Brutus

What is the historical accuracy behind the Tilt skirt. Please. Go on and on.

Your logic is like a teen girl at prom. "It doesn't look like that and yes it does so who cares, no one cares about you!"My. God. Please describe the intention behind this absurd trend and why no one is talking about it. And why no designer can justify the trend as it relates to individual show design other than it's a trend in general. That's not good enough.

When the Bluecoats start their show, you get that slow-black, crow-black, deep in your bones feeling that this is the future. You watch it, as if from your satisfied Our Town grave. The only thing the show needs is for the designers or performers to reveal on a personal level what this music means to them, viscerally, spiritually.

See below.

2014:"A parting glance from a loved one or the memory of your grandmother's hands folded in her lap?" No that was foreboding and dire too. Way way too preachy and grim. Way too "last gasp of breath". Way way too on the nose.

78th and Madison Madison's Gene Kelly show is winsome and delightful. The production puts dance front and center, rather than tacking on dance as an afterthought which so many drum corps shows do. THE MGM LION 78th and Madison starts with the MGM lion roar. But according to film restoration expert Greg Kimble in Hollywood, MGM's A-level releases had a three-roar introductory segment. Only the C Level pictures had a one-roar introductory segment. This is an A level release. Change it. PIN-UP GIRLS The cardboard cutout dance sequence where the Gene Kelly-esque dancers have a fling with the pinup girls is a Broadway-quality design idea. As the season progresses, I'm sure the choreographers and dancers will become more fluid and creative with these props, and they'll generate more clever moves with them. The props just sort of suddenly disappear, however, and as a result we lose the resonance that these props have built up. Its a huge buildup and no payoff. Here's how you fix it. Have a movie set prop guy collect the cut-out girls and stack them up, as if preparing them for storage. One by one, the guys give up their girls, but of the guys is reluctant to give up his cut-out girl to the prop guy who shakes his head, grabs it and walks off. The dancer is heartbroken and finishes a forlorn solo. This will put a final button on that set piece and give it more depth and completeness. EMOTIONAL RANGE As with many of the shows this season, Madison needs to build a bigger range of emotion in the music, and heighten and build more set pieces. Set pieces are like special effects at a concert-- they keep the audience engaged, and they keep the shows from becoming an endless amorphous stream of kaleidoscopic shapes blending into each other, ad nauseum. The more set pieces to break up the endless mind-numbing swirling drill set swamp, the better. THE GOTTA DANCE CHARACTER One aspect of Madison's show that needs serious examination is the depiction of Gene Kelly. Madison uses the clown-like Gotta Dance character from the dream sequence in Singing in the Rain to represent Kelly. It's way too broad a character to bookend Kelly's life in dance. Its a cartoon-like character taken from a short dream sequence in the film and is used way too much in this production. Madison's use of this character lasts longer in this production than it does in the original film! The way Madison uses the character, it begs for laughs and falls flat. The character doesn't represent Kellly as a whole, and should be used in this show only as a potent spice. It's almost too jokey a character to introduce the homage, and definitely way too broad a comedic character to appear throughout the entire production. THE COSTUME (HAT AND GLASES GOTTA GO, JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIE) Also, the actual hat that Madison created for the Gotta Dance character is a steroid-pumped mockery of the original and its absolutely grotesque. Heres what it looked like in the film. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/60/c7/60/60c76038cd4a7dbd7016e45bc437aaa2.jpg Kelly was handsome, don't forget. Madison's heightened version of the hat looks like something from Syd & Marty Kroft's Lidsville. Replace it. Also, the large suitcase is much larger than the original in the film, but the intent of creating a visible, comedic, larger than life prop for a large drum corps audience ends up making the dancers look clumsy-- an unfortunate effect. Why is the suitcase so big-- it doesnt match the original in the film. Also, the hat is enough to capture the Gotta Dance character. Take the glasses off. Gene Kelly's character in Singing in the Rain's Gotta Dance segment is more recognizable by its hat than by the glasses (which Kelly in the filim takes off almost immediately.) After the first 20 seconds of Kellys number the glases are long gone. Not here. The glasses and hat are so prevalent, so big and bizarre on these dancers, and their appearance so frequent, it makes them look like an Asian stereotype throughout the entire production. THE SUAVE KELLY Further, the featured dancers need to study the physicality of Gene Kelly. (Thank God the kids can watch Youtube on the buses.) Genes style was fluid but masculine, polished, crisp and classically centered. Right now the kids seem to be stuck with a fey version of the comedic Gotta Dance character in the dream sequence, and it grows wearisome. We'd much rather see the suave and debonair version of Kelly. The ending exit from the Gene Kelly character should reflect the more sophisticated but still vulnerable and likeable Gene we see in the rest of Rain with the more sophisticated hat. Lose the luggage. The ending exit character work should show the transformation that he made in Singing in the Rain. Hes become sophisticated, but still with a comedic flare. Overall the Gotta Dance character is smarmy and charicature-like, and not representative of the overall sophistication of this gorgeous homage to one of the worlds greatest showmen and certainly shouldn't reappear at the end. We don't need the character to return as a framing device. We're well aware of the point of focus of the show. Let the suave Kelly take us out.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/20/51/2f/20512ff358a7dc6cd6b64f9624220a90.jpg

