I don’t recall how or when the podcast Conversations on Dance crossed my radar.  I was aware of it before I listened to it, but once I started listening to it I couldn’t understand why it had taken me so long to tune in.  Because it’s right up my alley!  Hosted by former Miami City Ballet dancers Rebecca King Ferraro and Michael Sean Breeden, the Conversations on Dance podcast releases “weekly chats with the dance world’s best and brightest” for your listening pleasure.  Yes, please!

[If you don’t know what a podcast is, there’s a very comprehensive answer here.]

Midway through an episode, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to turn the tables and interview Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden.  There was something appealingly not-quite-but-almost-meta about writing a blog post about a podcast.  So I reached out to them and they very generously agreed to a phone interview with me.

To begin with, how and why did the podcast come about?  My own blog came out of a desire to find a new way of interacting with the art form I love so much, following a particularly traumatic time in my life. Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden had, in fact, a similar motivation.  “The real reason why is we were both injured and seeking another outlet for our passion for ballet,” Mr. Breeden says.  “As any dancer knows, being injured is one of the most depressing, difficult things over the course of a career.”  The podcast gave them a positive way to focus their time and energy, as well as kept them connected to the ballet world.

They did not go in wholly inexperienced.  Ms. Ferraro had previously had her own blog, and both of them had led pre-performance talks at Miami City Ballet for several years.  Mr. Breeden wondered, “Why can’t we take what we do for a live audience and publish it for other ballet fans who might be interested?”  Pre-performance talks are a common and established offering at ballet companies around the country.  Talks give audiences a chance to learn more about a specific work or dancer, hopefully deepening their experience and keeping them coming back for more.

With a pre-performance talk, the audience is finite as well as obvious:  people who purchase tickets to a performance and who show up for the talk.  You can assume that there’s a baseline of interest because they bought a ticket and came.  But with a podcast, the material is simply… out there.  For anyone.  Do Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden have an audience in mind?  “We cater to everyone.  We expect that our audience is probably comprised of young students, definitely professionals, and parents watching their children go through the education process in ballet,” Mr. Breeden reveals, “but we’ll have total neophytes” as well.

To me, that’s the dream.  The idea of someone new to ballet tuning in to learn more—that’s how future audiences are built.  It also underlines the importance of content.  Ballet insiders can use a lot of shorthand and drop a lot of names, not realizing that they’ve lost people.  “We try to be careful, but it’s so easy for us to get into talking shop in a way that the outer circle of people can’t understand,” Mr. Breeden admits.

But, as Ms. Ferraro points out, “Always our audience surprises us.”  Referencing an early episode with former New York Times chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay, she says, “It was real bunhead business.  We were deep-diving into Serenade history, talking about the costumes, the hair… We thought, ‘We’re going to have a really narrow audience for this.’  It turned out to be the most popular episode we had to that date!”  That validation has freed them to go deeper when the moment calls for it.

Alastair Macaulay and the other Conversations on Dance guests are celebrities in the dance world.  Your average American household may never know their names, but to anyone following along, these people are stars and idols.  Selfishly, thinking of my own blog, I wondered how Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden landed some of their biggest names, especially early on.  It turns out, while they both have many friends and connections, they’ve also done a few cold asks.  Ms. Ferraro says, “At one point, out of nowhere we emailed Julie Kent.  And she wrote back and said, ‘When can we schedule it?’  That’s how we really started:  just doing Skype interviews with whoever would talk to us.  And then it started growing.”

One hundred and thirty-six podcasts later, I have to ask:  Did they know this was going to take off the way it has?  “No way!” Ms. Ferraro says.  “It was just for fun!” Mr. Breeden adds.  Despite their retirements and no longer being based in the same city, the opportunities have continued to come.  So they’ve kept going.  They have a regular season, almost, at Vail International Dance Festival, doing both live and recorded interviews.  They traveled to the Kennedy Center recently, and last year they came here to San Francisco to record a series of interviews with dancers and choreographers during San Francisco Ballet’s Unbound festival. The demand currently goes both ways:  Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden have a wish list and take requests for listeners’ dream guests; they also have people reaching out to be interviewed by them.

Listening to the dancers’ stories on the podcast, I’m often struck by the fact that although everyone has their own path, there are many similarities in the journey to a professional career.  “I think the most important thing is that everyone has a disappointment in there, often a big one,” Ms. Ferraro says.  “We hear a lot from parents of students that it’s important to hear that stuff. There are struggles, and it’s ok for you to be struggling.  We all do.  Let’s open that conversation up to support each other and help the next generation through the training process and getting a job.”

I ask what their favorite part of the podcast is.  “There are two elements,” Ms. Ferraro says.  “Being able to stay connected [to the dance world], and also the connections that we make with these dancers.  We sit and talk with them for an hour and then we’re friends with them!”  (It’s fine; I’m not jealous at all.  This follows a recent realization that I would like to talk to more people, both dancers and audience members.)  A few minutes later, Ms. Ferraro circles back.  “Actually, I think my favorite thing is that people don’t realize how well-spoken dancers are.  I think it’s really cool to highlight everyone’s intellectual aspect.”

Personally, I certainly appreciate that.  Dance is non-verbal, and it’s so easy to think that silence onstage means dancers don’t have things to say.   Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Breeden themselves are proof that dancers have voices.  And they have the interviews with others to prove it too.

I hope you’ll check out their podcast.  And, taking a page from their book, let me know if you’re interested in talking about ballet.  I’m all too happy to nerd out with you.

Conversations on Dance:  Rebecca King Ferraro and Michael Sean Breeden
Listen to Conversations on Dance on their website or on iTunes, Spotify, and iheartradio.