BEST DOCUMENTARY: Inside the Craft of Investigating Ballet’s Most Complicated Stories

At the ballet, beauty is center stage. Dancing with Shadows pulls back the curtain to ask what that beauty costs. The seven-part docuseries traces the history of the New York City Ballet, from George Balanchine's founding vision to the allegations of abuse and misconduct that have shaped the company's more recent history.

On this episode, host Cory Choy, Festival Director of the New York City Podcast Awards, sits down with Nicky Anderson, Head of Narrative at Stak, the London-based production company behind the series. Dancing with Shadows won Best Documentary and Best Sports Podcast at the 2026 New York City Podcast Awards, and in this conversation, Cory and Nicky discuss:

• How Nicky found her way from an assistant-to-the-CEO application into Stak's narrative department
• Why Dancing with Shadows is her most personal project, rooted in her own childhood ballet training in the west of Ireland
• How the team gained access to some of America's most esteemed ballet dancers, and how they restructured the series after being unable to interview someone at the heart of the story
• The whiteboard-and-sticky-notes system Nicky uses to structure each episode and season
• Why their team records every interview on three separate mics
• How 300+ million YouTube impressions helped the series find its audience

Listen to Dancing with Shadows on Stak's Legacy series

Submissions for the 2027 New York City Podcast Awards are now open. Find out more at podcastawards.nyc.

Craft, Content & Creators is a production of the New York City Podcast Awards. This episode was produced by Emily Reeves and mixed by Christian Cucinello, with support from Ivan Bronson, Lauren Molina, and Zach Treanor. Our theme music is by Santiago Aramburu.