Hi, everybody.

I'm Felicia Curry, and welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around DC.

In this episode, the Air Force perfects performance... Norwood: I just thought that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Felicia Curry: the ocean is revealed... Man: We created this space to tell these stories.

Curry: and I meet with Helen Chason, the director of the Kreeger Museum, to talk about the Kreegers' role in the Washington art scene.

This is the Monet.

It's really beautiful.

It's all ahead on "WETA Arts."

♪ Off Interstate 295 in Southwest DC at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, members of the United States Air Force Honor Guard aim for perfect synchronicity.

[Officer shouts indistinctly] Man: All the service branches have honor guards or ceremonial units, and our primary mission is to provide funeral honors for military members in Arlington National Cemeteries.

So if you think about the people that carry the caskets, that's the pallbearer team.

The 21-gun salute everyone knows about, and the color teams that march, those are the different elements of a funeral.

[Officer says command] Curry: But within the Honor Guard, there is an elite unit that takes performance to another level.

It's called the Drill Team, and its leader is Master Sergeant Ken Barrows.

Ken Barrows: So the whole Honor Guard's mission is "To Honor With Dignity."

We go out and do funerals and ceremonies, but the Drill Team's mission specifically is to recruit, retain, inspire.

So we will do other high-visibility missions with Air Force leadership and even United States leadership, like the president and secretary of defense.

We go out to international military band performances.

We go out to air shows to see if we can give back to the community, as well as see if we can bring in any potential recruits.

[Spectators cheer] The original purpose of drilling is to win the battle.

Curry: Military drilling in the United States dates back to the Revolutionary War.

Kelly McKinley: The most disciplined force, the best organized one that can respond to commands quickly, they're usually going to be able to win.

Anytime you get a group of airmen together... [Officer says command] and you have a narrow focus on precision drill, naturally, these members are going to want to elevate their skills and go beyond just the basic weapons, tactical purpose, and are designed a little more to entertain, or to challenge the member.

It's not easy to do what they do, that 11-pound weapon.

It's not easy to choreograph something like that.

We're one of the only services where the weapon leaves their hands constantly and one of the only services where we redo our routine every year.

Officer: Stand-easy.

You know what they say: Amateurs practice till they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

So we're going to do another one.

Move.

Peter Mask: Perfection is our goal, but excellence is always our standard.

[Officer says command] Curry: Once you're in the Honor Guard, you can apply to be on the Drill Team.

Barrows: I'm looking for a good airman first.

A good airman follows our core values-- integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do.

A good airman will come in here, they'll put the work in, and they're going to be excellent.

Curry: The Drill Team finds recruits in many ways.

There is a sergeant-- his name is Sergeant Day-- and he was posting about the Drill Team on TikTok.

And I just thought, That is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Looked so fun, so I wanted to be a part of that.

Curry: While women have been in the Air Force since it was created in 1948, they only became eligible to join the Honor Guard in 1971.

McKinley: In 1976, women started performing as pallbearers, as color guard, as firing party.

And then by the early eighties, Senior Airman Lori Meyers, she became the first female on the Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team, and she paved the way for a number of women to serve on the Drill Team.

Kai Norwood: Being the ninth female on the Drill Team since 1948 has truly been an honor.

So when I first applied for the Honor Guard Drill Team, I didn't make it because I just was not strong enough.

Norwood: Unfortunately, we're not as strong as the men, genetically speaking, so it's very difficult, but it's all mental.

I would come in early to work to try to train with one of the trainers, stay after work, did everything that I could, and then the second time around, thankfully, I made it.

We did change the requirements to be more inclusive.

So the height requirement we used to have was 5'10", got changed to 5'6".

And it doesn't matter what gender.

And when they do the routine, the maneuvers aren't modified because of gender.

They just have to learn how to manipulate the weapon.

♪ Curry: Those admitted to the team must first perfect the drills.

They will spend another 4-6 months typically learning how to actually be performance ready.

Airman Buford's been on Drill Team for about three months now.

She's not quite performance ready yet.

Buford: I started off strong, then I got injured.

And it was kind of a struggle after that, but I definitely kept trying my hardest.

I did not want to give up because I really wanted to join.

Norwood: She's amazing, very good driller, has the right mind-set.

She's smaller than me, so you can imagine [Chuckles] how that goes.

Zephrendae Buford: I don't have a very big wingspan, so it's definitely a process of making sure that you're still doing things properly but also not looking crazy.

[Laughs] Curry: And timing is paramount if you're going to create a gauntlet of spinning bayoneted rifles.

Barrows: The first time I ever tried it, I got hit.

It's learning the right steps and the right cadence.

I put a lot of trust in my trainers, telling me, "Hey, this guy's ready to go."

