[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, two hours of bodies and dance, I'll speak with Cornell philosophy Professor Kate Manne about her new book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. Constance Grady is a senior correspondent for Vox. She'll join me to discuss her latest article titled The Year of Ozempic Bodies and Barbie Botox. That is happening next hour but this hour we dance.

[MUSIC - David Bowie: Let's Dance]

Let's dance

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

Let's dance

To the song they're playin' on the radio

Alison Stewart: For the last eight years, cameras followed dancer, Mickela Mallozzi as she traveled across continents as the host of the series, Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi. The show's tagline is Experiencing the World One Dance at a Time. In the series, Mickela builds connections with communities through dance but also music and history and food, sometimes fashion. In the most recent season, she explored the five boroughs of New York City. She attended a milonga or tango party in Queens, visited the Sri Lankan Dance Academy in Staten Island, and danced punta while diving into the history of Garifuna, an Afro-indigenous Caribbean community in the Bronx.

Let's listen to a clip from that episode. This is José Francisco Avila explaining how the Bronx became home to the Garifunas.

José Francisco Avila: Garifunas have been migrating to New York for the past 80 years. There are 250,000 Garifunas here in New York City. Half of that population lives here in the Bronx. Bill Rainey Park is significant for the local Garifuna community because this was a meeting place back in the '70s and the early '80s. Most of the people who came here were new immigrants. The directions will be, once you get off the train station, turn left, keep walking, and you're going to see a building that looks like a ship, and that's what the park is.

Alison Stewart: The New York-centric season of Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi is airing now on NYC Life, on PBS stations, and on PBS's app. Joining us now in the studio is host, executive producer, and creator, Mickela Mallozzi.

Mickela Mallozzi: Thank you so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: It's so nice to have you here. When did you first develop the itch to travel and see the world?

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh. Independently, I was really lucky to be able to study abroad between my junior and sophomore year of college. I went to NYU. I come from a family of immigrants, and my family, both my parents came from southern Italy and my grandparents lived in Italy. Every day was speaking to them-- Excuse me, every Sunday was speaking to them on the phone. The few times that we got to visit, it was about immersing our whole family in working on our family's little farm in Italy. That's what travel always meant to me, was not just sitting around on a beach. It was really being part of the community. That left such an indelible mark in my heart, in my brain, in my body.

Then the combination of my joy and passion for dance while traveling the world really combined. When I couldn't speak the local language, I would be able to jump in and dance with people and not just randomly. Very respectfully during celebrations, holidays. It was the dance that I loved, but it wasn't the dance that was the end being of this. It was all of a sudden I was invited to someone's home to share a family meal or I'm invited to someone's brother's wedding the next day. It was because we shared that universal language of dance. That love of travel came from so many different aspects of my life but it really culminated into this insane project. [laughs] I absolutely love it.

Alison Stewart: One of the first episodes, you visit that Southern Italian beach where your family was from, your parents immigrated from 40 years ago. What was something that you learned about your family and your roots through dance, through the show that maybe you wouldn't have gotten out of them before or wouldn't have understood before?

Mickela Mallozzi: I grew up doing the tarantella. I grew up dressing as [unintelligible 00:04:25], that outfit that you see me. It's this starched paper hat that we're wearing. It's this really beautiful seven-layer piece. I don't know why they wear it in the summer because it's all wool,-

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Oh, no.

Mickela Mallozzi: -but it's gorgeous. I grew up doing that here in the United States in Stanford, Connecticut. There's a big Italian American population there, a big Minturnese population there. That's where my family's from, is Minturno. I thought when I started this project, why not go and rediscover my roots in a different way? Because being Italian American and our culture here is really different from being Italian in Italy. It was this amazing reconnecting with the destination and this hometown, and it was just the start of this journey. I have to say, to be honest, it was really the start of me rediscovering my own roots since then.

