Corps Life: A Summer of Self-Discipline

I spent the summer after I graduated performing with one of the top marching corps in the nation, performing every night for crowds of fans.

For high school band kids, “drum corps” was the ultimate experience for diehard marching band performers. The music was louder, the marching was faster and the shows were out of this world and in your face. Each group required its members to spend three months perfecting a 12-minute show from sun up to sundown and by the time they stepped under stadium lights for nightly performances, their hard work had paid off.

A few of us color guard gals posing for “Eighties Day” on a cloudy day in Denver.

I arrived in Denver on May 16, 2010, two weeks shy of graduation, not realizing the long summer ahead of me.  My color guard team of 40 performers started rehearsing immediately in a park outside of the Mile High City. The rest of the corps, which consisted of brass instruments and percussion, eventually joined us and we started putting together our competitive show, piece by piece.

Aside from my brief trip back home to walk across the stage and get my diploma, I spent every day doing the same thing:

Get off the charter bus around 2 or 3 a.m. Pull out my air mattress in a gym full of my corps mates. Sleep. Wake up at 7 a.m. Eat. Practice in the heat until noon. Eat. Practice in the heat until it’s time to EPL (eat, pack and load) for the next show. Shower. Get ready for the next show. Drive to the show. Perform. Eat. Get on the bus and head to the next state.

Repeat, every day.

A gym in New Mexico where I slept on an air mattress with 150 other corps members.

Once the show was completed, we started traveling across the United States. We started in Denver and traveled up the west coast from California to Washington. Then we traveled through the Midwest to the South and eventually touched the east coast with shows in the Carolinas and Pennsylvania. Every night we put on performances for people in high school stadiums and arenas, and every night we competed for a higher score against other corps.

My summer with the Blue Knights Drum and Bugle Corps meant endless days of sweat and hard work.

If I said the experience didn’t wear on me, I would be lying. While I eventually got used to the heat and the constant state of hunger and thirst, I still wanted to quit every day. It was tough to endure criticism from leadership and directors and it was mentally tiresome to do the same piece of choreography for hours on end. (Not to mention it was killer to my knees, ankles and wrists, which still haven’t fully recovered.) It was difficult to receive phone calls from family and friends who were enjoying their summer before college out by the pool while I spent every day covered in sweat and dirt. Most of all, it was hard because each day went slower than the one before and every morning we stretched to “Leaving On A Jet Plane” by Chantal Kreviazuk.

I still think they did that to torture me.

Performing for thousands at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis was the highlight of my summer.

When we finally got to championships on August 12, I was ready to go home but I knew I had gained a lot from my summer. I had an appreciation for beds, showers, dinner tables and metal silverware. I had a dark tan and had gotten trim and fit. But more than anything, I came to Baylor knowing the true meaning of hard work and determination.

Student becomes teacher of color guard

I’ve been a performer since I was 15 years old. No, I wasn’t in drill team nor was I a cheerleader in high school. I participated in what is considered the “sport of the arts”, a rigorous combination of dance, flags and rifles. Most people knew it as “color guard” or “flag corps”. More often than not people equated “color guard” to their high school’s dance team rejects who stood behind band waving flags during halftime at football games. But for me it was a sport that was easier to do than explain to outsiders, and that’s saying something.

Now that high school is over and I have had my fair share of traveling across the country performing in stadiums and arenas, I teach color guard at Midway High School. It seemed natural at the time that accomplishing my life goals as a performer would lead me to teach others what I have learned. I started working at Midway 2 years ago and it has always been a blessing.

Here is a description of what I do:

Before school starts in the summer, I teach all the skills necessary to spin a flag, rifle or saber along with dance fundamentals so that they will be prepared for choreography. Once school starts in the fall, I add choreography and teach it to the students so that they can put on an entertaining show at halftime but also so they can be competitive at marching competitions. It’s exciting to see how I can teach girls (and guys) how to do all these challenging skills in such a short amount of time. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing those students achieve at the end of marching season.

After marching season and fall is over, I design a show just for them to perform indoors, no marching band needed. This part of the season is called “winter guard” since the season starts in January and typically goes until March or April. These shows are designed to happen on basketball-court-sized tarpaulins. Sometimes these tarps (often called performance floors or mats) can be made from old billboards sewn together. Performance floors are typically painted to convey part of the show’s theme.

Here the Forney High School JV Winterguard performs on a gray and white gradient floor.

Like marching season, I choose the costuming and flag silk colors to evoke whatever show I choose as the director. I edit whatever track I have chosen to fit the show concept, making sure that the music builds and plateaus much like a novel or movie gathers momentum before a denouement.  I then start from the beginning of the music and write each performers spot in “drill”, or coordinates which create shapes that will lock in during different moments of the show.

 

I write a lot of drill in my free time in spirals and notebooks, and I try to color-coordinate between different pieces of equipment to make my life simpler.

 

Once the drill is completed, then choreography is filled in to get performers from coordinates A to B to C, and so on. There are four different options to choose from when it comes to choreography: dance, flag, saber and rifle. Depending on the style of choreography and music, different pieces of equipment are appropriate for different parts in the show. For example, I prefer dance and saber choreography through lyrical, soft parts of the show and I prefer rifle for more aggressive moments. It is up to each director’s discretion as to how they would like to piece together the production. (After all, it is their show and piece of art!)

Over the course of the season, choreography is added in, changed or enhanced leading up to a championships performance. Students practice after school and on occasional weekends to make their show as competitive as possible.

The shows are scored by a panel of judges who look for vocabulary (the choreography as it’s written with levels of versatility and difficulty) and excellence (how well each student performed the vocabulary provided). The vocabulary and excellence are looked for within these four categories: movement, equipment, general effect (how well the show theme is portrayed) and ensemble analysis (how much of the choreography is “clean” and moving together as a cohesive unit). Each group competes against other schools within their classification, from a novice level called “Regional AAA” to nationally competitive classes like “Scholastic A”, “Scholastic Open” and “Scholastic World”. Classification is not based on school size but is based on ability (though those things often correlate as larger schools tend to have access to more students and, therefore, larger teams).

Here’s a link to a video montage that shows some of the world-class performers and shows from 2012. It gives a better idea of what winter guard is and how challenging it can be:

2012 Winter Guard International Highlights

 

At the end of the day, I find it rewarding to have a team of 12 high school students who want to learn from me. They trust me to use them as media for my work of art, and, as a college student who was in their shoes not too long ago, I find it gratifying and humbling at the same time to have that privilege.

The arts are important for students by giving them something with which they can feel pride and self-confidence. These past two years teaching has showed me that the arts are equally as important for teachers for the exact same reasons.