Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.

[Music] EACH EPISODE A POSTCARD FROM NEW MEXICO TO THE REST OF THE WORLD.

CREATOR KEN PETERSON TAKES US BEHIND THE SCENES AND SHARES HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE BANDS OF ENCHANTMENT TV SERIES.

DANCER, AND CHOREOGRAPHER DAVID WORSHIMOTAKAHARA EMPOWERSDER, CREATIVITY WITH COLLABORATIVE DANCE.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES BANDS OF ENCHANTMENT [Music] .can't know, but nobody else was asking me.

What's up?

[Music] >>Rare Americans: here we go.

[bell] Yee haaa, whop, whop.

>>Rare Americans: Your not, your not gonna push me around.

You can't get me down, down, down, down [Music] .all right here we go.

[Music] .when I wake up in your arms, I know that love is alive.

When I wake up in your arms, when I wake up in your arms.

When I wake up in your arms, I know that love is alive.

When I wake up in your arms, when I wake up in your arms.

[Music Fades] >>Faith Perez: Ken, thank you for being here with me on COLORES today to talk about Bands of Enchantment.

So what inspired the idea for this show?

>>Ken Peterson: My brother and I and our family, we wanted to make a show that champions the New Mexico and Albuquerque we know and love.

And, my brother and I wanted an excuse to get back to spend time with our family and friends.

We uh, graduated, many birthday candles ago in the entertainment industry, and went abroad to find work.

And we wanted to come back and make something special.

>>Cimafunk: .vaya parar el tiempo un rio esto mientras ser eso linda.

Voy a parar el tiempo, no te has cuenta, sera suave y lento.

Voy a parar el tiempo, un dia eso, mientras del eso, linda.

Voy a parar el tiempo, no tiene la cuenta, sera suave y lento.

[Music] >>Southern Ave: [Falsetto] >>Red Light Cameras: And I know, if you love someone let them go.

So here I go.

Wooa, wooaaa.

I love you enough to let you go.

[Music Fades] [Crowd Cheering] >>Faith Perez: Why New Mexico?

>>Ken: I was born in Detriot and I came out to New Mexico and had a transformative experience, and was introduced to the art, to music.

I got my first guitar.

It was given to me by, a friend.

That's why we give guitars away at Bands of Enchantment.

[Cheering] [Music] >>Ken Peterson: It's a cultural epicenter.

It's, you know, you got all these different communities and cultures and ethnicities.

And it's this melting pot and it's beautiful.

[Music] [Sings in Spanish] [Music] >>Junior Mesa: I remember running through the open skies and your love had me hypnotized .

[Music Fades] >>Ken: So then, I was like what if we made a show that championed that and shot it cinematically?

'Cuz our backgrounds are in filmmaking.

>>Junior Mesa: And everyone I trust seems to do me wrong.

>> Ken: And yeah, I guess, through that is, that's how it came about.

[Music Fades] >>Faith: Yeah, you've talked about it being like a postcard of New Mexico to the world.

Can you tell me a little bit about how the show embodies that idea?

>>Ken: Yeah, so the backdrop is New Mexico.

So, and that comes through in the set design.

But we also take the bands to another location.

>>Ken: (on tram): This is amazing.

This is amazing.

>>Ken: So, in season 3, we took BJ, The Chicago Kid, up the Sandia tram, and we filmed his acoustic session going up the Sandias on the tram.

>>BJ The Chicago Kid: Is it alright if I sing a little bit for y'all today?

>>Tram audience: Yes sir.

Yes please.

>>BJ The Chicago Kid: He's on that mountain yeah.

And problems don't last forever.

But if we, yeah, just hold on, I know that we'll, we'll be all right.

>>BJ the Chicago Kid (on tram): Ahhhh!

[Laughs] Somebody looked behind me like, "Ahhhh!"

[Laughs] >>Ken: When they come to New Mexico, we want them to have the New Mexican experience.

So, like, Girl Ultra came from Mexico City.

She had never been, and we took her to the National Hispanic Cultural Center and filmed there.

[Nats] >>Ken: They're going to that back.

They're going to share that story.

Off-handedly, you'll always have something, just like my experience, you'll have something kind to share.

[Sings in Spanish] >>Ken: We bring enchiladas red or green on set.

And I just I want all those experiences that I had, and changed my life, to come through and, for each, everyone's experience, is unique and special, and not just like "Get on set!"