When they tell me that, it's like, "OK, I know I can walk through there and not get hit."

Curry: Today's performance is at National Harbor.

[Officer saying commands] Barrows: The event is called the Drill at Dusk.

This one's considered a halftime drill.

It's about seven minutes long.

Atten-hut.

Announcer: And now leading the charge, Master Sergeant Kenneth Barrows of your United States Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team!

[Cheering] As in every Air Force mission, the Drill Team executes each movement with flawless timing and exacting precision.

♪ McKinley: The philosophies that we follow haven't changed from 1948.

There's still the desire to take everything a step further-- excellence in all we do, to serve others, to honor with dignity.

All those things remain the same.

♪ Announcer: In order to accelerate change, the Air Force continues to evolve into a stronger, more efficient fighting force.

The Drill Team is no exception.

Although our routine is frequently revised and improved upon, one tradition remains the same-- the use of the line formation.

Watch the domino effect created by the quick reflexes of each team member, then make some noise and show some love.

The louder you cheer, the harder they will perform.

[Cheering and applause] ♪ [Cheering] I would say it's art.

That precision, that discipline, it really does reach people.

♪ [Cheering and applause] ♪ Announcer: Representing every member past and present of the United States Air Force, your United States Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team!

[Cheering and applause] Man: So it's pretty impressive.

I'm not gonna lie.

I liked the performance.

Just the way that they maneuvered those weapons.

I was like, "What the...?"

I've never seen that in my life.

Officer: Team, fall out... Buford: Watching these inspires me to work harder and be better so that I can be out here doing it with them.

Barrows: I thought it was a really good performance.

I'm really proud of them.

There was a couple nerve-wracking parts in there for myself, but it worked out really well.

Norwood: I wanted to be able to show that you can do this whether you're a man, whether you're a woman, whether you're short, or whether you're tall.

I wanted to be able to show all the little girls out there, or even the boys out there, that anybody can do it and anyone can be a part of that change.

You just have to have the right mind-set.

Curry: The Drill Team performs up to 150 times a year around the world.

Follow them on Instagram @USAFDrillTeam.

Near the Capitol in Southwest DC, an underground lair has been transformed into a digital underwater experience.

♪ Woman: Being immersed in this underwater wonderland, it was just amazing.

And then it had science that backed it up.

♪ Woman: The digital art aspect of it was so incredible.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

♪ Woman: I would never go to the deep ocean personally, so it's nice to be able to see from the comfort of Washington, DC.

Curry: The exhibition is called "Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean."

Woman: The twilight zone is really amazing and incredibly important to our planet.

♪ It's the layer of the ocean that extends hundreds of meters from the surface.

It's way too dark in the twilight zone for you and I to be able to see anything, but there are specialized creatures that live down there that can tell whether it's night or day, even though there's very tiny amounts of sunlight.

And the more we look, the more we find how incredibly dynamic it is.

We started thinking how amazing it would be to have some kind of immersive experience, so people who will never get to go to the "Twilight Zone" could see, get a sense of what it's like... Oh, did you see the siphonophores go by?

share the science.

So we talked to ARTECHOUSE, and we looked into their mission, and it looked like a perfect match, and here we are.

Curry: ARTECHOUSE is the brainchild of Sandro Kereselidze.

Sandro Kereselidze: The idea of ARTECHOUSE is to have a place where you can experience dynamic, innovative art for audience of 21st century.

♪ Using the latest tools and technology, we develop stories, and I think science has so much to tell.

I'm coming from a family of movie directors... Curry: Kereselidze founded ARTECHOUSE in 2015.

Kereselidze: At ARTECHOUSE, we try to push the boundaries of next generation of scientists, next generation of artists.

Kereselidze, voice-over: Before ARTECHOUSE, me and my wife were doing over 200 events around this area, and I was connected to a lot of artists who use technology.

Before that, there was no place dedicated to this type of storytelling.

Somebody had to fill out the void, and that's how ARTECHOUSE came to life.

This is actually our third major show telling the science stories.

♪ We did a partnership with NASA to tell the story of the universe and what's above us.

We also done amazing partnership with the Society for Neuroscience, telling what's happening in our brain.

♪ And now we're going all the way deep to the ocean.

♪ And it's like there's a whole universe.

We can tell that story together of all this research in a new way for a new audience of today.

That's kind of cool.

How are things going, though, overall?

It's going to be cool.

Curry: Alongside Kereselidze, Riki Kim led the dialog with the scientists.

Riki Kim: One thing that keeps coming up in their scientific literature is about the biodiversity of the twilight zone and the massive migration that happens daily.

We took that as a cue.

If animals are migrating every day, let's make our story 24 minutes.

That covers 24 hours.

