Who are The Pack Drumline? Official drummers of WNBA champs Chicago Sky try out for 'America's Got Talent' Season 17
Season 16 of 'America's Got Talent' ended on a pretty high note as an estimated 6.13 million viewers reportedly tuned in to watch magician Dustin Tavella be crowned the winner and take home the grand prize of $1 Million and an opportunity to headline in Las Vegas! The hit talent hunt show is all set to make a big comeback with season 17, on a quest to find the next big talent.
One of the contestants who will be trying out their luck on the show are Chicago's pride- The Pack Drumline. Led by the group's founder/ director Perry Donta’e, the incredibly talented group of 15 drummers/ dancers will be performing before the show's returning judges- Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara. While we will have to wait and watch to see if The Pack Drumline, who also happen to be the official drum liners of WNBA Champions Chicago Sky, manages to impress the judges or not to advance to the lives round. In the meanwhile, you can read all about this Illionis-based group here.
RELATED ARTICLES
'America's Got Talent' Season 17: 5 things you need to know about NBC's talent hunt show
You can watch The Pack Drumline in action here:
Who are The Pack Drumline?
Hailed as Chicago's most dynamic entertainment crew, The Pack Drumline features a group of multi-talented performers who not only dance but also play drums simultaneously! The Pack Drumline was started by Perry Donta'e when he was asked by the nonprofit he was working for asked him to develop an after-school program for at-risk youth. The freshly graduated Southern Illinois University alum took on the challenge with much gusto and came up with a program called 'Street Beat' for kids who were "outcasts".
In an interview with The Tribe, he recounted, "The program I came up with was called Street Beat, and I was finding kids who weren’t into sports, the kids who were outcasts, the kids who were introverts, and started teaching them the basics of drumming. As the years went past, we just got better and better until we were able to turn this into a company." As the group was just beginning to shape up a sudden budget cut by the nonprofit put the group's future up in the air. But Donta'e wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet, soo he branched out and founded his own touring entertainment group with the help of three of his friends and changed christened the Street Beat group into The Pack.
When asked how he came up with the idea of fusing dancing and drumming together, he explained, "I’ve always been a professional dancer. My younger brother is a lead dancer. When he started with Street Beat, he was helping us play bucket drums and he was finally like, ‘we got to start dancing with this, we got to really elevate this.’ So we started asking for more kids who were interested in dance. We didn’t even care if you were good or not. We let anybody join the team. We would just teach them the basics over and over and it just turned into like a full dance crew. And then we started making it mandatory that all the drummers, in order to be on the drumline, also knew how to dance as well, because we dance while we drum now."
After performing at local events, and parties in and around Chicago, the group got its first big break when they were presented with an opportunity to appear on a local tv show called Windy City Live' back in 2017. Their brief stint on the local tv show was an instant hit and paved the way to their next big opportunity when WNBA team Chicago Sky asked them to be their official drumline. "That was amazing. Then we got an email from the [WNBA basketball team] Chicago Sky staff. They were like ‘Hey, we’re looking for a drumline. Would you guys be down to be our new official drumline?’ We were super pumped, so of course we said yes," Donta'e shared. Since then the group has gone on to compete on 'World of Dance', and even represented USA at the 'Red Bull Dance Your Style' World Finals in Johannesburg, South Africa!
We can't wait to watch The Pack Drumline's performance on 'AGT' Season 17. The group too seems to be excited about their upcoming stint on the NBC show. The Chicago group took to their Instagram page to reveal the big news that they would be appearing on 'AGT'. "THIS WAS SPECIAL 🔥 The team recently got back in town from auditioning for America’s Got Talent @agt ! This was probably the most emotional weekend of our lives . It’s still hard to believe that this just happened . We have no idea what’s going to happen next but the fact we were given the opportunity to showcase ourselves was big enough ! STAY TUNED FOR SEASON 17 PREMIERE ON MAY 31ST!," the group posted in April.
America's Got Talent' Season 17 premieres on Tuesday, May 31, 2022, at 8 pm on NBC. Following the show's premiere, you can catch all-new episodes every Tuesday from 8 to 10 p.m. ET/PT. For viewers who wish to tune in to the show without cable, they can do so using any of the following streaming services: Sling TV, fuboTV, Hulu With Live TV, AT&T TV, or YouTube TV.