Carolina Crown 2010 "A Second Chance"

[pistolpete]

I'm just a fan and thus have no insight into what the designers were thinking but it seems to me that the rewind section was not part of the original plan. The show was written to challenge for a title but in the last two weeks of the season reality set in and the Promise of Living was added in an attempt to medal.Fan reaction was phenomenal at Allentown but the new ending was not enough to catch two corps that Crown had been beating earlier in the season.

[corpsband]

I'm just a fan and thus have no insight into what the designers were thinking but it seems to me that the rewind section was not part of the original plan. The show was written to challenge for a title but in the last two weeks of the season reality set in and the Promise of Living was added in an attempt to medal.Fan reaction was phenomenal at Allentown but the new ending was not enough to catch two corps that Crown had been beating earlier in the season.

This would be incorrect. The rewind was actually taught something like 3 weeks before it ever saw the light of day; it was planned well in advance and not a last minute rewrite. I think the first ending went in at Normal.

[CrownStarr]

This would be incorrect. The rewind was actually taught something like 3 weeks before it ever saw the light of day; it was planned well in advance and not a last minute rewrite. I think the first ending went in at Normal.

Yup. We only did the rewind in its final form about a week before we performed it, but we got an earlier version about four weeks before we debuted the final version. Originally, we actually played and marched the last bit of the Mahler backwards, in time, but that literal rewind got dropped in favor of the more effect-based one we ended up using.

I suspect our design staff had had the rewind idea up their sleeves for a long time, probably while they were designing the show in the preseason. We got our original ending towards the end of Spring Training (mostly from the last few minutes of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, but I think there was also a snippet from the finale of Mahler's second symphony), which we debuted that one, as you said, at the Normal, IL show. Michael Klesch told us later in the season why they'd decided to drop that ending.

When he introduced the Rachmaninoff ending to us at Spring Training, he was really excited about it and thought it was a great closer for us. However, as we started to perform, he and the staff realized that while the music was great, the pacing didn't work with the rest of the show. The end of the Mahler reprise is the thematic climax of the show: it's the same music from the opener, and Carrie (the lead guard girl) is faced with the same choice between two "options" (lead guard guys) that she had in the preshow. In the preshow, she made one choice, which led to all the events of the rest of the show. Now, in the closer, she gets a Second Chance (see what I did there?) at the decision, and because of what she learned throughout the rest of the show, she makes a different choice.

That, in a nutshell, is the driving theme of the whole show, so it's a big moment thematically. The problem with the Rachmaninoff closer was that it started with this great, triumphant music after she takes her second chance.... but then it just kept going and going. It went on for too long and lost the momentum that the reprise had built up. They patched the problem after a couple weeks by cutting out a large portion of the closer to try and keep the momentum up, but I think that was always meant as a temporary fix while they worked up the rewind ending. I'm not sure how long they had Promise of Living up their sleeves, that much was only revealed to us when we got the final iteration of the rewind ending in Mississippi, about a week before we put it in the show for the first time.

Edited April 10, 2011 by CrownStarr

[SFZFAN]

The main character hits on several guys during the show, but they all end up being gay.

In the end she returns to her imaginary friend from last year.

She really should have hit on the drummers then.

[Tee]

Hey there. I took a crack at this during the season, and I guess I can type it up again if you'd like.

To understand this program, we must first look into the ending of last year's. At the end of "The Grass is Always Greener", we see the Peter Pan character running into the tunnel, away from Neverland, and leaving Tinkerbell alone, which we can see in the change of colors from green to brown, as her sorrow grows over time.

What I got out of their program was that the entire story is based on the concept of second chances at finding love. If you watch the videos, during the pre-show, you can see the main female guard lead dancing with both male leads, and when the first male lead smacks here, I believe that is supposed to represent the lover's quarrel of him finding out about her and the other lead. The Katchicurian(sp?) I believe is meant to represent the lover's quarrels, with eventually we can only assume to be the end of their relationship. The music then transitions into Marquez's Danzon No.2, where the girl tries to find another partner, as evidenced by her dancing with many different people, even the drum major at one point. The next piece is Elgar's Nimrod, where we see the female lead finding a possible new partner, and the blossoming of their new love is signified by the slow, romantic music. After this, it goes back into Mahler's Symphony No.2, and the original ending right before the rewind is our female lead mistakenly returning to her original paramour, and is almost beaten for it. After the rewind, she runs back in the other direction, and arrives at the other lead. Now, this is where the music from last year's show is brought back in, as she is rewarded for making the right decision in love, so she thinks, until Peter Pan returns to re-claim his lost love, and the pair run off together into bliss.

