Boo Picks the Hits
Oct 26, 2009
Many Sport of the Arts fans know, or have met Michael Boo along the way at a WGI Regional or World Championships. His love for the activity is well known, and is proven by his knowledge of color guard and percussion trivia. For those who don’t know him, or may not know his name, it’s likely that you’ve read Boo’s words as he is a staple at the World Championships to write reviews of finals competitions as well as many other feature stories.
By Michael Boo
I’m lucky enough to have been to every WGI World Championship (both guard and percussion) since the organization held its first event in 1978. Recently, I was asked to come up with fifteen shows that I find memorable. WGI On Demand is a wonderful service that allows us to go back in time and view shows throughout the history of the WGI World Championships.
These are not necessarily my favorite shows of all time or even my personal most memorable. But they were the first fifteen shows that, for whatever reason, popped into my mind as shows that guard fans should be familiar with.
1979 Quasar “Come Sail Away” (3rd place)
This show was based on the popular tune by the rock band, Styx. Quasar had won the first WGI World Championship the year before, (and boy, do I wish that Seattle Imperials from 1978 were available in this series. Seattle was the first glimpse at ballet training in winter guard, to my recollection.) The passion the guard brought to this show was phenomenal. Look at the eyes as the members came out of the cloud made by the smoke machine. You don’t see headgear like that anymore due to the evolution of how guards move.
1987 Union HS “Mannequins” (1st place)
This was one of the earlier proofs that the top Scholastic guards were right up there with the top Independent guards. Throughout the season, the mannequins, dressed as the glamorous guard members, where utilized as props and backdrops. The big shocker came at the World Championship Finals, when a large piece of fabric big enough to cover the entire flow was sprung up and sailed over the entire guard at the end of the show. I don’t know how the members moved as fast as they did, but when the fabric made it to the back of the floor, the members were nowhere to be seen. The equipment with which they made their final pose was now in the “hands” of the mannequins, as if they transformed into the mannequins. I’ve yet to hear such a loud collective gasp from the audience.
1987 Miller’s Blackhawks “Colors” (2nd place)
Just two years removed from his victory with the one-year appearance by Erte Productions, George Zingali came to work with Miller’s Blackhawks and helped conceive this masterpiece exploring one of the essential elements of a visual program. To this day, it remains as a work that perfectly summarizes everything there is to say about color. The show led our eyes around the floor in a constantly interweaving tapestry of color that explained why we are so emotionally affected by the psychological impact of color, ending with a quote I heard as recent as a couple years ago when someone was talking about guard shows, “What color are you?”
1989 Crestview HS “Funhouse” (5th place)
This show didn’t break any major ground and it didn’t change the face of the activity, but it was one of the most pure expressions of fun I remember seeing on the floor. The members, dressed as clowns, came animated and magically entered the floor from a box, did their thing, and then went back into the box and apparently resumed their existence out of the view of the outside world. A janitor came along to clean up and what happened next was one of the cutest things witnessed on the field. So often we wonder, “Did I just see what I think I did?” The reaction of the janitor was priceless.
1989 San Jose Raiders “Patty Who?” (4th place)
Now, floor coverings are so predominant that it’s hard to imagine a time when they weren’t utilized. San Jose Raiders raised eyebrows when they carted out this bright red covering and spread it out across the floor, the first instance of covering the floor that I remember. The show that followed was no less startling. Based on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, this may have been the advent of movement designed to touch our innermost senses and make us feel something, even if we weren’t sure what we were feeling; as opposed to movement for pure movement’s sake or for the sake of conveying a traditional storyline that doesn’t beg for interpretation. The guard members and the equipment work seemed to continually spring forth from the floor in a flurry of movement that was ever ascending. Come the next year, floor coverings were fairly standard, and within two years, they were the norm.
1989 Blessed Sacrament “If You Could Read My Mind” (2nd place)
Coming off several years of hard-hitting shows based on music they called, “Cosmopolitan Rock,” Blessed Sacrament did a 180 and introduced a new style of storytelling that was quiet, serene and made us lean forward to observe rather than be pinned back to the backrests of our seats. Gordon Lightfoot’s classic of the same name was interpreted through smooth and gentle movement and equipment work, with each visual reference in the song corresponding to an action on the floor; often utilizing some prop. This show was shocking for its emphasis on mesmerizing the fans. It opened the floodgates to subtle programs throughout the activity and turned the focus to how guards could program every second of a show to interpret music, as opposed to having several seconds of connective movement between moments of big hits. In this show, every moment was both connective and a continuous hit, but a hit on a restrained level with the effect derived from the accumulation of the moments over the course of the entire show. In retrospect, it was pure magic.
1991 Miamisburg HS “Candle in the Wind” (1st place)
Now a hit after being reworked for the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana, Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” was all but unknown in the United States. Written in 1973 as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, referred to in the song by her original name of Norma Jeane, the work wasn’t even released as a single in the US, but was kind of hidden in the album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” What really made this show stand out was the lengthy amount of silent movement and equipment work in the middle, with the music coming back at the exact moment of a dramatic equipment catch. At the end, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike stood over a grate in the iconic pose that has been reproduced endlessly in posters, a hand-cranked fan, invisible to the audience, providing the gush of air that sent her skirt airborne.