>>Faith: Yeah right, and the locations are really important too, to this, right?

>>Ken: Yeah, that's kind of the postcard to the world is like, in in a season, you'll get to go to all these places.

I think it adds this, like, fabric to the episode, of you know, weaving in all of the origin story for the artist, so.

>> Levi Platero: I will run and pursue you once again, you're more than my friend.

[Music Fades] >> Ken: There's now 30 episodes out there.

So, there's quite a few.

We do 12 bands a season, and we're now doing season 4, so we're adding more to that mix.

Season 1, we had the Levi Platero Band from the Navajo Nation, which was incredible.

>> Levi Platero: And I will bring you back to a place where we started again.

>> Ken: And Levi just kills it, if never listened to Levi, amazing on guitar.

>> Levi Platero: instrumental >> Ken: It's paired with Sarah Marie Rory, from Santa Fe, which is just beautiful.

>> Sarah Marie Rory: The feeling's great and it touches so honest it never arrives.

I'll see you soon or never, just later not now.

Goodbye is not too much, I'll try not to pride myself on it.

Letting you fade it's a little but baby I'll not look back.

[Music Fades] >>Ken: Then we had a bunch of other New Mexico bands but one being, we had Max Gomez from Taos, New Mexico, who's gone on to open for, Jeff Beck and George Thorogood.

He's extremely talented and an incredible musician.

I could go on forever.

I will stop here.

Just go and watch them.

Each episode is unique and amazing, and super-talented artists and bands.

>> Faith: How do you go about selecting the bands and artists?

>> Ken: Deep diving.

It's, it's watching like, 'cuz someone could have amazing, uh, you know, numbers on a platform, but I like really like checking out that live performance, because it's for television too.

So uh, it's finding different parts of the country, of the world.

For example, having somebody from Columbus, Ohio, like Lydia Loveless, incredible episode.

Weaving in people from all over because that community will tune in for that artist they know, but they'll stay for artists, and get introduced to new artists that they haven't.

And, then the fun part is it's a lot of listening to music, which is my favorite, favorite pastime.

>> Lilly Hiatt: .

wings of this city, so small and pretty, you couldn't pump it up with some kind of truck.

Her arms are open, wild eyed and hoping somebody could give her that kind of love.

>>Faith: So, how has the show evolved since it's inception?

>>Ken: Change in location physically.

We were in Tucumcari for the first season.

We were at, uh, their Railyards.

We couldn't have audiences.

So, season 2, we have audiences.

We always wanted audiences.

We couldn't, 'cuz, you know, it was a pandemic.

So that's changed.

>>The Stone Foxes: .here's the deal put your feet to the ground.

Make this shake.

Just like that.

Just like that.

[Music] Smoke is rising from the coal.

Feed the fire in burning soil.

Don't need my eyes to see it's wrong.

Everything I know will soon be gone.

Whoa-o-o-oh, whoa-o-o-oh, whoa-o-o-oh, whoa-o-o-oh.

[Music] >>Faith: So, what has been your proudest moment as a producer on Bands of Enchantment?

>> Ken: We're 90 percent crew New Mexico.

So, New Mexicans.

We have over 20 this season, paid, advanced, job internships.

We get to work with CNM, UNM, high schools around Albuquerque.

And we get to provide those opportunities.

And that, that to me is super exciting.

>>Faith: So, what do you hope the long-term legacy of the show will be?

>> Ken: Well, we're trying to make uh, 40-plus seasons.

An Austin City Limits for New Mexico.

>>Uncle Lucius: The devil's in the detail shop, waiting on his old rag-top Wondering where the hell have all the real souls gone.

It's been so long since the reaping's worth a damn.

>>Ken: We just want to keep adding on and making more opportunities and more ways for people to feel a part of this.

>>Lydia Loveless: Out on love.

Out on love.

Out on love.

Out on love.

Out on love.

Out on love.

Out on love.

>>Faith: So, what can viewers look forward to in the upcoming fourth season?

>> Ken: Cimafunk.

Afro-Cuban funk band that is incredible.

you'll have Uncle Lucius.

[Music] >> Ken: Additionally, we'll be going to some really exciting locations and showcasing more awesome places in Albuquerque.

And continuing the postcard of Albuquerque to the world with this show.

