(percussion music begins)
(students murmuring)
- Our theme for 2020 and '21
was connections in many different ways.
I approached Weston Sprott with the idea
of trying to partner with a school outside of Julliard,
with our percussionist.
He immediately thought of WHIN,
because Juilliard has a previous relationship with them.
And it turned out to be the perfect school
to partner with, since their students
are a little bit younger than ours.
And I had the idea of commissioning a piece,
where we could involve both parts of the Prep Program:
the MAP Division and the Pre-College Division,
and that quickly expanded into adding WHIN as well.
- You know, I've never really done something
in this particular capacity before,
with students of different age groups learning
and also different playing levels.
And somehow the idea of,
"It takes a village to raise a child,"
kind of came about in me.
And I was like, "Oh, I think I can play off of that,
in conjunction with some of the history
and the culture behind the steel pan instrument."
When steel pan was sort of coming up in Trinidad,
each community had something to add
and each community also had their own steel band.
And that's how I looked at each school.
- He made the distinctions by instrument groups.
The WHIN Tribe would be the plastic gourds.
(WHIN tribe music)
The MAP Tribe played mostly metallic instruments.
The JPC-A Tribe played on skins.
They played on djembes.
And the JPC-B Tribe played on wood instruments.
And so that distinguished them sonically
and distinguished them also by age.
But the end product, of course,
was all them playing together, thus the village.
(MAP Tribe music)
- And as a percussionist,
we have to, we have like snare
and bass drum and marimba and stuff.
But for our section, we had to find like
metal scraping noises and some metal sounds.
(MAP Tribe music)
My favorite part was just trying to find the right materials
and know, and, you know,
have a deeper understanding of the piece.
We will have to play as one,
we have to fill the same pulse,
the same rhythm, the same feeling,
but just being in person and being able to like
see the person right next to you,
we're able to communicate more.
- I was more than impressed with the younger students.
They really did a great job,
even though they had maybe slightly simpler music.
It was very crucial to the idea
and the essence of the piece,
because culture had a huge part to play.
There's this thing in Trinidad that we do,
it's called chip, well we say chip or chipping.
And it's kind of like walking rhythmically to like music.
But the thing is, when we do it in Trinidad
and you hear a lot of people doing it,
you hear lots of like dragging of the feet.
And I was trying to recreate those sounds.
(percussive music continues)
- I was nervous the first day that I went like in person,
but then I got used to it.
(WHIM tribe music)
The WHIM Tribe was third grade and fourth grade.
I like to see like the older people
who are better than me play.
One of the older kids would help us,
like if we didn't understand it,
they would show us how to do it, right?
And then we would play together.
- The first rehearsal, it's always,
it's usually a little bit rough.
And I'm also hearing all of this live for the first time.
And I just threw out the idea, you know,
it would have been really cool
if we had people dancing to this.
- And I thought, "Yes. That's an amazing idea!
We should do that!"
We had two wonderful choreographers,
Rachel and Isaiah, who were just
a complete joy to work with.
- When we talked to Kendall Williams,
he just kind of described to us his idea
and his vision for the piece.
And so that's kind of where Isaiah and I
drew our inspiration.
So I guess I'd describe the movement as very cultural,
very rooted, very groovy.
So for Isaiah and I being two African-American individuals,
we wanted to also team up
with other African-American individuals
that attend Juilliard to just kind of capture
that whole setting of what it feels like
to come from that background,
to have to walk across the land,
to really embody that sense of culture and background.
- I think with the choreography,
we really wanted to show like the diversity
of everyone in the group
and the versatility that we all have as dancers.
And we had like sections, we would call one section,
"This is gonna be the contemporary section."
And then another section,
"This would be a little more classical."
And then we had some West African movement
and some modern and like Horton and Graham stuff in there.
The filming day, there was one musician,
he was with the youngest group and it was his birthday.
I told the group of dancers that was like,
"When we do the improv, like jam,
we have to go around this way
to celebrate him for his birthday."
I love this process because
without me knowing that,
I was, you know, interacting in this village.
(percussive music continues)
- There were all these people in the room
doing what we should be doing,
which is, you know, performing our art form.
(percussive music continues)
(applause)