Straight Leg or Bent Leg?

[combia1]

I think Crown uses straight leg. To over simplify the Cavalier's technique, its bent leg.

Just talked to a Crown visual staff member about this last month. Their style is knee lightly bent, but straight as possible.

[combia1]

We have this debate with the HS band I work with every year. Straight or bent? I think it is a happy medium. Straight looks great if you have the time to devote to it, but with HS kids, a slightly bent leg is closer to what your body does naturally (walking) so it is easier to teach. I also think that straight leg technique falls apart at larger step sizes and/or faster tempos. At a certain point, you have to start bending your knee.

Also can't stand the extreme straight leg of toes up on the and count. You usually have to start cocking your hips up and down to get that to work and it looks like you have a corncob stuck up your rear!

Glad the Cadets relaxed their style a bit this past year. Thought they looked and move MUCH better.

[fsubone]

Pacific Crest has made the transition to straight leg for this year since Steven Estudillo left to go be the Cavies caption head

Really? I could have sworn that they were using bent knee this past summer. Do you mean they're changing it for 2013?

[bluecoats88]

BD won with a white stripe at least in 07, 09, 10, and 12. I think they had white stripes in the 80s too for some of their wins

I was referring to back in the 70's and 80's when they had stripes down the outside of the pants which exposes a lot in marching, not the current stripes on the front of the pants.

[CloudHype]

We have this debate with the HS band I work with every year. Straight or bent? I think it is a happy medium. Straight looks great if you have the time to devote to it, but with HS kids, a slightly bent leg is closer to what your body does naturally (walking) so it is easier to teach. I also think that straight leg technique falls apart at larger step sizes and/or faster tempos. At a certain point, you have to start bending your knee.

Also can't stand the extreme straight leg of toes up on the and count. You usually have to start cocking your hips up and down to get that to work and it looks like you have a corncob stuck up your rear!

Glad the Cadets relaxed their style a bit this past year. Thought they looked and move MUCH better.

The leg does bend on a straight leg technique.

I stopped caption heading because my design schedule got heavy, My last group I had for 3 years, did the "straight and beats" and won visual at every contest but one (judges split, one had as his highest, the other had us 5th from bottom). This included groups that where BOA Semi-Finalist. Once I left, the director switched them to a "relaxed and beat" and their scores tanked, with a very experienced band.

Everybody thinks relaxed legs are easier to teach and clean. It is not, it is actually harder to teach and clean. Many people have wrote and talked about this (Ron Hardin comes to mind) and they all will echo what I say.

Edited February 13, 2013 by CloudHype

[mellodramatic]

So let's talk physics for a second.

In reality every corps has to have some amount of leg bend. If you're on a crossing count, one leg has to be straight (ideally) because it's your support leg. The only way for the other leg to stay totally straight would be if it was also touching the ground, which would mean you're shuffling your feet across the grass. You could possibly achieve totally straight legs if you end up bouncing a little on the cross count, which I think the Cadets ended up doing (whether on purpose or not, I don't know) around 2006-2008ish time frame.

I'm pretty sure that most, if not all corps strive for a straight standing leg on the cross count. Anything else makes you squat and get lower to the ground, which is not awesome. The variation comes from the pass-through leg.

Now if we're talking about toe-lead technique (some call it jazz run), then there are about a thousand definitions of that just within DCI. Two come to mind: "squat and go", and "Blue Devils stay tall and glide like a boss with immaculate legs".

[contracurt]

Really? I could have sworn that they were using bent knee this past summer. Do you mean they're changing it for 2013?

Yes, PC is going to straight leg for the 2013 season.

[TESB]

1 White stripe and a half skirt thing is different than white pants or 2 white stripes down each leg. For sure BD does what they do well, but it may be difficult to compare to the other corps.

Idk, now they have two really thick white stripes along their right legs and at least on the fannetwork it nearly looks like they have one white leg and one black leg, like it realllly shows up. That can be arguably even more revealing of foot timing and leg shape because it visually isolates every other beat and a single leg. But I think above all, judges aren't daft and probably aren't fooled by the color of the uniform or the particulars of style. I find that in even our favorite Green Machine shows it's hard to come by two Cavaliers who really look the same like two straight leg marchers would look the same. The bent leg style just has way too many variables, which is the nature of that choice in technique and judges have probably been forgiving (rightfully so) for that fact in the past.

My personal taste is straight leg just looks cleaner, but it's also a departure from what drum corps used to be, so it has that stigma attached to it.

[fsubone]

Yes, PC is going to straight leg for the 2013 season.

Thank you. I thought I had gone completely insane for a second and blanked on 2012. Because I saw them four times live, and it was bent knee all the way.