telling is ... and the language and the food is very much part of our upbringing. So hearing these different, this different music and dressing up in costume, a cultural costume. wasn't strange for me but I never had that cross cultural connection.

The very first time I really felt that it was a friend of mine's father was getting married in Scotland. The wife, soon to be wife, was American. The father is Scottish-British and they wanted to have a céilí. I never heard of what a céilí was. And they had-

LA: I've experienced that.

MM: Yeah. Oh yeah. Now I think they're so much fun. A little whiskey, a little beer, you know, you get the courage but there were so many Americans coming into Scotland for this wedding that they wanted to teach them what is a céilí. So we had a céilí lesson in a barn a couple of days before the wedding and we had so much fun. We had so much fun and I was like, this is what I want to keep doing.

And that really stuck with me but I'm, also, I'm not shy. You know you can't be shy. I think that's what transmits also in the show over the years of doing this, is that I don't care if I mess up. I'm not doing this to become a professional tango dancer, I'm not doing this to become a professional belly dancer, I'm doing this to connect with people in a fun way. I just happen to have the vocabulary in my body so that the people who are teaching me feel comfortable enough to keep going. That's where I think I have, that's my superpower. I don't give a shit if I screw up, right? But I also care enough about what these people are so proud of that I want to do it justice.

And then by digging even deeper—and you see it in their eyes, like at first they're, some of them are super skeptical. They're like, "She's never going to get this dance." And then I get a little bit of it, and like, "Oh, let's teach her more. Let's teach her more." And then that's where you get that magic. So it's a little bit of not caring, but also being so caring about what they are so proud of I think at the same time.

MC: Obviously dance has been a part of your life almost forever. When did travel come into the picture as a priority for you or your family? Like how did that work growing up?

MM: Yeah. So my grandparents live... I grew up with my grandparents in Italy and we were only able to see them every four or five years. So we didn't go that often, but we were lucky enough to go there. They had a farmhouse there. So my only real travel was going to this farmhouse in Southern Italy, and we would stay about a month. It was amazing. But when we were there, we were working there. It wasn't like... I mean, we would go to the beach because it was in Southern Italy, and it's beautiful. I mean now I feel like a spoiled brat, as I say this, but really like we would slaughter the chickens and the rabbits, and we would pick the eggs, and we would pick the figs. It was a farm, a working farm, and it was work, and we were living there.

And so for me, travel always meant doing something that was almost work. You had to do something there. It wasn't just like laying around and being lazy. So I think that to me is what travel meant. It didn't mean going on vacation and getting away from everything. It was going somewhere and continuing on with your life in an amazing way of what they do locally.

So that really stuck with me and that's how I travel now. I couldn't really imagine going somewhere and not doing anything. I think I would get really bored and even if I try not to do anything, I end up dancing with people, or finding music, or you know.

MC: So you're talking about work and travel and it being integral to that. Now that you are, what, three seasons into Bare Feet...

MM: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MC: How does the planning go for the seasons? How do you pick the places you're going? How does planning on the ground and deciding who to talk to and who to dance with, how does that all work?

MM: Yeah. So this season in particular is pretty interesting. When I was preparing for this season, it's on public television. So I'm an independent producer, I have to find all my own funding. I'm very proud to be part of the public media family. The integrity of the show. I get to make the show I want to make. I know Samantha Brown has been a host on here and she talks about that same thing. Public television is really something special that I think as the American public we need to value.

And aside from that, when I was in the process of about to make Bare Feet season three, I thought, The first season was international destinations, and the second season we did Bare Feet in New York City. New York is my home. It's my love. How I know New York is through dance and so I was able to feature my friends, people who I've danced with for years through cultural neighborhoods in New York. So Little Ukraine in the East Village, Little Haiti out in Flatbush, Brooklyn. I danced in Harlem. I danced on Broadway. It was so much fun.

And so for season three, I thought, Why don't we do Bare Feet across the U.S.? And it was right after the election, and I was like, you know what? I don't really feel motivated to go around our own country right now. It's a really dark time. And coming from an immigrant background, I thought, you know, it's really important, it's to show that we all come from a different place and so I thought, why not get my DNA tested and base every single episode on my DNA map.

And I knew that I was Italian. Both my parents are from the same little town in Southern Italy for generations. So that's the only thing I knew I ever was and I thought this would be really interesting. I hope it comes out pretty diverse, and I assumed it would because Italy is a very geographically strategic place on the map, so I knew it was going to be sort of interesting. So I got four DNA tests done.

