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drill vs. choreography in drum corps shows, 2 questions


2 questions  

70 members have voted

  1. 1. Which is harder to teach?

    • choreography
      37
    • drill
      12
    • they are equally hard to teach
      21
  2. 2. Which is harder to perform?

    • choreography
      27
    • drill
      24
    • they are equally hard to perform
      19


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Great topic for debate!! I’m going to use Crown and SCV for my comparison. Crown is doing extremely fast and difficult drill, ala Cadets during Sacktig days. SCV is doing more minimal drill, but WGI World Class level choreo, while also playing a challenging music book. What one lacks in drill demand and speed, they make up for with difficult choreography and challenging physical layering. Those that say drill is “harder” and choreo is “standing” just is not either seeing what these kids are doing or are just not willing to acknowledge that you don’t have to do hard drill to create demand and content within a drumcorps show. I’d say SCV is more in line with what is “in now” versus Crown making the statement that they want to be successful with an older formula. I love that they are both great and on opposite sides of the fence and wish we could put our homer biases aside to look at what demand and content really means in 2019 DCI. We all like what we like, but saying that choreo is easier than drill is simply discrediting the entire role  of the pageantry arts as it’s moved forward, developed and changed in the last 10 years. To each his own and we can let the experts decide who is “subjectively better” at this point. It’s only going to change more in the coming years! 

Edited by trumpetcam
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I think the thing about choreography is that while it is not easy to teach or perform, it is far easier to clean than drill. That's partly why we've seen a dramatic increase in the amount of choreography over the past 10+ years - to boost those visual scores by having a product that may look as difficult as any other but is ultimately cleaner than one that contains more drill. And because of that, it gives the music designers more opportunities to make their books more challenging, and thus easier to clean, than if they were doing drill all the time.

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Choreography for both questions by a mile. You can teach any dummy to march dot to dot and use peripheral vision to dress down forms. 

Choreography requires much more body coordination and more flexibility (depending on what you're doing). 

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I am going to pick drill as being more difficult because it can actually be judged vs just ones "taste"  Definable transitions vs scatter drill etc.  Lunging in a static form to cover dress and interval problems.  Some of the so called "body" makes me throw up in my mouth it's so badly done even by top 3 corps.  If you are going to dance, please do so and learn what that is about.

 

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33 minutes ago, Cappybara said:

Choreography for both questions by a mile. You can teach any dummy to march dot to dot and use peripheral vision to dress down forms. 

Choreography requires much more body coordination and more flexibility (depending on what you're doing). 

I'd also guess  that most of the corps have had a lot of experience marching in HS and/or College.  And far fewer have had dance training.

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11 minutes ago, PamahoNow said:

I'd also guess  that most of the corps have had a lot of experience marching in HS and/or College.  And far fewer have had dance training.

That’s what I think people misjudge at this level The top hornlines and drumlines can move like dancers and are getting that training lots of places these days. That’s easily as hard, or harder to do while playing than dressing a curvilinear form for the 1,000 time since high school band. Those on here that are familiar with the WGI world, whether you like it or not, recognize the level of difficulty in movement training. Doing a bug squasher or lunging to cover a form doesn’t  hold a candle to what the world class groups are being asked to do now with choreography and dance. If you don’t dance or move well, you don’t make a top 6 hornline anymore, fact.

It’s not my cup of tea either, but I know for sure I couldn’t do any of that choreo and play, these days. March and play was never a problem!

Edited by trumpetcam
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7 minutes ago, trumpetcam said:

That’s what I think people misjudge at this level The top hornlines and drumlines can move like dancers and are getting that training lots of places these days. That’s easily as hard, or harder to do while playing than dressing a curvilinear form for the 1,000 time since high school band. Those on here that are familiar with the WGI world, whether you like it or not, recognize the level of difficulty in movement training. Doing a bug squasher or lunging to cover a form doesn’t  hold a candle to what the world class groups are being asked to do now with choreography and dance. If you don’t dance or move well, you don’t make a top 6 hornline anymore, fact.

It’s not my cup of tea either, but I know for sure I couldn’t do any of that choreo and play, these days. March and play was never a problem!

I would love to get a dancers point of view on the body choreo that is done in corps these days being called dance and their thoughts on the members being able to move their bodies as dancers would. I think they might disagree across the board. 

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