That was 14 years ago that I filmed that episode. Since then, I go back and my connection with the language, my connection with the destination, my connection with the people, all my family that lives there, there are a lot of Mallozzis that are living there. What I discovered is they're very different cultures, but there's also this strong connection of wanting to maintain that heritage and those traditions, both in Italy and in America. There's this wonderful communication, this dialogue that we were starting and creating. When I go back, I was there this past summer celebrating La Sagra Delle Regne, which is that big wheat harvest festival that we do. There were kids in our episode that are now married and have their own children.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Mickela Mallozzi: We've lost, unfortunately, a couple of members of the team, including Giuseppe Conte who was the leader of the group that took me around and was such a kind soul. It's almost this beautiful time capsule of capturing the essence of what that town is, and then now seeing the next generation of younger kids passing that down. It just really sparked this want of reconnecting with my own roots but then finding those immigrant stories and those continuous cultural heritage stories over and over and over again throughout the world.

Alison Stewart: What do you think is communicated through dance that you can't communicate through words?

Mickela Mallozzi: There's touch, there's feeling, there's synchronicity. You're literally in step with someone immediately without having to say one word. Anything. I think that's super apparent, especially in our Garifuna episode, all of our episodes where there's drumming. Once you hear a beat, you have to naturally fall into sync with the person you're standing right across from. I'm mirroring them. If you think about it, the first beat that your body ever feels is your heartbeat. We're constantly hearing rhythms within our bodies, within communities, there are rhythms that bring people together. I think through dance, for me, it's magic. It's magic because I immediately feel this synchronization with another human being with their body.

Alison Stewart: We see that in the episode where you visit the Sri Lankan Dance Academy. I want to play a clip from Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi. You're speaking to one of the instructors, Dilhan Pinnagoda who is a drummer, and he's showing you the drum. Let's take a listen to this and we can talk about it on the other side.

[music]

Mickela Mallozzi: I've never heard a rhythm like this.

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Actually, you can feel the sound. It's very unique and we have a lot of different techniques and also a lot of rhythm cycles.

[music]

Mickela Mallozzi: What is the name of this instrument?

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Gata bera.

Mickela Mallozzi: Gata bera.

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Gata bera, yes. Bera means drum. Gata means this bump.

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh, the bump. Okay.

Dilhan Pinnagoda: The first exercise is called Ta Gata.

Mickela Mallozzi: Ta Gata.

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Ta Gata.

[music]

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Second speed

[music]

Mickela Mallozzi: It's like musical notes where you have bass, higher pitching sounds, and you're all getting it from one drum.

Dilhan Pinnagoda: Yes.

[music]

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Had to wait for the, oh. How do the drummers and the dancers feed off one another in that Sri Lankan dance?

Mickela Mallozzi: What's amazing about that particular style of dance is the drummers also dance. During the rehearsal, Dilhan, he's the guru for the school, for the Sri Lankan Dance Academy. Sachindara was my teacher. She's teaching these young kids. When we filmed, it was the first time that the students had been back post-COVID lockdown. It was this really beautiful moment. That was happening a lot while we were filming. Everyone was doing this over Zoom and then all of a sudden we're back in person. The drumming really guides this procession, this feeling that it's a walking beat, and through the dance, there is this bounce to it.

What's amazing, as you heard the rhythm, double in tempo and then double again, so it's quadrupling. Then on top of that, he adds these flourishes. He kept it simple for me. [laughter] I think at one point we were playing in 15, 8 time or 21, 8 a time, and you can really see my face. I'm really concentrating really, really, really hard because I just want to try and get it a little bit. This dance is done in procession and it's done with this beautiful drum that's strapped along their back to the front, and they're playing this drum and dancing at the same time. It is about this communication between the drummer and the dancer. What's really amazing is Sachindara tells us, she's like, "Look, you're supposed to anticipate what the drummer's going to do and vice versa."

That's a conversation right there. That's super apparent in most dances that I ever learn. The more that that's when you have live musicians and live dancers and they are communicating with each other, again, it's that magic. It's that I feel so privileged to be in a space where I get to witness it firsthand and then try it. Not everybody gets to do that. It's really amazing.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Mickela Mallozzi, she is the host and the producer of Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi. You can see it on the PBS app as well as NYC Life. You've been in New York City before, but in the previous episodes or previous seasons, you talked about institutions like Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, or Japanese Taiko drummers in Queens. What was the theme of this season that focused on the boroughs?