If you have to sqiunt to see whether or not it's a skirt, the audience will do the same.

Drum corps show color guards are just now snapping out of a modern dance phase that has damaged the activity because of its frenetic, repetitious, homogenous, over-emotional clap-trap. How many shows have you seen where color guards are doing these generic modern dance moves over and over again? Clutch your heart, reach for the sky. Fall to the ground on your side in a sleeping position. Fetal position. Contract at the waist, wrap your arms around yourself. My god, choreographers. Does every piece of music evoke these same generic modern dance moves to you? Recently corps color guards look like they're auditioning for Dance Moms and being treated for anxiety. The most original new choreography to come out of drum corps recently is Cavaliers vampire character choreography, and SCV's balletic French resistance choreography in Les Mis and their Middle-Eastern inspired moves for Schenerezade.

Star's Medea was an experiment in maintaining unflinching anger for 13 minutes. It worked, I guess.

The activity would be dead if that dumb mantra had been followed. Now that the activity has matured and evolved to encompass complex dramatic actions and subtle visual themes (and some not so subtle), that shallow, empty beer bottle advice just doesn't cut it. Maybe in 1976 this worked, but now that our brains are fully developed, no. That's like going to the Art Institute of Chicago and saying, "It's all about color." Provincial sayings like this completely negate of the maturation of this art form. Now dramatic elements are supporting the visual, lending depth and humanity, meaning, and even humor to the musical pieces. Not all shows of dramatic depth and thematic argument are successful. Some shows with dramatic action or thematic arguments have become preachy and uncomfortably on-the-nose. Cadet's Angels and Demons show was so subtle, so clear, so rich, it became a profound work of art-- a commentary on good and evil, and the nature of that duality as an ineluctable component in the human experience. Cadet's An American Portrait last year became a swirling toilet bowl of unbiodegradable patriotic color amid a cacophonous hurl of shouted speeches from great US statesmen topped off with confetti canons and red white and blue Roman candle enemas-- an in your face preach-apalooza. Way too on the nose, completely lacking in subtlety and just uncomfortable to watch, despite it being brilliantly executed and a good original concept before the plastic banner machine fired up and shrink wrapped the entire corps, mummifying them.

These WGI shows are almost painfully preachy and way way too "on the nose." Really disturbing. Where's the humor? The joy, the complexity, the naughtiness, the off-center point of view?

"Meaning" and a well developed theme can simply be the Nordic opera star being eaten by the shark at the end of the Velvet Knight's show, a lampoon of entertainment memes. It's not hard. Another example is SCV '99 where the build in the music was met with the rotating wedge that turned into an arrow. The pattern was the swelling music.