MC: That's a lot of spit.

MM: I'm in the system. I'm deep in the system.

LA: You're owned.

MM: Yeah. Oh yeah. I can't do anything without getting caught. But it was to compare and contrast. I took a little bit of creative, artistic liberties with it. It's a general Mediterranean swath, but it's basically like the Iberian peninsula, North Africa, northwestern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus. It's a really beautiful spread. And that's what this season's about. And I think this season was so personal to me and that really comes through in some of the episodes.

Like we were in Morocco, and in every segment where I'm dancing I'm crying because of one reason or another, whether with the Gnawa group, I was dancing gnawa which brings you into a trance. It's like a Sufi trance. I went somewhere else. What you don't see is that segment's only five minutes long but we danced together for like an hour and my body just went to another place and I felt so connected with these people.

Another moment we walk into a cafe playing taarab music, which is folk music from that area, and we walk in and there's a lute player who looks like my father and my grandfather. And my uncle had just passed and he looked very similar—and I'm going to get emotional thinking about it—but it's very... There's a connection. There's a reason why when it says your DNA comes from this place. It really—you feel that connection and Morocco is a Muslim country, and it's a beautiful, beautiful culture, and it has beautiful, beautiful people, and I felt so connected with them. But it was something so different from what I've grown up with. And I think that's also a really important message that's tying through this whole season, is in one way or another, I'm connected to these people in somehow.

And every place I go in all the past seasons, I've always felt connected to people when I dance with them. It's so funny, like when I was in Turkey, like, Oh, you must be Turkish, or even when I'm in Polynesia, they're like, You must be from the Cook Islands. I'm like, yeah. That's why I didn't want to get my DNA tested because I'm like, I'm 2 percent everything, you know? And then I'm not. But, then knowing that I'm somewhere in my past, someone came from here, if felt so wonderful and beautiful. And we started this two years ago and now all of a sudden DNA travel has become a thing.

LA: Well that was actually going to be my next question. Thank you for ...

MM: Sorry.

LA: Giving me that wonderful transition, which is that, as you said, people are really into finding out their DNA and traveling to learn about where they're from and finding connections with these places. Why do you think there's been that rise in it right now? Why are people feeling drawn to finding out where they came from?

MM: I think there's so many different reasons. And I've spoken ... I speak at the Travel and Adventures Show, The New York Times Travel Show, I speak at those shows about this DNA journey that I started. And the people that come up to me afterward have so many different stories: whether they were adopted, whether they found out family secrets, whether they didn't know anything about their family. So the only thing they can figure out is through their DNA. People who are similar to me, who know where their family comes from and want to see if they can find something more. But I think it's people want to feel connected. People want to feel connected.

We're in the United States, which as we all know, this country was built by people who weren't from here. People that have come here—whether by choice or not by choice. Unless you're Native American, you did not come from this land. And there is this spark of curiosity to what does that mean? What does that mean to be American and what does that mean to be part of the human race? Because as I've been doing this, I don't feel like I'm just Italian anymore. You know? I also don't feel like I'm Moroccan or I'm Uzbeki. I feel like I am connected to this swath of the world where I feel more closely connected to a massive group of people.

And I feel very lucky that my DNA has been super diverse. There are some that aren't quite as diverse, but you still feel this connection to a place that's not as familiar and I think that's... It's that curiosity of like, Where do we come from? What does this mean? I think also there's this idea of you get the information from the DNA and then what do you do with it? You know? It's like, Well, heck, why don't we go to Poland? Or, Why don't we go to South Africa, or wherever your blood may be coming from.

I think one of the really cool companies that has done some amazing stuff is called africanancestry.com because not only are they giving a sense of identity to a group of people who have not been able to have one, a lot of them, but they're having these cross-cultural bridge trips back to African countries where people find that their DNA, where the tribes that they come from, I mean that's huge. You're finding your identity. If you feel lost, you're finding your identity. And I think that's a lot of it, is a lot of people that are doing this feel lost or feel like they're missing something and want to fill in that gap.

MC: I'm curious because heritage travel is such a trend, but what you're doing with travel and dance is not necessarily something that's covered as often. Why do you think that travel and dance isn't covered in the same way as say like travel and food or some other easier connections? And then when you were traveling to all of these countries, like how did you find the dancers to actually experience that with?

