- Kansas city is a town steeped in creativity and innovation.

With loyal audiences who support the arts, even at a time when live performances are not possible.

This dedication to nurturing a vibrant art scene is one of many reasons why Kansas city PBS is lucky to have a home here.

This year, the focus on distancing to keep ourselves healthy has left many audiences without the ability to enjoy their favorite performances and has left many local arts organizations without a platform on which to entertain and inspire.

Kansas City PBS is proud to present KC Performs.

We are thrilled to be able to bring this new series into thousands of homes in the Kansas city community.

I hope you enjoy this labor of love and encourage you to visit kansascitypbs.org/kcperforms to learn more about our partnerships with local arts organizations.

Thank you for helping us make this big stage available to our friends in the arts.

(downbeat music) (upbeat music) (violin music) - Musical Theater Heritage is in Crown Center, it's been around since 1997.

It was founded by George Harter, who founded it to kind of syndicate us nationally, syndicated radio show called the Night on the Town.

Lots of people in Kansas, you know, George of course, and so for our local mission started producing shows at the Belger Arts Center on the loading dock in 2003 and got successful, and people love seeing musicals and moved to Crown Center in 2008.

We do the greatest musicals of all time in a theater with about 250 seats and it's awesome.

We're really lucky that we've got a lot of talented, versatile people, so we're very nimble, we've always been nimble in how we produce shows.

If you're gonna produce big musicals in a small space, gotta be very creative and innovative and nimble.

And so we were used to drawing on that toolkit to begin with, so when we had to figure out a different way to give our product to our audience, our ticket holders and to keep our local artists employed.

But in the COVID climate, we really wanted to be cognizant of doing it as small as we could, to have as few people in the room as possible and fortunately we've been successful and people seem to like what we've been doing.

(piano music) ♪ Folks, we finally got our headline ♪ ♪ "Newsies Crushed as Bulls Attack" ♪ ♪ Crutchie's calling me ♪ ♪ Dumb crip's just too damn slow ♪ ♪ Guys are fightin', bleedin', fallin' ♪ ♪ Thanks to good ole' Captain Jack ♪ ♪ Captain Jack just wants to close his eyes and go!

♪ ♪ Let me go ♪ ♪ Far away ♪ ♪ Somewhere they won't ever find me ♪ ♪ And tomorrow won't remind me of today ♪ ♪ And the city's finally sleepin' ♪ ♪ And the moon looks old and grey ♪ ♪ I get on a train that's bound for Santa Fe ♪ ♪ And I'm gone ♪ ♪ And I'm done ♪ ♪ No more running, no more lying ♪ ♪ No more fat old man denying me my pay ♪ ♪ Just a moon so big and yellow ♪ ♪ It turns night right into day ♪ ♪ Dreams come true, yeah they do, in Santa Fe ♪ ♪ Where does it say you gotta live and die here?

♪ ♪ Where does it say a guy can't catch a break?

♪ ♪ Why should you only take what you're given?

♪ ♪ Why should you spend your whole life living trapped ♪ ♪ Where there ain't no future ♪ ♪ Even at 17!

♪ ♪ Breaking your back for someone else's sake!

♪ ♪ If the life don't seem to suit ya' ♪ ♪ How about a change of scene?

♪ ♪ Far from the lousy headlines, and the deadlines in between ♪ ♪ Santa Fe, my old friend ♪ ♪ I can't spend my whole life dreaming ♪ ♪ Though I know that's all I seem inclined to do ♪ ♪ I ain't getting any younger ♪ ♪ And I wanna start brand new ♪ ♪ I need space and fresh air ♪ ♪ Let 'em laugh in my face, I don't care ♪ ♪ Save my place, I'll be there ♪ ♪ Just be real is all I'm asking ♪ ♪ Not some painting in my head ♪ ♪ Cause I'm dead if I can't count on you today ♪ ♪ I've got nothing if I ain't got Santa Fe ♪ (playful music) - Park ICM actually started in 2003 by Stanislav Ioudentich who is our piano master.

He had the dream of creating what is really a very boutique and very unusual program, a conservatory in the United States that trains soloists.

It as developed on the European master-apprentice relationship.

Very much a one-on-one relationship between the professor and the student so that they can learn and craft their music to a whole new level.

We have 30 incredible musicians from all over the world right here in Kansas city to train with these world-class musicians.

If you wanna learn more about Park International Center for Music, you can go to icm.park.edu (playful music) (aggressive piano music) - There I was in Boston Ballet, it was the night before my premiere on March 11th, we got through the dress rehearsal and then we were all called in on the day of May 12th, sorry, March 12th.

We were all called in and March 12th to the theater and the director let us know, we could listen in that everything was shut down.

So I rented a car and packed all my stuff up and drove back to Philadelphia.

And I gotta say, up until that point, I'm an independent choreographer, I work with people in sweaty ballet studios all the time, it is my work, it is what I love.

I love the whole comradery community but I'm with people all the time.

So after about a month, I'll call it of wondering, actually it was a lot of TV-watching in my bed.

I was having a hard time reconciling with this.

I woke up one day and I decided, right, so this is, you know, this is not me.

I don't take things literally lying down, I don't.

I have to figure out a way, so I thought right, so I would like in this time to support and give back to my community and I wanna learn something new, so I thought about dance films and I love the art of filmmaking anyhow.

I just, I've always found it, editing all of that.

So I started contacting dancers I'd worked with, directors I'd worked with, and I said listen, I have a new endeavor.

Not new of course, dance films has been happening a long time, but something new for me and man, people were amazing in how they were like, "Yeah, right let's do this.

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