About
We are pleased to welcome you to the Conversations on Dance podcast, hosted by former Miami City Ballet Dancers, Rebecca King Ferraro and Michael Sean Breeden. With each episode, we bring our audience an inside look into the world of professional dancers. We discuss ballet training, techniques, choreography, and conduct interviews with some of the dance world’s best and brightest. We hope you will join us on this adventure and delve deeper into the beautiful world of dance.
Rebecca King Ferraro
Rebecca King Ferraro was born and raised in Northern California. She received her ballet training from Contra Costa Ballet Centre in Walnut Creek, CA. King spent two summers studying at San Francisco Ballet School under the direction of Gloria Govrin. Her senior year in high school, she attended The Rock School in Philadelphia. After graduating in 2006, she moved to Miami to train at Miami City Ballet School.
King joined Miami City Ballet in 2007 as a company apprentice and was promoted to corps de ballet in 2008. Since then, she has worked with many of today’s most sought-after choreographers including Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck, and Liam Scarlett. She has danced in the majority of MCB’s Balanchine repertoire, as well as classical full-length ballets and contemporary works. From 2010-2016, she served as a Company Representative on behalf of the dancers, a role similar to a union representative.
In 2012, Ms. King started her own digital marketing company, Rebecca King Ferraro Digital Marketing Management, where she works with businesses, individuals, and nonprofits to develop their digital footprint. King has taught ballet master classes across the country and is currently a freelance coach in South Florida.
Ms. King retired from Miami City Ballet in 2018, after an 11 year career with the company.
Photo: Rebecca King Ferraro in George Balanchine’s ‘Raymond Variations’. © George Balanchine Trust. Photo by: Julian Duque
Michael Sean Breeden
Michael Sean Breeden was born in Lexington, KY, where he began training at the Lexington Ballet at the age of 7. He began attending the School of American Ballet on scholarship in 2002, with additional training completed at San Francisco Ballet, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and Vostrikov’s Academy of Dance. While a student at the School of American Ballet, Mr. Breeden performed ‘Tarantella’ at Symphony Space’s Wall-to-Wall Balanchine centennial event, as introduced by Lourdes Lopez and Edward Villella.
Mr. Breeden joined Miami City Ballet as an apprentice in 2006 and was promoted to the corps de ballet in 2008. He performed soloist and principal roles in the works of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Alexei Ratmansky and Liam Scarlett. Mr. Breeden has joined Miami City Ballet on acclaimed tours to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. Michael also danced for Boston Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre and Suzanne Farrell Ballet.
For 3 years, Michael gave interactive pre-performance talks for the Miami City Ballet that broadened the audience’s knowledge of the ballets programmed and allowed them to directly question the artists involved. Since retiring from the stage in 2017, Michael is now a repetiteur for Justin Peck having staged his works for Hong Kong Ballet, Ballet Arizona and Miami City Ballet. He has taught ballet for Yale University, Kent State University, Mark Morris Dance Center, Ballet Academy East, Ballet Tech and many others. He was the assistant to the director for Troy Schumacher’s BalletCollective from 2017-2020.
Photo: Michael Sean Breeden in George Balanchine’s ‘Divertimento No. 15’. © George Balanchine Trust.