Mickela Mallozzi: That season actually also focused on the boroughs, we filmed both Seasons 5 and 6 at the same time.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Mickela Mallozzi: In all of these interviews and sessions that we did, it was right when the city was reopening, again, post-Covid lockdown. We figured, this is a really magical moment to capture how dance, taken away from us, dance parties were blowing up on Instagram during lockdown. People were dancing in the streets as much as they can when it was better weather. We were lucky enough that in partnership with the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, we co-produced this next season saying, "Look, we need to document this. This moment's never going to happen again."

To be honest, the first six episodes that came out, we really focused on the reopening of New York City and this love letter to, this is why the arts are important, this is why they're necessary, this is why communities need to come together. We were missing that feeling of touching each other and making music with each other and having arts in public spaces. All of a sudden, these public spaces were opening up on the forefront for dance parties and music jam sessions and dance classes all outside. Now, after that, we're public television, just like you're public radio, you know that we depend on support from sponsors.

We honestly had to hold off for the last six because we were looking for more sponsorship. That's just the truth of it. We were lucky enough to get a Bloomberg Connects, it's a public arts app. It's wonderful. They supported us for this last season, and what that does is we decided, "You know what? We don't need to focus on the Covid story anymore because nobody wants to hear that. We've all been through it. In this, let's focus on, which it originally was anyway, was the diversity of voices that don't always get to be told on media, including Garifuna."

A lot of people didn't even know that Staten Island had the largest community of Sri Lankans outside of Sri Lanka, a little Caribbean out in Flatbush, Brooklyn. We do a whole Empower NYC episode, which through all the years that I've been filming, I keep running into these dance organizations and groups that are empowering their communities that aren't necessarily culturally based or neighborhood-based.

Alison Stewart: Oh, the Pacemakers.

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh my gosh. [crosstalk] They're the best.

Alison Stewart: The senior dance team. The members range from 60 to 80 years old. How did they form? What kind of routines do they do? Where do they perform?

Mickela Mallozzi: Empower NYC is our season premiere episode. They actually started because the woman, Susan Avery, she's the leader of the Pacemakers. She auditioned to become a dancer for the official dancers for the Brooklyn Cyclones. She got in, she was the oldest member, and then she danced, went home after her first performance, and got bullied because they're like, "What is this old lady doing dancing?" The cyclones were like, "You hold your head up high, we want you back." Then after that, she finished the season and then was done and was like, "I'm not going to go back. It was a little too much."

Her daughter was like, "Look, you love dance. Why don't you start your own group?" She put out a call for dancers and it is-- There's break dancers, there's tap dancers, the oldest dancer, I think she's 85. These dancers, it brings so much joy, not only to them, but the audiences. They love them. They get standing ovations every time they perform. Dance keeps you young. Movement really is important, especially as we're aging. It's proven that dance is one of the only activities that wards off onset Alzheimer's. It's an incredible way to connect with people, but keep your body moving. They're so fun.

Alison Stewart: They are fun.

Mickela Mallozzi: They made me a jersey because each of their jerseys has their birth year on it-

Alison Stewart: Excellent.

Mickela Mallozzi: -and their nicknames. I was really honored to be an official-

Alison Stewart: Honorary Pacemaker.

Mickela Mallozzi: -honorary pacemaker. It was amazing.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi, with Mickela Mallozzi. We'll have more after a quick break. We'll head to the Bronx and we'll hear about how Mickela learned to vogue properly after the break.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. My guest is Mickela Mallozzi. She's the host of Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi. The show explores the world and world cultures through dance. We're talking about the world of New York City, which of course has got a million cultures within our city. Let's talk about when you went up to the Bronx, and I'm going to say it, and you might have to correct me, and you learned about the history of the Garifuna.

Mickela Mallozzi: Garifuna.

Alison Stewart: Garifuna.