Some of the creatures, like siphonophores, and weird creatures like the Strawberry Squid, the bioluminescence, which everybody loves to talk about, those things are featured in the Immersion Gallery and explores them further.

Man: When this opens up, see, you have... Curry: The rooms off the Immersion Gallery are dedicated to interactive exhibits.

Man: The auxiliary galleries are intended to kind of add to topics that the Immersion Gallery space doesn't fully cover, and we make those interactive to add some depth to the content in the main gallery.

There's a whole range of ways to get input from people in the space, and then do something with that and give them a response.

Sometimes it involves cameras to track people's movement in a space and then influencing projected content.

We also sometimes use physical hardware, like buttons and joysticks.

One of those spaces focuses on the Mesobot, an autonomous robot scientists use to research where they can't go and see themselves.

This is the Mesobot here.

So you have, like, a lever that you can use to move between different depths.

♪ And you can hit a button to show you sort of the Mesobot's perspective and get information about the different creatures that it does encounter.

♪ Curry: Another interactive exhibit interprets bioluminescent creatures.

Simon Alexander-Adams: The Atolla jellyfish has this blue bioluminescence that happens when it's startled.

There's some fun sound design.

More imaginative since I don't think they actually make sounds.

[Chuckles] But this is a way to, like, imagine the sort of weird creatures.

Heidi M. Sosik: We've been able to talk to them.

They've respected our concerns and sometimes tweaked the way that the exhibit was going to appear.

It's been really fun to have that give and take.

Kereselidze: I had this idea to, like, have air bubbles activating the jellyfishes, and gives you all the information, and we can appreciate it.

That's the whole goal of this exhibit-- to spark curiosity and interest.

Beautiful jellyfish.

[Chuckles] Kim: The reality is that what we're doing happens in digital content, so we still need to be onsite for this thing because we have to see it.

How are things going?

Going well.

Tuning up the mapping here on the floor and then it's on to that side.

Looking good.

Looking good.

Can't wait, can't wait, man.

We are a few hours away from opening, and there's always some surprises with the technology.

But our team troubleshoots, and bringing this exhibition to life.

Let's make it happen.

♪ Curry: With miles of cable, dozens of projectors, and crates of sensors, ARTECHOUSE brings the ocean depth to the surface.

Sosik: And this project and this exhibit are just like the culmination of so much learning and knowledge, and I really appreciated learning to think differently about the ocean twilight zone and about the value of the ways that the artists were thinking about how to share the knowledge.

♪ Curry: There's no more time for testing.

The first guests have arrived.

[Indistinct chatter] Guide: Feel free to head downstairs for a brief introduction... Narrator: Dive into the enchanting waters of "Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean."

Discover the daily awe-inspiring animal migration from deep within the ocean to the surface.

♪ [Sound of waves breaking] Woman: It was funny.

At first, they're all standing very politely, taking a look, and then people started to get more relaxed and really sit on the floor and lean back, take it in.

I think people were really immersed in the exhibit and really kind of feeling the waves of life, even if they weren't quite sure what they were looking at, knowing that it was important and it was exciting.

Man: Those scientists and the whole idea of exposing people to all those mysteries and things we see under a microscope, these things we don't see, to make that accessible to people with art, I think that's so awesome.

Sosik: It's really been fun over the course of the project to see how Mesobot has almost become a character in the story about our science, and having it show up in this exhibit in such an interactive and fun way is really part of that arc that I really love.

And with everything coming to life tonight and the amount of enjoyment I see other people having is also really kind of overwhelming.

♪ It makes me feel very emotional.

Kereselidze: I hope you guys like this show because we really worked very hard.

Kereselidze, voice-over: The future of ARTECHOUSE is to be in every city, and I think we can push those limits even more.

This is just the beginning.

Curry: You can see "Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean" through November 17th.

And starting November 22nd, catch their annual holiday special.

Go to artechouse.com for details.

When David Kreeger moved to Washington in 1934, he came to work as a lawyer for the Department of Agriculture.

By the time he died in 1990, he and his wife Carmen had made an indelible mark on DC's art scene.

♪ Curry: Look at this beautiful piece.

It's a gorgeous work.

It's by Foon Sham.

Foon is well known to the Washington area and has worked all over the city.

Curry, voice-over: I met with Helen Chason, director of the Kreeger Museum, to talk about the Kreegers' art collection and their legacy.

Curry: I noticed immediately that it did feel like a residence.

Was the intention always to make this a museum?

Great question.

And, yes, they knew from the very beginning that they would open this building as a museum after they were finished using it as a residence.

Carmen Kreeger played a very big role in designing this.

They wanted a building that would house their growing art collection and to provide good acoustics for music concerts.

♪ There are world-renowned artists in this collection.

Monet.