Here's the interview of Program Coordinator Dean Westman on the meaning of the word Tilt as the incidentally selected symbol for their show. He basically reveals that there was no underlying meaning other than a vague reference to these composers being "off kilter", no specifics about these composers lives, no thematic argument, no story, no series of events, no humanity, no pattern or progression or game other than examples of things tilting and "messing with perspective", and no effort to link the visual design to the composers point of view being "off kilter" in the context of other symphonic music or how that related to the player running and jumping off the scalene triangle at the end. But #### that pitch bend was awesome! = = = DCI Field Pass 7/2014 Interviewer: One of the world class shows generating a lot of buzz in the early season is the Bluecoats 2014 production, Tilt. Last Saturday morning, outside a Muncie Indiana’s Starbucks, I sat down with Coat’s program coordinator Dean Westman to find out more about the design and execution of the show. Westman: Well, it, it, it started with music. And that happened in September. I mean we gave ourselves about three weeks off, and we came at it this year in the spirit of let’s find the most exciting repertoire we possibly can. And when you have visual designers that are Tony Award winning visual designers, they had the confidence that we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with it, you know we’re talking about John Vanderkolff, Jim Moore, Fred Vigola (sp). And so it all started with music. And we had the music and we found this, the three composers, Tyondai Braxton, Andy Akoho and Vienna Teng, and and we, we were on fire with this music. And I’m talking until late March, we had no idea where it was going. And uh, the conversation turned to how could we mess with perspective. Audience perspective because this music feels so off kilter compared to what you know we consider classical music or orchestral music. It really is 21st century music. And when we started the conversation about perspective, that’s how we got into the word tilt. And that’s how we got into tilting the field and these scalene triangles, and it all kind of snowballed from, from there. Uh but it very much started with, with the repertoire. You know Dan there are so many amazing story tellers in this activity. Um, and so many designers that that is right in their wheelhouse, and I have no problem admitting I’m not one of them. You know, I, it, it, it’s tough to do. And um, for, for us, it, this was just a, this was just a better fit for the Bluecoats to take this kind of music first approach. And when you, and again John Vanderkolff, everybody knows what he’s done with Star 93 with Blast, but he also has like a degree in music theory from the Eastman School of Music, so we, we can approach it that way when you have a visual designer that does a harmonic analysis of the score you give him. Interviewer: Wow, and the talent level this year seems to have gone up another notch as well. Westman: Yeah, yeah absolutely. That’s been happening in my four years, I, I’ve seen that steadily over each year, the numbers of kids auditioning, and, and the talent level and you can’t even be in the room when they’re doing the auditions because it’s heart wrenching to watch. There’s players that, when I marched would have been the best player we had, and they’re not making it. Uh, and I think that’s, that’s not just a Bluecoat comment, I think that’s where the activity’s at. The virtuosity that’s going on in this activity right now, um, we saw that in Muncie last night. Uh, it didn’t matter what corps was on, There’s a level of virtuosity that’s ridiculous to me. Interviewer: And there is a level of preparedness we didn’t see at the beginning of the season ten years ago either. Westman: Yeah you have to, you have to have that. I mean y-, eh, there, there’s a good pressure to do that. And I think that, that, the Cineaste is , that, that pushes you. You know that’s going to be out there, and you , you don’t want to come out un-, unprepared, and I think sometimes people talk about oh you don’t want to give everything away at the beginning of the season and you have room to grow and whatever. Everybody has room to grow. Um, Gordon Henderson used to teach me drum corps don’t peek, staffs do. So I, I don’t believe in showing your cards too early. I believe in that everybody paid a tick-, you know a price for a ticket and they all deserve a great show and we’re going to get better and we’re, it’s going to evolve. But uh we’re, we are kind of showing a lot, a whole bunch of the card, every card we know right now. And the cards we haven’t shown are the ones that we’re still just figuring out. Interviewer: Let’s talk about some of the unique aspects of the design of this show and uh I hesitate to call it props, they’re more like parts of the stage. These triangles, what kind of triangles are they? Westman: Yeah they’re scal-, scalene triangles and that was a, they started sketching those, it was, I remember it was at my house, and it was some time in the spring when we had, when we had a design meeting. And then they workshopped it, and they had like a, the guy who built the prop almost has like a Santa’s workshop, and I went out there and it was John, Jim Moore, Greg Lagola. It took a huge element of work-shopping to get