Mickela Mallozzi: The Garifuna, yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about the Garifuna.

Mickela Mallozzi: The Garifuna are a resilient, powerful people that their story never gets told. They were top of the list when we were putting together the list of the seasons that we were going to do, or excuse me, the episodes we were going to do. The Garifuna are people that were originally called the Black Caribs in the Caribbean on the island of St. Vincent back in the late 1700s through basically a miracle. You hear this story in the episode of resiliency where they fought not to be enslaved by the British colonizers that were coming over to the island of St. Vincent. Were basically exiled, 5,000 of them that survived, half of them died, and then were exiled to Honduras, so 2,500 of them.

Today, there are over 250,000 of them in the Bronx. Another at least 250,000, or I think, half a million back in Central America in Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, and Honduras, and in other parts of the United States. The Bronx has the largest population of Garifuna. When I spoke to a lot of Garifuna folks, it was really, "We're put into the bucket of either we identify as Black or we identify as Hispanic. Actually, we are our own, we are Garifuna. We have our own language, we have our own culture, we have our own dance, we have our own music, our own food.

I met so many pillars of the community, including José Francisco Ávila, who you played that clip before. I just love him. He's so proud of his culture. Every single person that I met in the Garifuna community and that we featured in our episode, they know their history. It's number one. They are proud, so proud to be part of this legacy including one young gentleman, his name is Gogo. I remember him saying, he said, "I am one of those heroes. I am one of the heroes of the Garifuna people." He's a dancer, he's a musician. His father [unintelligible 00:18:03], I'm learning drumming and punta with him.

It's powerful. It's powerful and it's important for us as New Yorkers to understand who our neighbors are. It's powerful for Garifuna to see themselves represented in the community, but then also I'm getting messages, our show airs nationally on PBS as well, where people are reaching out and saying, "I've never ever heard of this culture ever. It's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing it." For me, it's an honor that all these communities give me access, allow me into their homes, into their communities, on their dance floors, in their kitchens, and share with me what they love so much.

Alison Stewart: What they want the world to know about them.

Mickela Mallozzi: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: We're going to hear from, I think it's Luz Soliz?

Mickela Mallozzi: Yes.

Alison Stewart: About punta, which is a dance. Let's take a listen to it. We can talk about it on the other side.

Luz Soliz: Punta is a ceremonial dance. In the old time, it was only done during wakes. You're sliding and because you're doing this with your toes, it creates a circular movement in your hips [onomatopoeia] and then you go circular. That means life, like is a circle of life. In the Garifuna, our soul never dies, only the physical body. The punta is danced during that time for the dead.

[music]

Alison Stewart: How has this dance become integral to keeping the culture alive and the history alive?

Mickela Mallozzi: It is known as the identity of the Garifuna people. Now the punta's danced everywhere. Like Luz, her group is called Wabafu. Actually, her daughter took over that group. It means our strength, our power. Luz and her daughter and the whole group, as she said, it was only done at wakes, it was done at funerals because at that time, and we talk about this with Bodoma later in the episode, is that once one Garifuna person passed, it was such a loss to the community. You start with only 2,500 people left of an entire tribe. If you lose someone, it is devastating. There was this dance done at wakes to bring up the spirits of the people that are in mourning, but also, it represents life in that you're moving your hips. Some can consider it a sexualized dance, but it's really about procreating and making more Garifuna people for the future. As she said, that soul never dies. It's for more Garifuna, but over the years, it's become more mainstream.

It sort of crossed over into people do punta now in clubs, and in dancing, in celebratory places. That is a lot of dance, that its origins meant one thing, and what does it mean now? It's the identity to the Garifuna people. When you say punta or if you say Garifuna, it's the same thing.

Alison Stewart: Synonymous.

Mickela Mallozzi: It's synonymous, yes.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's talk about voguing.

Mickela Mallozzi: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Voguing, in the class that you went to, students are encouraged to bring high heels, but it is not mandatory, with an icon, a ballroom icon. We've talked about voguing and ballroom dance a lot on our show, Cesar Valentino. What elements of voguing did you find challenging?