Helen Chason: Yes.

Van Gogh.

Yes.

How did they amass the fortune necessary to gain artwork of that prestige?

David Kreeger came from a very middle-class background.

He went to Harvard Law School.

He worked with an investment group and then became CEO and general counsel to Geico, and that is how they were able to purchase many of the works that they purchased.

♪ They loved Washington, DC-based artists, and they loved the Impressionists.

They purchased works directly from DC artists as well as from galleries in town, and they bought what they loved.

They did not buy for investment.

Their one rule was it had to be a work of art that they both wanted hanging in their home.

♪ I can show you one of our most Instagrammable works, which is a Monet.

I'd absolutely love to see that.

All right.

♪ This is the Monet, and it was painted in 1897, and the Kreegers purchased it in 1961.

I love the use of the purple in the haze off on the side and in the vegetation.

It's really beautiful.

As you move around the gallery space, you can see the perspective change quite a bit, and at different times of day, the painting looks different.

♪ I believe that one of our strengths is you're able to stand three feet from a Monet and really see the texture in the canvas.

You can see the brushwork, but it's the intimacy of the gallery experience, I think, that is so well worth it.

I've got to get my Instagrammable photo.

[Chuckles] OK. Ready?

[Camera shutter clicks] Oh, it's gorgeous.

♪ Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Chason: This is a beauty.

This is by Maillol.

And it was one of the first outdoor works that the Kreegers purchased.

The sculptures have grown since then.

They have.

They have.

How many do you have out here now?

We have almost 20, I think, at last count.

Oh, my goodness.

We have both the works in the permanent collection that the Kreegers purchased, and then we've added to the collection since with contemporary works, some of them by Washington, DC-based artists.

We've talked a little bit about the work the Kreegers have done here on their museum, but how important were they to the fabric of DC?

They were quite philanthropic and huge patrons of the cultural world in Washington, DC.

They were very involved in the arts as well as some of the city life.

The Kreegers established artist awards at many of the universities in the area, so they were actively encouraging education about the arts as well as supporting the arts.

♪ You have several world-renowned artists alongside great local artists as well.

We absolutely do.

In the permanent collection, we have Sam Gilliam, we have Gene Davis, we have Thomas Downing-- Washington-based artists that are usually on view in the lower gallery.

Right now we're celebrating our 30th anniversary exhibition, "Here In This Little Bay."

That exhibition has outstanding artists from the Washington, DC, area.

We have so much talent in this city, and it's just wonderful to be able to bring that talent and have their work on view and share it.

Curry: I love contemporary work.

This is beautiful.

These are two gorgeous works created by Kei Ito.

This is using sunlight and photosensitive paper, and the liquid that was used was a combination of honey and syrup.

And then it was put out in the sun, and this work was created during the summer.

And the work on the left-hand side was created during the winter, demonstrating how the different temperatures changed the materials that were used.

Wow!

What an exciting thing to do on the 30th anniversary, to see where art has come.

Absolutely.

Oh, wow.

This work was selected for our 30th-anniversary exhibition.

This is titled "Mirror World," and it is acrylic ink on panel.

I love this placement in the room.

It truly, like, fills the whole space.

It does.

And I'm thrilled to actually announce that the David Lloyd Kreeger Foundation has purchased this work to have it on view forever.

Wonderful.

Chason: Carmen and David Kreeger were incredibly generous people, who felt that the secret to a good life was sharing.

And our mission is very simple.

It's to share art, architecture, and music.

It's exactly what Carmen and David Kreeger did, and it is such an honor to continue that legacy today.

Helen, thank you so much for your time here today.

We have loved being with you here at the Kreeger Museum.

Thank you so much, Felicia.

It's been a real pleasure.

Curry: The Kreeger Museum's newest exhibition presents prints by local artists acquired by local collectors.

Get details at kreegermuseum.org.

Here's a thought from Eric Carle, the award-winning illustrator and author best known for his children's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

"Simplify, slow down, be kind.

"And don't forget to have art in your life-- music, paintings, theater, dance, sunsets."

Thank you for watching "WETA Arts."

Be well, be creative, and enjoy the art all around you.

I'm Felicia Curry.

Peter Mask: It is crazy how much laundry and upkeep we have to do.

When people see those uniforms, I don't think they know how much it takes.

Sosik: The ocean twilight zone is so important to the health and productivity of our planet, and we hope that by seeing this exhibit, more people will be inspired to appreciate and want to be responsible stewards of the ocean.

♪ Chason: Monet actually created a studio boat and would go out on the river before dawn to capture the scene with the vegetation on the left-hand side and the sort of ephemeral purple haze on the right-hand side.

Announcer: For more about the artists and institutions featured in this episode, go to weta.org/arts.