Michael 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. In 2016, Breeden co-founded the Conversations on Dance podcast with Miami City Ballet colleague, Rebecca King Ferraro. The duo has worked diligently to grow Conversations on Dance into the highest rated rated dance podcast on Apple Podcasts. King and Breeden have worked closely with some of America’s most important arts institutions including The Kennedy Center, Works and Process at the Guggenheim, Stanford Live, Performing Arts Houston, the Vail Dance Festival, among others.

Since retiring from the stage in 2017, Michael is now a repetiteur for Justin Peck, having staged his works for Royal Danish Ballet, Semperoper Ballett, Atlanta Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Golden State Ballet, and Miami City Ballet, as well as for Princeton University, University Of Southern California and Indiana University. He has taught ballet for Yale University, Kent State University, Mark Morris Dance Center, Ballet Academy East, Ballet Tech and many others. He has been rehearsal director for Troy Schumacher's BalletCollective since 2017, and recently assisted the company for the premiere of the full evening music theater production 'The Night Falls'. Mr. Breeden is an ex-officio board member for the Lexington Ballet Company.