MM: Yeah. So I've traveled with dancers and—I'm not going to brag right now—but they can't do what I do in the sense of you have to not care. And I think losing all inhibitions of like, It doesn't matter what I look like right now. It doesn't matter if I'm getting the steps, I'm just going to try this. And I think that's one part of it. There are a lot of professional dancers that are fantastic dancers that may not feel comfortable trying something outside of their comfort zone, with a camera crew capturing this entire moment that they're going to screw up.

I also am very good at mimicking people. That's what I'm doing. So I go back to the idea of like I'm not going there to be a professional tango dancer or whatever type of dance I'm doing, but with that sense of not caring, there are a lot of people that would absolutely care what they look like if they're jumping in without any rehearsal. I mean I get questions all the time like, Don't you go the day before and rehearse? It's like, no, sometimes we have five minutes, sometimes we have an hour. Whatever you see, that's what you get. You know?

So I think it's a particular skill set, which I'm very proud that I have. Everyone can eat. It doesn't take a lot of skill to eat food. It takes skill to make the food, that's for sure. So I think that oversaturation of traveling through food—and of course we include food in our show. Food is such an integral part of culture. It's been an integral part of my life. That's why I'm not a professional dancer because I like to eat too much, let's be honest. But really! I feel like I've found my calling, but I've also found the perfect fit. I also grew up being a musician. So I'm not a professional musician in a band. I'm not a professional dancer in a dance company. And I love to eat food. And I love to travel. And I've made this TV show where I can do all these amazing things. And I love to dress up in costumes so that's really fun.

LA: I'm probably trivializing this too much, but making a fool of yourself is kind of a universal language.

MM: Yes, it is! And people feel comfortable around you. That's where we get the magic is people are like, She's okay, she's cool. Not “cool,” I'm such a nerd. But she's like...

MC: Willing to try.

MM: Yes, yes. Willing to try and we want to give her more. That's where I always see that shift when I'm approaching groups. This is the perfect example: We were filming in Georgia, the Republic of Georgia. There's this world renowned Sukhishvili Georgian National Ballet and I've seen them perform here. I've seen them. They are incredible. Google them. Look at them. They are like acrobatic, insane, beautiful dancers. I've never seen anything like it and so it's been a dream of mine to dance with them. And so when we were going to Republic of Georgia—I found out that my ancestry was through that area—and I was like, We're going to Georgia. We're doing dancing with Sukhishvili and we made it happen.

And I always have to be very clear because there's always lost in translation and how I find these groups sometimes is through the tourism boards and I say, "This is a group I want to dance with," or, "Do you know of a group that has the style of dance? Can you connect us?" So we have this conversation: “I need to be able to try the dance.” That's the point of the show. It's not showing just them dancing. It's me jumping in. And there was this moment lost in translation. We go to the rehearsal where they're dancing for like an hour. We're getting all this beautiful b-roll. I'm waiting, I'm waiting. I have my shoes on. I'm ready. I'm sitting and watching. And then all of a-

MC: So ready.

MM: So ready because I was like, I've been watching this choreography. I feel like I can pick it up—but not because it's insane—and all of a sudden I see them talking in the corner and I could tell I don't speak Georgian, but I could tell that they, he was upset because here we are, they have a rehearsal for a huge performance... It's like going to the New York City Ballet and be like, "This girl's going to try ballet for the first time. Can you just let her jump in for five minutes?" Do you think that any of the ballet masters would be like, “Sure. Dance with Misty Copeland for five minutes.”

LA: She seems chill.

MM: Yeah, like she can handle this. No. No way. So I don't blame anybody who's like, "Girl, you're crazy."

MM: So finally he like storms off because it's frustrating. He's the choreographer and they were like, Mickela, I don't think we can do this. I was like, all I need is five minutes, just give me five minutes and they're like, “Okay, well, which choreography would you want to try?” And I was like, I had been watching for an hour. I was like, there's this part where the girls are in the line and they're doing this fancy footwork let me try that and they're like, "Okay, fine." And he's like, "Everybody on break," you know? And again, I don't speak Georgian, I figured he said that.

And I start dancing and I start picking it up and the dancers start coming close and they start clapping and they start cheering, and I get it and they're cheering and then IIliko comes back, the artistic director, choreographer, and he goes, “Show”... In Georgian he's like, “Show her this dance, show her this dance” and so then we've got the men. And he's, like, so happy and he's teaching me more and we did this in seven minutes. We did it in seven minutes. We used like every second of that video. And that moment where he shifts happens over and over and over again. And that's where I'm like, "I got them." And I got them, and I got the story, and I got this experience that I'll never forget.

