The 16th season of America’s Got Talent ended on a very high note when an estimated 6.13 million viewers watched as magician Dustin Tavilla crown the winner and take home his first million dollar prize. And a chance to win the title in Las Vegas! The hit talent show is set to return with season 17, in search of the next big talent.
One contestant who will be trying their luck on the show is Chicago Pride: The Pack Drumline. Led by group founder/director Perry Donta, the incredibly talented group of 15 instrumentalists/dancers will perform in front of the show’s returning judges: Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara. While we’ll have to wait and watch to see if The Pack Drumline, also the official drum liner for the WNBA Chicago Sky Champions, is able to convince the judges or not to advance to the live tour. In the meantime, you can read all about this Illionis-based group here.
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You can watch The Pack Drumline in action here:
Who are the Drumline packages for?
Regarded as Chicago’s most dynamic entertainment band, The Pack Drumline features a multi-talented group of artists who not only dance, but also play drums at the same time! Pack Drumline was founded by Perry Donta’e when the nonprofit he was working for asked him to develop an after-school program for at-risk youth. The former Southern Illinois University graduate, who has just graduated, accepted the challenge with great enthusiasm and created a program called Street Beat for “marginalized” children.
In an interview with The Tribe, he said, “The show that came to my mind was called Street Beat, and I’d find out-of-work kids, marginalized kids, and introverted kids and start teaching them. Battery basics. Over the years, we’ve improved more and more until we’ve been able to turn it into a company “. Since the group was just beginning to form, the sudden budget cut by the nonprofit organization casts doubt on the group’s future. But Donta’e wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, so he branched out and started his own mobile entertainment group with the help of three of his friends and changed the Street Beat group to The Pack.
When asked how he came up with the idea of mixing dance and drumming together, he explained, “I’ve always been a professional dancer. My younger brother is a solo dancer. When he started with Street Beat, he would help us play the bucket drums and finally said, ‘We have to start dancing with this, we have to We really live it up.” So we started asking more guys who were interested in dancing. We didn’t even care if I was good or not. We let anyone into the team. We taught them the basics over and over and it turned into a kind of full dance group. And then we started making it up. It is mandatory that all drummers, on the drum line, also know how to dance, because we dance while we play now.”
After performing at local events and parties in and around Chicago, the group got their first big break when they got the chance to appear on a local TV show called ‘Windy City Live’ in 2017. Their brief stint on the local TV show was an instant success and paved the way for their next big break when The WNBA Chicago Sky asked them to be the official drum line. “It was great. Then we got a letter from [WNBA basketball team] Chicago Sky Team. They were like, ‘Hey, we’re looking for a drum line. Guys, would you like to be our new official drum line? We were super charged, so of course we said yes,” Donta’e participated. Since then the group has continued to compete in World of Dance and even represented the United States at the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Finals in Johannesburg, South Africa!
We can’t wait to see The Pack Drumline perform on AGT Season 17. The group also appears to be excited about their upcoming assignment on the NBC show. The Chicago group took to their Instagram page to reveal the great news that will be appearing on the AGT website. This was special 🔥 The team recently came back to town from auditioning for America’s Got Talentagt! This was probably the most exciting weekend of our lives. It’s still hard to believe what just happened. We have no idea what’s going to happen next, but the fact that we might We had a chance to show off it was great enough! Stay tuned for the season before May 17th 31st!”, the group released in April.
Season 17 of America’s Got Talent will premiere on Tuesday, May 31, 2022 at 8 p.m. on NBC. After the show premieres, you can watch all new episodes every Tuesday from 8pm-10pm EST/PT. For viewers who want to tune in to the show without cable, they can do so using one of the following streaming services: Sling TV, fuboTV, Hulu With Live TV, AT&T TV, or YouTube TV.