Mickela Mallozzi: The confidence, Alison, that is-- [laughs]

Alison Stewart: [unintelligible 00:21:34] It's funny. I watched a couple of episodes, and it's the only time I really saw you flinch. You're usually like, "I'm in. Let me do this. Let me try this." You were definitely a little taken aback by what was being asked of you when you really got into the whole empowerment part of what voguing is.

Mickela Mallozzi: Yes, I am a confident person in general because I'm having fun, not because I think I'm awesome. [laughter] It's because I'm like, "I want to try this."

Alison Stewart: No, you're game. You're totally in.

Mickela Mallozzi: Yes, I'm down. When someone is asking you to be like, "Live in that, you're gorgeous, you're sexy." I'm like, "No, I don't feel that way." Then you're around a whole community of people in a room full of people that are-- They feel sexy and empowered, and it translates to you, and it transmits to you, and you're like, "Yes, we can do this.

We are beautiful, and we are feeling confident." Because voguing came from the LGBTQ community, where they did not see themselves represented in vogue, in the magazine Vogue or on the runways, or in any sort of fashion magazine. They said, "We are fabulous, and we are going to walk the runway."

You walk the runway in class, and you're basically posing to take photos as if you're on a photo shoot for a high fashion magazine. That was the most challenging for me because I hate that. I hate taking photos. I hate getting all dolled up. I hate that. I love the nitty gritty and just getting down and dirty and trying things that don't make me look graceful or pretty. That was the biggest challenge. I think you see the transformation at the end. We really gave that segment, it was like a seven-minute long segment because it deserved all the love and attention, because I really, truly did feel like, "Wow, I feel amazing. I feel beautiful. Everyone else in this room feels beautiful. We are here for each other."

I can see, especially for communities that were so marginalized, how important that was to find their voice and find their place in community.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of that section [laughter] when Cesar's talking about voguing, empowering people to be their most authentic selves and to really live themselves and live their lives. This is from Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi.

Mickela Mallozzi: During the class, I was like, "I feel sexy, and everyone around me is feeling sexy and confident," and that's we're feeding off of each other, and we don't get to tell ourselves that enough or ever. Some people never get to tell themselves that.

Cesar Valentino: I think when people really look at themselves and they're able to say, "You know what? I felt liberated. I felt celebrated. I felt loved. I felt validated. I felt special." That's why I do this. Voguing really allows you to say, "I'm imperfectly perfect, just as I am." That's an amazing thing.

Alison Stewart: It's such a great episode.

Mickela Mallozzi: I always get goosebumps, I have goosebumps right now, every time I hear him say that line because it's so true. "I'm imperfectly perfect just as I am." It doesn't get more powerful than that.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the tango from Queens. [laughter] The most authentic tango, what is it called? How is it performed? What is its purpose?

Mickela Mallozzi: Whoo. That's a loaded question. No, no, no it's good. I was lucky enough. Our very second episode was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, learning tango. There's a lot of ideas of the history of tango, starting in Uruguay, transferring over to the brothels in Buenos Aires, then being brought over to Paris and being refined, and then being brought back to Buenos Aires. To me, tango is about touch. It is about touch. When I see beautiful dancers that do ballroom tango, it's a completely different style. It's very performative, it's competitive, it's bigger gestures. It's gorgeous. Not knocking it.

Alison Stewart: It's just different.

Mickela Mallozzi: It's very different. It's very different. The essence of Argentinian tango is you are just walking with someone and so closely, again I'm getting goosebumps, so closely. That was, I think I'm really grateful that it was the second episode I ever filmed for Bare Feet in my career. Because when you talk about communicating with another person without speaking words, this is the ultimate. When I dance tango, a lot of times I close my eyes. It's not because I know what I'm doing. It's because I'm concentrating so hard to understand where the weight shift is going, where my body is going, where my partner is leading my body.

