From: dci@cs.washington.edu (Donald Chinn)
Subject: Re: My comments on Finals and PBS broadcast
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 17:19:46 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.003017.1@vax1.umkc.edu> cputnam@vax1.umkc.edu writes:
>In article <1992Sep7.142324.15439@husc3.harvard.edu>, fath1@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Fath) writes:
>> I have one small criticism about Cadets this year.  They pride themselves on
>> their innovative designs.  In fact, they have a T-shirt that says, "We
>> zigged and everyone else zigged.  ZAG!"  Well, this year, they relied on a lot
>> of old moves and did more zigging then zagging.  They brought back the slow-
>> motion move from 1989 Les Mis and the S-follow-the-leader from last year.
>> But these are small points - overall a great show!
>
>I don't think they're all that small.  I think it shows that they are running
>out of good moves.  If you read the Marc Sylvester article, it points to his
>lack of ideas for DCI.  They really do need to get a new drill writer.  Someone
>who won't try to emulate Zingalli so much.
> 

I think there were plenty of good new moves for the Cadets this year.
The parallelogram thingy is probably the best example.  There were a lot
of new ideas for the color guard this year: the simulated flight, the
uniform changes (how did they do them without the crowd noticing?!).
Just because Sylvester reused a couple old moves doesn't lessen the
fact that there was a lot of new stuff.

>Let's take this last part a bit at a time:
> 
>> What can I say about the Cavaliers - I believe that they had the best overall
>> show design of the year.
>
>I was told that Brubaker only wrote the Cornish/English Dances section of their
>show.  It shows.  This was not at all a Brubaker style show.  No parallelagrams
>or triangles or the like.  In my opinion, their drill was worse than the
>Devils'.  I'd have put their drill about 5th or 6th.  Definetely not what I am
>used to expecting out of the Cavies.

I am inferring that because Brubaker did not write the whole show that
this makes the show somehow a little more inferior.  Did you imply this?

>> They had a surprisingly large number of performance
>> errors on Saturday (flag drops, solo missed notes, lines a bit off).  When I
>> saw them live, these errors were not evident.
>
>I remember seeing the dropped flag on a fairly easy exchange on the 45 yard
>line, side 1.  That type of drop is the type of mistake a much younger and much
>less capable corps makes.  Not a world champion.
>  

>> They performed the show with an incredible degree of intensity and confidence
>
>Again, I must disagree.  I felt that they were flat every night.  They just
>never had that note or section that got me excited.  Like the drum feature
>stuff where they'd have the guard hold the drumheads.  That type of
>hype-producing section was gone this year.  It seemed fairly boring this year.
>

>> People often criticize the Cavalier horn line - I think this
>> year they put on an outstanding performance.  
>
>Again I disagree.  Was that their best soprano player that botched the final
>solo?  I imagine so.  The book was relatively easy and agian, uninspiring.  Not
>as much emotion as Star or as much excitement as the Devils.
> 

I decided not to go into "line by line analysis" mode, so I have highlighted
just these three quotes from the posting to make the following point.  The
quality of a horn line (or percussion line, or color guard) does not hinge
solely on whether they make every toss, solo, or neat visual effect.  You can
have a championship show that has noticable performance errors such as dropped
rifles, etc.  There are 11 other minutes of performance that have to be
considered to determine whether one horn line, say, is "better" than
another.

It's like ice skating (MORE sports analogies!).  It is not necessarily true
that the ice skater who lands the most jumps will win (although, I suppose,
all other things being equal, then s/he would win).  (My buddy Peggy
Fleming says that ... :-) there are notions of grace, lines, interpretation,
and technical difficulty that come into play.

True, blown solos and dropped flags are indications of a systematically
lower overall performance level, but they are only indications.  I would
never believe that a blown solo, for example, could knock a corps down
a couple places at DCI.  There's just too much other stuff going on.

In short, there's a lot more to a drum corps show than the highly
visible/audible stuff.  (What?!  Subtlety in drum corps?!)

-- Donald
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