Recap: WGI South Brunswick Brought Out The Beasts Of The East
Recap: WGI South Brunswick Brought Out The Beasts Of The East
These groups caught our eye at the 2019 WGI South Brunswick Regional and we can't wait to see them later this season in Dayton.
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The 2019 WGI South Brunswick Guard Regional brought us some of the best of East Coast color guard, and we saw a lot of great color guard on that floor. Here are some of the highlights from this past weekend:
Coverage
Scholastic A
In Scholastic A, Central Square HS jazz walked away with first place with their program, “One, Two, Three Four Five,” a fantastic piece in which a jazz artist tells the story of how he learned to love, play, and create music through various influences in his life.
The flags in this program just had an amazing run, and every “moment” really locked in place, including a fantastic ensemble flag moment utilizing the staircase props. Check out an interview with Central Square's director Tammy Graziano from the weekend.
Independent A
AMP Winter Guard (A)’s program, “Pocket Full of Dreams,” was a very well designed, written, and performed the program. The set design included streetlamps that lit up on cue with the music, which was a nice effect, and the greyscale period costuming worked really well with the performers’ movement and equipment books.
The equipment training throughout the program was consistent from person to person, and the writing was musical and unique, which really set them apart from the other IA competitors.
Scholastic Open
It was impossible to forget South Brunswick HS’s neon ode to the late-1980s/early-1990s, “Spin Cycle,” set in a stationary bike spin class with literal stationary bikes that were both used as intended, and as platforms, for performers to execute equipment work.
Everything about this show was extreme—the floor design, the uniforms, the flags—except for the hair. The hair, keeping with the theme, was pulled back into a tight ponytail (the hairstyle of choice for every spin class aficionado).
This program had a lot of energy and a lot of room to grow, with a center segment that is made up entirely of bicycle bells as the musical track. Once that segment gets cleaned up, it’s going to be a really cool moment.
Independent Open
Both Main Line Independent and Sacred Heart University Winter Guard put out amazing programs, yesterday.
Sacred Heart’s program, “Strings and Glass,” featured a very cool arrangement of Blondie’s disco classic, “Heart of Glass,” and there were a lot of effects involving large mirrors moved around the floor to create awesome visual effects. The rifle segment at the beginning was really well staged, well-written, and well achieved, and the flag line was clearly well-trained.
The music, though, was what really set this program apart. I look forward to seeing how it grows throughout the season.
Main Line Independent’s program, “The Dressmaker,” has so many cool concepts going on in the show. The floor design featured dress pattern outlines, and there was a cool costume change about halfway through the program where the female performers donned hoop skirt cages—the undergarment popularized during the 17th-18th Centuries as a way to keep the dress skirt both away from the legs and create a wider, more open dress.
The hoop skirt cages created a really cool visual effect when the performers moved and turned, and it would’ve been nice to see that visual continued throughout the program. The ensemble flag feature on the bright red flags was also just phenomenally executed. This program has a lot of great boning (see what I did, there?), and I can’t wait to see it at Championships in April.
Scholastic World
Somerville HS’s program, “Remember Me,” had some really nice movement writing, and that ending ensemble flag statement was just beautiful. The flag line, throughout the program, was really the standout section. Both well staged and well written, the flag work and performers did a fantastic job of creating and selling the overall tone of the program—a somber story about the narrator’s grandmother forgetting her life due to either Alzheimer’s Disease, or Corticobasal Degeneration (the loss of brain tissue). There’s a lot of work to be done, but all the pieces are in place for this to be a fantastic program.
Independent World
Okay…I have to preface this by saying that I was a huge fan of both AMP Winter Guard programs, last year. This year, the designers went in a flappingly different direction with their World class program, “Immortalis Maledictum”—literally translated, “The Immortal Curse." In this case, “curse” means “insult,” like “to curse one’s name.” Eight years of Latin and all I can do is translate.
So, the Immortal Curse, in this case, specifically relates to vampires. This show has it all—black uniforms, black capes, coffins, and a creepy introduction (the second show I’ve seen, this season, where the performance track announces the guard, rather than allowing the announcer to do so).
The music includes tracks from various film scores—Interview with the Vampire and The Omen—as well as the Goth/Emo ballads of the late-90s/early-00s band, Evanescence. As someone who once showed up to auditions for his second year with The Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps wearing a cape, I can’t say that this show doesn’t evoke some powerful memories of my early-adulthood, so I appreciate all the thought that went into this design.
AMP typifies all the things that are great about East Coast Color Guard—fast, intricate, and handsy equipment work, precise execution, and the ability to execute it all with seeming ease. Oh, and they can move really well, too.
There are just so many cool tosses and tricks that this show will never fail to please the audience. In the end, there’s also a really neat design trick that, for the sake of a not spoiling the show, I won’t detail. Needless to say, I’m an eternal fang…FAN! Fan. Yeah. Fan. These puns will be here all season.