To have this milonga in Queens with the Astoria Tango Club, I felt like I was back in Buenos Aires. I kept saying that all night because it felt so true. I was like, "I feel like in Buenos Aires." Then I happened to run into a bandoneon player who was in our episode from Buenos Aires, completely out of the blue. Again, this was the first time the Tango Club had come together post-COVID lockdown. It was this beautiful, magical moment of all these people just wanting to touch each other again. Tango is literally about touching each other so closely. You couldn't do that. We couldn't do that for a year and a half. It was a really magical evening. Authentic tango depends on who you're speaking to. It really is.

Alison Stewart: We have a clip from instructor Walter Perez explaining how to dance the tango for beginners. Let's take a listen.

Reporter: Similar to milongas in Buenos Aires, Argentina, tonight's milonga starts with a beginner tango lesson.

Walter Perez: To dance tango, 80% is just walking. If we reduce tango to the minimum expression, it's a walking in embrace, walking together. 1,2 1,2,3 1,2--

Dancers: 3, 1,2,3.

Alison Stewart: What's the other 20% if 80% is walking?

Mickela Mallozzi: [laughs] It really is walking and you're just walking together in unison. It's that body weight. You're reading that other person's conversation. You're having that conversation of, usually I would be dancing with a man, or potentially a woman, too, but I would be following. I would not be leading. I'm always a beginner in tango, but they are guiding my body with their own very slight weight shift. Minuscule. That's when you know you're with a good tango dancer, is because there's no force, it doesn't take a lot of energy, it's just these really subtle moments. Then over the years, as you become more in tune with how tango is, it's all the little flourishes, and it's just gorgeous. It is one of my favorite dances.

Alison Stewart: One thing you get to do on the show as well is eat. You don't just dance, you eat. What's an unforgettable meal that you've had?

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh, my gosh. Here for the New York season or ever?

Alison Stewart: Let's say the New York season.

Mickela Mallozzi: Oh, man. Well, funny enough, the Garifuna episode, there are no Garifuna restaurants or Garifuna-owned and run restaurants in New York City yet. There's this wonderful restaurant called Seis Vecinos, which is called Six Neighbors, and they have a whole bunch of Garifuna dishes on their menu. There was this sopa de marinera, if I'm saying that right, it was the fish stew that José Francisco Avila takes me to. It's this creamy, coconutty fish with like crab legs hanging out. It was just beautiful and when I say I never thought I would be a professional dancer, I danced my whole life, but I eat too much [laughter].

I know this episode today we're talking about Ozempic, and if there is a real thing becoming a professional dancer, there has to be a certain body type. I could never fit that because I love to eat. I come from an Italian family where food is your medicine. If something's wrong, my mom feeds me, my nana feeds me. I felt that sense of family, and the owners of Seis Vecinos, it's family-owned and family-run. It was a beautiful meal. José Francisco Avila is so funny because they just kept bringing plate after plate after plate. He's like, "No, no, we have to eat all of this."

Alison Stewart: [laughs] That's the rule.

Mickela Mallozzi: We did, but luckily, my crew, it's great because once the camera stop rolling, we do the one bite, and then everybody sits down we have our nice family meal.

Alison Stewart: I've been on that one. I want to mention that you're teaching a new course at NYU called Intercultural Communication Through Dance. What is it you hope your students take away?

Mickela Mallozzi: Well, it's amazing. The class starts next week, and a majority of my students are non-dance majors. That was the goal. I want this to be open to anyone. The goal is to build empathy and understanding for someone that may not be like you, but also using the universal language of dance to understand context. I think, for a lot of us, dance is very performative, or it seems very performative, or that's how we see it in the media. It's a dance competition or a dance performance.

Dance tells stories, music tells stories, and those stories are very important to people, to their cultures, to history. I think without context in 99% of dances, you miss the most beautiful part of the dance, not just the visual and the oral part of it. It's storytelling. That's what I want my students to get is that, dig deeper into these ideas of seeing dance. What does it actually mean to you? What does it mean to the people that are performing it?

Alison Stewart: You can catch Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi on PBS through its app as well. Thank you so much for coming in. Good luck with your class.

Mickela Mallozzi: Thank you, Alison.

 

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