And that happens every single time. And it's so stressful because if it was just communicated and you know it is what it is. But just communicating like, Mickela needs to dance with you and I think people are just like, "Yeah, that's cool. We'll just perform for her." But again, I think, I'm my producer, I'm also my director, pretty much. We're a very small crew. It's me and two people. I fly all the way across the world. If we don't get what we need to get, that's on me and it's like I won't take no for an answer. Dammit. I came here to dance with you. We're dancing.

MC: That's amazing. Are there any other places that really surprised you as like a folk dance hotspot?

MM: Oh, it's like every place is amazing. As a dancer and someone who just loves world music—music in general—every place I go is just like, I want to stay here for two weeks and just soak this up. And we only get about four or five days. But we really do some incredible stuff that I think we get to see stuff that a lot of people don't, don't always have access to.

Ireland is one of my favorite countries in the world. I've been there five times and going back to how I find these groups, when I started Bare Feet it was just a blog and I would travel and do web videos and write posts. And I had been to Ireland so many times, I'd made friends in Dingle and Killarney, and we feature those groups in the show because I was like, "I'm finally going to be able to go back to Ireland and you guys, I love you so much. We become friends from dancing together and making music.

And that's what's the beauty about Bare Feet, especially in this season. There are some groups where I've met them seven, eight years ago, and I'm now featuring them in the show because I can, because it fits in the story. But that's what Bare Feet is about, is I love to say, I make new friends by dancing with strangers. And that's what I do and I think if I don't live it, if I just say that, but it's actually the truth. Like the people that you see in our show, the New York season, they're almost, all of them are my friends. This new season, a lot of people I met along the way. But Ireland, everywhere you go, there's just so much music. There's so much dancing. The people are so kind. It's so beautiful.

Uzbekistan, this was actually the second time I went there, and it was amazing to know that the Caucasus were in the map, in my DNA map. And so it was nice to go back and revisit and have a slightly different perspective to a place. A lot of times you don't know if you're ever going to go back to a place. So it was really nice. I went there five years ago and to see the evolution of Uzbekistan, because when I was there it was politically in a very different place. The amount of infrastructure that has been built, the high speed train, I mean huge difference, but still the beauty of all the traditional dance.

We were in the Basque region of France, which was really fun. I went to Girona, Spain. So we're in Catalonia and I finally got to do flamenco. We did two episodes on flamenco. One in Seville, which is very pristine, professional and then we go to Utrera which is about 35 minutes out. It's a town known as the cradle of flamenco. It's Roma people, the gypsy, gitano. We were there for the Gitano Potaje Festival, which is called the Gypsy Spoon Festival. And I know using the word “gypsy” is a little not PC, but it depends on who's using it. We danced with many, many Roma and gypsy people in Romania in the season and in Spain, and they proudly call themselves gypsy and that's the only reason I will call them gypsy. Gitano, cigan, whatever that word is, I respect them for what they want to be called. They don't even call themselves Roma.

So the diversity of the music that we see, also the string of connection that we see is kind of amazing too, where as we're traveling through these areas, you hear the similar rhythms, the similar steps, the similar instruments, and you're like, We're all connected. We are so connected it's crazy and I get to feel that with my body.

LA: So not only are you traveling to all these different places, but you're trying all these different types of dance. Were there any particular dances that you had never done before and when you did it, it clicked and you felt an instant connection with?

MM: Mm-hmm. Morocco, again, I'll go back to Gnawa and Morocco, there was something... I'm very stocky. I love men's dances. Men's dances are way more fun than women's dances in most cultures.

LA: I mean it checks out because most stuff they get to do is more fun.

MM: Right? Right? I mean women shake their hips, they do fun stuff, but the men are like squatting and jumping and ...

LA: But they're also, they're dancing for themselves.

MM: Right, right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, they’re dancing for each other to show off and they, like, want to one up each other. Same when we were in Cyprus, same thing and I'm like, I love that challenge. I just have that like a little bit of a competitive side and I want to get it, but it's so much fun and I'm built that way. I'm like, I can squat, I can jump. I'm like super stocky.

So that one in particular, I think. I can't explain it. There was something that was happening where the music… It's this, they're playing karkaba which are like iron, they're like giant castanets basically. They were based on castanets from Andalucia. And they're playing this gimbri, which is like a bass guitar drum, which they cross over to jazz. And they're playing and singing and just stamping. And there was something, were squatting and jumping and squatting and it's like when I was done, then I felt like I was a little bit in pain because I have terrible knees and everything. But in it, you don't feel a thing. And I just felt this connection where I was able to follow them completely.