those pieces to do exactly what we needed them to do, and from a logistical standpoint to be able to separate into parts and fit in a box truck and all the things and, and I gotta give our corps director massive props, pun, pun very much intended in that he let us as designers live in a bubble and not say why, here’s why we can’t. And here’s why this won’t work, whether it’s cost or the logistics of moving it, um he does a great job of letting us live in that bubble, and if, if there’s ever something we can’t make it work with our corps director David Glasgow, it’s literally because we can’t make it work. Um, but that, it, it turned out great. Interviewer: There is one part of your show that is generating more talk, more kudos than anything else right now in a show that’s full of great surprises, what’s being called the pitch bend. You have a big powerful chord from the horn line, and all of a sudden, they lean back and the pitch drops off, it becomes electronic at some point, but you can still make out the horn line, and the horn line rejoins in. I’ll play an example right here. Interviewer: Okay, talk about this pitch bend and where the idea came from. Westman: Well it came from our brass arranger, Doug Thrower, um and he started talking about that over the winter, and um, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little bit skeptical, um but the devil was in the details on that. And I think people might look at that and go oh, it’s this synthesized effect, and it is in that it’s being elect-, it is happening electronically, but what went into that, that is us. We did a recording session during spring training with the horn line that took an entire block of just various chords, various volumes, various ranges, um and so what you hear there is the Bluecoats horn line passed off to the virtual Bluecoats horn line, um and then it does the pitch bend, recaptured by the actual Bluecoats horn line, then the virtual horn line bends it again back to the actual. So, it wasn’t like well, we’ll just play a chord with some you know finale sound and do it, that’s us. Um, and we took the time to do it, and I remember when they were recording it, I uh contacted DCI’s artistic director Michael Cesario and I said, I told him what we were doing, and I said this is either going to be the coolest thing, or it’s going to be extremely silly. I’m not sure yet, and we both agreed, you know, with no risk, there’s there is no reward. And um, and then and then the coordination of what Jim did from a choreography standpoint and how he pulls the musicians away from their mouthpiece and they make eye contact with the audience on the bend, kind of in a way to give them a wink and say, “we’re not playing our instruments right now is, is to me that, that’s what enhances it. But it was a great collaboration between Doug Thrower, our electronics designer uh Vince Oliver who is just rookie of the year with the Bluecoats. An absolute young brilliant musician and um, and our visual team. Interviewer: Man, the drum line sounds good this year. Westman: Yeah, no they’re on fire. That that, I think, I think people like us or anybody who’s been following the Bluecoats or just percussion in this activity, we’ve seen that coming with these guys. Every year it seems like they’re ratcheting it up, and then this year it’s, it’s just every time I, no matter what it is, whether I’m watching them go through their fundamental program, um or I’m watching them just in a visual block or I’m watching them in the context of their show, it just hits me as professional. Everything they do just feels professional. There’s nothing student, um, about what those guys are doing, and when you have leadership like they have, and when it’s written by you know Tom Rarick is a professional musician in the United States Air Force band, and that’s just, he approaches it, and I think it’s what I’m most proud of this year when, and this goes, speaks to the whole book. Is, I d-, at no point with us do I hear brass book, drum book, pit book, electronics. I think, I think the goal ultimately, I hope what we’re all shooting for is I think what we’re achieving at certainly the highest level we ever have, which it sounds like a score. It just sounds like a score. But when you have musicians like Doug and Tom and Vince, that’s their goal. It’s not about I wrote the best brass book, I wrote the best drum book, I did the best electronics, they almost want it just, it’s like a composer composed a great score, that was the goal and then we laid a visual idea to it. Bluecoats Program Coordinator Dean Westman. You can catch the Coats in action, tonight, New Haven Connecticut, tomorrow night in Bristol, Rhode Island, and Saturday night July fifth at the Bean Pot invitational in Lynn, Mass. Our theme music is by Mark Higgenbotham. DCI’s field pass is presented by Zildjian. Check out all of Zildjian’s products at Zildjian dot com. I’m Dan Potter, have a great Independence Day Weekend, and we’ll be back with another Field Pass next week.

Do you prefer the discussion about Madison's show to be about how great it was? If your corps were to be selected for next Year's Macy's parade, would you review this year's tape? The camera placements? The long pause and lack of movement after the tune is finished and before the cadence starts? The lack of movement in the overhead camera? I thought so. You'll catch on.