The direction of show design: will all follow Bloo?

[Jurassic Lancer]

I seriously doubt that all corps will follow Coats' show direction ... but love the show, or hate it ... it has a lot of people talking about it, and that's a good thing, I think.

[eutocoatrompa]

I think corps will develop with the mentality that anything is an option, not all will try to push the envelope. Although corps have an identity (even if it evolves and changes), it will be harder to tell who a certain corps is some years. But that's great, I don't want to see the same show year after year. I'm excited to see a few innovative shows, and (hopefully) will get to see some shows that remind me of what drum corps was when I first was introduced to it a while back.

[cfirwin3]

No.. even the Bluecoats won't follow the Bluecoats. They will try something else... and so will the rest.

[SFZFAN]

You read it and REPLIED.

It's like someone reading and commenting on a Kardashian article on TMZ complaining about all the articles on that family

In answer to the OP's question - yes, if Coats continue to be so successful with their new "Cirque" approach other corps will mimic elements. Success almost always breeds imitation

I actually didn't read it. My comments are purely based on the sheer number of pointless threads started by the OP. Thanks for trying though.

[jwillis35]

To me, TI/T is still the 800 lb. Gorilla in the room when it comes to concept shows. The Blue Devils' Feliniesque and INK shows are the standard when it comes to imaginative themes with a summarized narrative, and Phantom Regiment 2008 and The Cadets 2011 are the standard when it comes to telling a story. Carolina Crown's 2013 show is what I might call a Fantasy.

The above are all amazing shows. I believe there is room for all of this in the activity, and more. But I will say that what Bluecoats have done with electronics, mics, surround sound, staging of soloists, and now uniforms, will definitely be looked at by EVERYONE!!!

Now, how much a corps uses depends on what they are doing. Carolina Crown has been changing uniforms for a long time. BD always seems to customize their look. But what Bluecoats have done this year is really taking that concept to the next level. It helps that they don't have any longtime traditional uniform look in which alumni might be griping up a storm. For a corps like Cadets, with 81 + years of tradition in a West Point style uniform, it's simply not as easy for them to start from a clean slate. Even their black uni is still mostly a WP style uni. I personally think they need to either go full Maroon and Gold or do a costume that truly works with the show they are performing. Perhaps alternate, but there is NO WAY you will get that alumni base to be OK with always using a costume. Same for Cavaliers and Madison.

[N.E. Brigand]

I don't think it is really that far out from where some others are right now. Bloo is not wearing hats . . .

Over in DCA, the Empire Statesmen, who no longer perform, but won five championships between 1991 and 2004, never wore hats, I believe.

[N.E. Brigand]

While the uniforms were stunners, what I noticed almost as much was the ensemble and even soloist approach to the music...and the fact that a lot of the music was clapping.

And what I also find amusing is, isn't this a much much bigger version of Stomp!...which came from DCI?

Well, Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" dates to 1972:

[N.E. Brigand]

I certainly hope not. I am very okay with Bloo going in this direction. What I'm not okay with is the rest of the activity following them. Nope, no thank you.

Grow up

Aren't you charming. Troll harder.

I'm probably one of the more progressive voices on DCP, a lot of that has to do with my age. I'm all for the modernization of DCI but on two conditions:

1. The diversity and uniqueness of different corps is maintained. I love how there is such a huge diversity in the sound, show design, and identity of corps. It keeps things interesting. I am just as against all corps going in the direction of BD/Cadets/SCV/Phantom/Crown - you name it - as I am of all corps going in the direction of Bloo. Homogenization is a bad thing. It leads to staleness, slowing down of innovation, and groupthink. As a progressive thinker, diversity is important to me both in the people that I interact with in real life, and in the corps that i enjoy.

2. DCI doesn't attempt to become an activity it is not. I don't want to see DCI become WGI + brass. Where is the novelty in that? For the amount of worrying over how many corps are folding, I find it interesting that people are so interested in accelerating the death of DCI by trying to merge it into a completely different activity. It's fine for DCI to be unique. And modernization is possible without completely changing the activity as a whole. Bluecoats have a nice niche going on. And I love them for occupying it, because they only add more diversity to DCI. In ecology, there is something called the "competitive exclusion principle." Its premise is that no two species can occupy the same niche, as one will drive the other to extinction. In order to prevent this, something called niche differentiation occurs in which the species evolve to occupy different niches that allows them to coexist. This is the type of environment that I want to see in DCI.

Maybe a more apt question is "Do you want all corps to start to move in the direction of Corps X?" and my answer would be no.

Excellent post, and one that shows where the actual maturity lies in this exchange.

The new Bluecoats' show is very interesting, and I would welcome some more shows like it, but I agree with you that it's important for DCI to maintain variety. It's pretty commonplace for avant garde artists to dismiss their recent forebears and their contemporaries who won't "evolve" along with them. Lots of French films of the 1950s were dismissed as boring cinema de papa by the Nouvelle Vague critics like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who went on, in the Nouvelle Vague movement, to become excellent and often daring filmmakers showing a new way to make movies--but looking back, it's now evident that a lot of babies were lost when they dismissively tossed that bathwater.

Similarly, when classical music took a modernist turn in the 20th century, resulting in much enervating and memorable work, a lot of composers who preferred to continue working in a more traditional vein were left somewhat stranded, nearly abandoned until modernism began to fade. For instance, Pierre Boulez, a prominent modernist composer in his early years and then an even-more prominent conductor in his later years--an undisputed genius in the latter role--was a fierce proponent of modernism in his statements and writings, seeming determined to stamp other out other 20th century styles, and as a conductor, he almost never led performances of Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, or Copland, to name a few (or even such predecessors of theirs as Bruckner or Brahms).

*Truffaut's The 400 Blows is a film everyone should see. Lovely and heartbreaking. Also a very nice musical score.

[Tobias]

I think Bloo is utilitizing the evolution of staging which BD started. Moved away from "drill" more of an event on the field. Corps will certainly encorporate the idea but to enhance their own style.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Tobias

[Jurassic Lancer]

I think Bloo is utilitizing the evolution of staging which BD started. Moved away from "drill" more of an event on the field. Corps will certainly encorporate the idea but to engance their own style.

Totally agree.