It happens all the time. Every place I go, there's never been a place where I don't feel that connection. Again, Morocco was something completely, I just can't explain it. But every place I go, and everyone asks, where's the favorite place that you've been last, or where's the favorite place you've been in dance?

MC: It's the worst question.

MM: It's the worst question.

MC: It's the worst question.

MM: The worst. The worst and it's always like the last place I've been, because it's fresh in your mind. But at the same time, I mean there's never—even if I've had a bad experience somewhere, you always make something good out of it. We've had like production things fall through and then whatever comes out instead is 10 times better than what we would have gotten in the first place.

So I always say embrace the chaos. It is the best thing that can happen and I'm lucky that we're such a small crew. I have creative control over my show, so if something gets totally screwed up, I can make that executive decision. Like, "We're cutting that out. Let's find something else to replace it."

Like the Taraf de Caliu, which is the gypsy band that we danced within Romania. We didn't have that segment until the day before we shot with them. We were trying to find through Facebook and people who were connected. Everyone was on vacation. People were gone. And the fact that we were able to find them was a miracle and it was magic. I'm in their home.

I went to Clejani which is a gypsy, it's a gypsy village, where we had to go to the front of the village and they met us and took us to their home and then we were in this beautiful courtyard, a simple home, but everyone's playing music. I mean these are virtuosic musicians, legendary musicians and I'm sitting and eating and drinking with them and dancing with them and hugging them and so we're family. It's like, how does that happen every time? How does that happen every time? And my crew, again, with two other people. Every time we finish, we're like in tears. Like, that was fucking magic. That was magic. It really was.

And I think what is the best part of what we do, we're so small and intimate. We just have two cameras. We don't have a boom. We don't have lights. People feel comfortable with us. People feel comfortable with me. People feel comfortable with us because we're not this huge production and we're not feeding lines to people. This is real. I don't want to make a show that's not what this is really about. This is what travel's about. You'll never see me sitting on a beach on a luxury property. I don't do that for fun and I don't think that's real travel. It's for some people who need that reset, fine. But if you're going to travel to experience a culture, don't go to a resort. You know?

And we'll never show that either because our show is about connecting with people. That's what it's about. It's the people. It's not really about the place. It's not really about the dance if you think about it. It's the people that I meet that are showing me these dances, who are bringing me into their homes, bringing me into their studios, bringing me into their associations or cultural centers or whatever it is, where they are able to share this thing that they are so passionate about, letting me into be as one of them. And that's a huge honor right there.

Half the time I have no idea what they're saying, but we are smiling and crying and sweating and touching very respectfully and sharing these dances. I say that every time because you are. You're touching someone. Dancing is very intimate. It can be very, very intimate and my husband watches some of these things. He's like, “Your show should just be called, you're just a girl that want to have old men kiss you all the time.” It gets him so mad. I'm like, Yeah, but that's the best part.

MC: That's amazing. So recently when I hosted our Women Who Travel Trip to Colombia, the day that I was most nervous about was the day where we were going to go dancing in Cartagena and it's because I'm not very coordinated. As one of the trip leaders, I knew that I was going to have to be the one to make sure that everyone else felt comfortable and stepped out of their comfort zone to trust the guides and the dancers to teach us the dances and then they took us around to a bunch of different salsa clubs and it was amazing.

And the thing was, is once I got through, I just like had to, I had like half a beer and I was like, You know what? I'm going to set the tone and I'm going to just go all in and not worry about it and all these people want to have a good time and I want to make sure that they do. I had the most fun and it was truly that day I was most nervous about.

MM: Yeah.

MC: And I had the best time and it really was. It was the guides and the dancers and everyone else feeling comfortable with just like being themselves and not worrying about us going to a bar and having people sitting on the sidelines like, "Oh, who are all these American women dancing?" Are there any places that you think are really great for beginners or for people who maybe aren't as comfortable to just go out there and get it, or dances that maybe are easier to pick up as a non dancer that you think people should start with if they want to get out of their comfort zone in this way and maybe meet people in this way?

MM: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, social dancing is really great. I learned how to dance salsa by going to the Alphabet City and dance with like 60-year-old Puerto Rican men. That sounds creepy right now. But it really was... You jump in—and again, I don't care and I have fun with it, —but take baby steps. Take a class. Take a class here. There's so many ballroom dance schools. I do like that, but at the same time it's a little too refined and people take it very seriously, very seriously.

