Hey kids look...a giant light bulb!

Another excellent weekend! We are now full and have everyone accounted for in the show. There is a strong sense of accomplishment when we finish a rehearsal. Even better then that is the retention level that everyone is showing. The things that we are working on are really coming across in the show. As we focus more time and energy into certain segments of the show, the performance level is taking some pretty big leaps. We ran the full show 3 times this weekend. The run through in practice was well beyond what we did last week in the show. The show itself was even better then practice! And then yesterday’s run was very strong as well.

It is nice to leave for once with a sense of accomplishment. Looking back on prior years, I’m not convinced that we did this enough during the course of the season. We would come out so strong early in the season and then by the time the corps hit mid-July we got a little complacent. Which isn’t to say that we let things slip. We just didn’t seem to work as hard or make overall big strides in terms of our performance. The group dynamic was different as well. It was a group of all tremendously talented individuals with many years of experience under their belt. We always turned it up for the end of the season. This group has the potential to turn it up even more. I don’t expect the same level of proficiency as in years past, but I do believe that we can get a stronger emotional performance then ever before.

Which leads me to some thoughts from the weekend…

What is up with these show delays and crazy gate times lately? We got to the gate when we were supposed to only to find out there was a 30 minute delay. After the warm up the group is ready to perform. We are focused and ready to go, then there is a break because of a communication break down and we have the potential to lose the focus. My hats off to Chris Calhoun for finding a way to keep this group focused despite all of the logistical breakdowns leading up to the actual gate time. Hopefully this week at Kingston those breakdowns are gone and we can get ourselves into a reasonable routine so that we can remain focused for the entire time that we need to without that crazy break in the action.

Every time I march in that Syracuse show I feel like I am on the best drugs in the world. The lines on the field and how they relate to the front stands and also the back wall when playing backfield make no sense at all. I always feel like I am in the twilight zone out there! It feels more like we are marching on a giant parallelogram of a field instead of a rectangle. Now with that in mind think of the psychedelic sort of stuff you could come up with if you actually had a field like that. Throw in some 3D glasses for viewing pleasure and you’ve got yourself a bona fide 1960’s acid trip! Of course if you march all of your shows at Syracuse you are already ½ way there anyway!

Ok I don’t have very many thoughts from the weekend still. I am a bit fried from yet another weekend in the sun. At least this time it was 100 degrees and there were no man eating bugs.

So that’s it for now…back to your regularly scheduled program, “Monday mornings blow.”