Does that help at all? I know it's a bit academic, but it took a bunch of viewings before it started to sink in for me too.

Even reading this i am still confused..... i just liked music

[skewerz]

Did you not see the uniforms? (rimshot)

that wasn't comedy...that was dramatic tragedy...

[fsubone]

I think you're pretty spot on. And the show itself is a bit academic, though I almost think philosophic is a better word. Honestly, it's why I love it so much. It really gives you something to think about. I actually wrote an analysis paper for an art history class on 2009's show!

I think that, when viewed in context to 2009, however, the 2010 show takes on an even deeper meaning. 2009 was about the innately human drive to improve our lives, with the philosophic conclusion that it may be better just to find happiness in our current situation (in the show, the main character "comes home", a little worse for wear). Just watch the designers commentary if you have a fan network subscription. I think that you're very close with your take on 2010, though I'd venture to remove the love element completely and say it's more symbolic than that. It's essentially about the same thing as 2009, but with a different conclusion. The girl is searching for something she can't have, and ends up getting hurt. However, at the end, what she's ultimately looking for finds her. I suppose the conclusion is that happiness comes to us if we just let it. I think all the "Second Chance" allusions (including the drill and music) all point to the idea that this is a second exploration of 2009's theme of finding happiness. The choice to bring back the character from 2009 at the very end honestly floored me and made the entire show feel clear. I'm seriously of the opinion that we've reached a point where we should be studying drum corps in the classroom in the way we study film, dance, and music: not just technically, but philosophically. I think the art form is reaching that point. A "Drum Corps Theory" class, anyone?

I think the show is accessible, deep in meaning, artfully crafted in terms of design, and stunningly performed. This is why Crown has become my favorite corps in the past few years. I think they've elevated the art form to a whole new level of intelligence.

Thanks. Glad you like my analysis. I enjoyed yours too. I think the big point here is that you can't look at each show individually, since they draw from each other. You have to view them more like Act 1 and Act 2 of a play, instead of two separate ones. I think the Crown staff had to have something like this is mind when they designed the '09 show, but that's just a guess here.

[glory]

Designers need to be careful about themes that revolve around individual guard members, in my opinion. Those designs often lose us when we fans lose sight of the "star." I think that's part of what happened here. The design leaned too heavily on isolated interactions between one or three in the guard to communicate the particulars of this theme - and that theme wasn't nearly so easily to communicate as, for instance, the death of Spartacus in Phantom 08 or the confusion of Cadets dreamgirl in 05. Even Crown's 09 pixie didn't tax our attention in service of the theme.

That said, Crown 10 had lots of great things going on. The failure of the storyline to reveal itself postively to me wasn't much of a negative.

HH

[loopin' froot loops]

It was about rewriting endings that didn't work.

I thought that's what 08 was all about- finding the right ending

[jjeffeory]

Hey there. I took a crack at this during the season, and I guess I can type it up again if you'd like.

To understand this program, we must first look into the ending of last year's. At the end of "The Grass is Always Greener", we see the Peter Pan character running into the tunnel, away from Neverland, and leaving Tinkerbell alone, which we can see in the change of colors from green to brown, as her sorrow grows over time.

What I got out of their program was that the entire story is based on the concept of second chances at finding love. If you watch the videos, during the pre-show, you can see the main female guard lead dancing with both male leads, and when the first male lead smacks here, I believe that is supposed to represent the lover's quarrel of him finding out about her and the other lead. The Katchicurian(sp?) I believe is meant to represent the lover's quarrels, with eventually we can only assume to be the end of their relationship. The music then transitions into Marquez's Danzon No.2, where the girl tries to find another partner, as evidenced by her dancing with many different people, even the drum major at one point. The next piece is Elgar's Nimrod, where we see the female lead finding a possible new partner, and the blossoming of their new love is signified by the slow, romantic music. After this, it goes back into Mahler's Symphony No.2, and the original ending right before the rewind is our female lead mistakenly returning to her original paramour, and is almost beaten for it. After the rewind, she runs back in the other direction, and arrives at the other lead. Now, this is where the music from last year's show is brought back in, as she is rewarded for making the right decision in love, so she thinks, until Peter Pan returns to re-claim his lost love, and the pair run off together into bliss.

Does that help at all? I know it's a bit academic, but it took a bunch of viewings before it started to sink in for me too.

Thanks for the explanation. It makes total sense explained to me. I guess I should have been on here more last summer.

My response is: OMG .