So I think partner dancing, like salsa dancing, is great as long as you feel comfortable knowing that you're going to have to touch another person. It depends on your comfort zone. There are social dancing where you don't have to touch anybody. But again, like you can find square dancing in New York. That's hilarious and fun. It's so much fun. Or like there's this whole scene for Contra dance. It's like a—basically it was against the English back in the 18th century, 1700s and 1900s, maybe even earlier, but there's like a revival of it. It was during the 1960s and then there's this whole young group of people that are doing Contra dance. That's a whole scene.

Salsa dancing is super accessible because salsa now has become so mainstream and you can find a club that hosts salsa dancing. You can go to like a Zumba class. Just get your body moving. If you get your body moving and start feeling comfortable with your body yourself. A lot of people, like you said, you feel intimidated by the fact that you're going to have to dance with someone else in front of other people. So why don't you just get your body moving and feel comfortable with yourself first? And then once you get in that rhythm. You can do that.

But there are so many destinations. I mean, if you're a salsa enthusiast, you can dance salsa in every country in the world. That's how global it is now. So it's not even that you have to go to Colombia or Puerto Rico and dance salsa. Or even go to Spanish Harlem. I mean you can dance salsa everywhere. India. I was dancing. That's where I got invited to the wedding the next day. We were dancing salsa at a club in Mumbai and they're like, “Oh, my brother's getting married tomorrow” and we're like, well, we'll crash your wedding.

LA: Every wedding crash story I hear seems to take place in India.

MM: Those are the best weddings. Let's be real. Actually what's great to do is if you're going around a festival or a holiday, if you plan your travels around some sort of big celebration, naturally there will be local dancing. In Europe, it's usually in the summer. Carnival is so much fun no matter where you go in the Caribbean, in Europe, in South America. Those are really great opportunities to just dance and you don't have to dance with people, but you're moving, you're hearing the music.

What I like to try and do is focus episodes if we can incorporate some sort of celebration or holiday because there's so much dance, there's so much color, there's so much music, it's amazing. So that's another way of like, Okay, I don't know what type of dancing I want to try. But I know during carnival in Bahamas... well, not the Bahamas now but...

MC: Trinidad.

MM: Yeah, Trinidad or even Guadalupe—we did a carnival in Guadalupe, which was unbelievable. But you just, you're walking down the road, you're dancing down the road on your own with all this energy from other people. So you're feeding off the energy. You're not touching anybody, and it's the best. Again, I think feeling comfortable just with yourself moving, just move your body and eventually you're like, "I want to try this with other people, and this can be really fun." I could, I just feel like there's so many places to dance.

LA: And to wrap things up.

MM: I'm sorry.

LA: Let me ask you one more question, which is, where are you going to dance next?

MM: Ah, that's what we're trying to figure out. We know we're going to do another Bare Feet in NYC season, which we're very excited about. We heard that it was one of their top shows here in New York, which is great and we did a call out to fans of like, "Hey, we're going to do another season." We've gotten some incredible responses so we're going to go to Beiruty Ridge, out in Bay Ridge, it's like a little Lebanon. We're going to hit the Sri Lankan community out in Staten Island, the Garifuna people in the Bronx. It's going to be beautiful.

LA: Can we just like tag along with you?

MC: Yeah, please.

LA: Sounds like the most amazing tour of New York ever.

MM: It's going to be insane. I'm super excited about it and then we have some things in the works that I can't disclose yet, but we're potentially talking to bigger distribution partners. I love public television and I want to stay with public television, but I also need to make some money. I need to be able... I've been doing this all and I know, and I think what people don't understand is that it's a labor of love. It really is a labor of love and it's almost a 10-year journey so far. And it's been a lot, and I love it so much, but I want to take it to the next level. I know it's touched a lot of people and the responses we've gotten from fans has been incredible, and I just want more people to hear these stories.

MC: Well, for people who want to follow you now that they've heard about you, where can they find you on the internet and where can they watch Bare Feet?

MM: Sure. If you go to travelbarefeet.com, you can put in your zip code and find us where we're airing on your local PBS station. The new season, this DNA season comes out in October, nationally and right now I know all the stations are actually airing season two and season one in preparation for this. So you can watch all of that. We're also on Amazon Prime to catch up and you could follow us on all the socials @travelbarefeet on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. All the socials.

MC: I'm @ohheytheremere.

LA: I'm @lalehannah.

MC: And we'll talk to you next week.