[Music] [Sings in Spanich] [Cheering] ENLIVENING COMMUNITY >> David: I remember standing in front of this wall and seeing my shadow and just starting to play with my shadow.

And I just started to move.

Improvise.

Just dancing with my own shadow.

I remember that distinctly as kind of like this.

Oh, I like this.

This is, you know, this is really something that it felt very natural.

[Music] Groundworks.

It occurred to me that dance.

At its essence, it is an act of labor.

That's the only way you can do it.

It's physical, hard labor.

I love that about it.

And at the same time, it is also very, very much about ideas and very much about freeing the spirit in this really imaginative way and somehow bringing the two together and synthesizing that through the art form.

So, I thought of that idea in the name Groundworks.

That it would always be connected to the ground in some way.

As much as we want it to be transformational and to be about ideas that somehow we were always connected.

I come from a medical family, actually.

My grandfather on my dad's side was the first Japanese-Canadian physician in Canada, and my dad followed in his footsteps.

My father was very attuned to the arts, but it was my mother who really encouraged me to try to pursue something creative.

When I was an adolescent she enrolled me in theater classes.

The epiphany was actually in a movement class for actors.

The teacher of that class had us going across the floor doing these sort of, introductory jazz steps.

I remember after the class kind of dancing home, you know, just thinking, wow, this is, you know, this is something I'd really love to do.

[Dance Studio] So I started studying, and, in Montreal at the time, there was a blossoming of a dance boom.

My first ballet teacher, he sat me down and he said, you're the crookedest thing that's ever walked into a dance studio, as far as I'm concerned, he said, but we're going to work.

We're going to work really, really hard on even things like just stretching me, like putting weight on my back or my hips and just stretching me, and really broke down the basics of what then was just this, you know, mystery to me in terms of the vocabulary and the technique of ballet.

I wasn't just crooked, I was, you know, I was short, I didn't have the proportions of the classical line or anything like that.

Okay.

I think I was just really confused and kind of lost at that stage in my life.

[Music] I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

I had no sense of myself, and it really helped me think of myself in this different way.

I felt I could transform myself as a dancer.

It was a lifeline, you know, and I clung to that.

I was determined.

You know that because I wanted to do this, I would.

And fortunately, I had, you know, enough people along the way give me the nudge or the encouragement at just the right times to, to continue, you know.

I met Pandora, same period and I'm just starting out taking classes.

I ended up taking ballet classes at, at the Ballet Academy of the major ballet company in Montreal.

La Grande ballet Canadian.

I saw Pandora across the studio one class.

She was the ballerina.

We were just so enamored with the idea of becoming professional dancers and being in the dance milieu.

We had an amazing kind of period where we were.

We were studying and getting freelance work.

Both Pandora and I.

We married in '81.

I had heard about Ohio Ballet and this sort of unique company, and I said, let's, you know, let's audition.

And we did.

And Heinz Poll offered us both positions.

And so that brought us to Ohio in 1983.

Heinz at the time, he experimented with really mixing the repertory up between contemporary dance and classical ballet.

Heinz ran this organization in a really sensible way.

We didn't have a lot of frills.

He believed in primacy, the importance of just putting movement dance bodies in space front and center without scenery and a lot of dressing.

That kind of lean, economical approach to producing certainly influenced me in trying to figure out how to start a small start-up company.

And then his choice of repertory and that range.

We started GroundWorks just with this belief in the potential for new work.

So, by the time shortly before I decided I would retire, which happened to coincide also with Heinz announcing his retirement in 1998, I was eager, itchy to try to do something on my own.

I didn't think at the time I wanted to continue to perform.

My body was feeling pretty, pretty ragged.

I had some knee surgeries.

I thought, this feels like the right time.

[Music] There's an attitude, willingness and ecosystem here in Northeast Ohio, which is extraordinary.

And that for me, I'm grateful.

And what it's allowed GroundWorks to do.

What we do is highly skilled.

But how do we take what we do as artists and use that in some way to empower creativity in others?

[Music] I think of my legacy more, in the immediate, like the exchange the experiences I have had with different artists, different collaborators over time.

It's an environment.

It's an attitude.

It's a culture of creativity and collaboration and connection that is very special.

If you talk about a legacy, I would hope that could continue in some way.

And it's not just dependent on me.

To be able to bring people together, to collaborate together and try new things, hopefully to create things that haven't been experienced before, it's a gift.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.