1994 James Logan HS “Baseball” (15th place)
When we first saw this show, we couldn’t envision that the guard was on its way to so thoroughly dominating a whole decade’s worth of the Scholastic World Championships. In 1994, they were a fresh-faced ensemble of youngsters out to have a whole lot of fun with a program based on the “National Past-time.” What was so delightful about viewing this program was its pure innocence, the lack of any pre-conceived notions anyone had about the Logan guard program and the joy of seeing a new face in Finals. They had a baseball game on the floor. You can’t get more straightforward than that. It was as breezy as an afternoon at the ballpark on a crisp autumn day, and that breeze brought in the seeds of the tree that was to soon sprout forth and force all the other guards to settle in its shade.
1996 Emerald Marquis “Einstein’s Dreams” (3rd place)
There have been many shows that have made the fans ponder the deeper meanings of the productions. One such show was Odyssey’s 1987 production of “Carousel of Fools,” an early use of an original audio track of synthesized sounds. Even more provoking of the gray matter inside our heads was “Einstein’s Dreams;” an attempt to bring relativity to the masses. Music was ethereal and relatively cosmic, and movements seemed shattered, as if passing through a time warp and getting stuck halfway through. The “hoop skirt” coats put on by members required new methods of equipment handling to work around the airy bulk, and it seemed the focus was on reinventing everything there was to say about or do in color guard. Without a doubt, the show left many people in the stands scratching their heads, but today, it’s regarded as a masterwork that was perhaps a decade or two ahead of its time. And, it quite possibly introduced many fans to the world of existentialism.
1995 Bishop Kearney HS “Sybil” (1st place)
The famous architect Mies van der Rohe stated, “Less is more.” In 1995, Bishop Kearney replied, “More is not enough.” One could get dizzy continually turning their head to catch everything that was popping up all over the floor in this production, as various segments of the guard were frantically interpreting the split personalities of the title character, personalities that were staged concurrent or in rapid succession to one another. Seeing Sybil’s multiple personalities rapidly spin off from her one true self was like watching a train wreck in slow motion…one could not avert their eyes. At the start of the Finals performance, one member angrily cut off her (real) hair with scissors and threw it on the floor, instantly raising the collective blood pressure of the audience to dangerous levels. The show was exhilarating to witness and the danger of it falling completely apart was palpable. The fact that it didn’t only added to the enthused reactions of the fans in the stands, many of whom were stunned by the carnival of action unfolding on the floor and inside their brains. At the end, when the tension was so high one could barely stand it any longer, Sybil came crashing through a pane glass window, shattering any vestige of the aura of reality and shocking us back to the real time of our own placid existence-in-comparison.
1996 Everybody “The Peacock People” (8th place)
Everybody was the predecessor to Northern Lights, and the guard made quite a popular impact with this fantasy about an imaginary society of, well, peacock people. Few guards have generated such an effect facing backwards as this guard did near the start of the show, when colorful capes representing peacock plumage were spread out to fill the floor with color. The show was impeccably tuned to the subtlest of musical hints in the soundtrack. Towards the end, a repeating two-note rhythmic figure was seen in the heads gently cocking to the side, the peacock headdresses bouncing to the rhythm ever so slightly. It was such a small movement, and yet it was so perfect, one could hear the entire arena chuckle in appreciation. This simply great entertainment crafted around a visual motif that worked big time. It perhaps should have been hokey, but it ended up being magnificent in its intentions and execution. Few shows are as much fun to sit back and enjoy.
1996 Northmont HS “Wall and Remembrance—A Vietnam Memorial” (4th place)
Re-creating the Vietnam Wall and the sentiments felt by those who visit, this show dropped one bomb after another on the rice patty that had been the University of Dayton Arena, exploding in the faces of the audience members and sending emotional shrapnel into the stands at velocities that left the fans’ passions wounded and scarred. Sounds of battle accompanied the conflict, played out on a series of large ramps. Bloodshed and anguished reactions to being caught in the middle of the attacks were bloodcurdling and horrifically effective. As painful as this show was to watch, it was even more captivating for allowing us to share in our emotions and memories of either the Vietnam War or the power of visiting the memorial on which the show was based. At the end, a small girl accompanied her “mother” to the wall, and the girl left a child’s gift at the base of the wall where her father’s name was etched. Her “father” then stepped out of the wall, in full battle gear, to hug her, but arms from unseen presences pulled him back in while the mother and daughter walked away. This is the only show I’ve ever witnessed where one could hear other audience members weeping at the end.
1997 Center Grove HS “Joy” (2nd place)
This show was based on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from the last movement of his “Symphony No. 9.” Performed in front of simple-yet-stately curtains that were so appropriate for setting a stage they were used for the special opening ceremonies at the World Championships in Phoenix, the show focused on the pure, unadulterated joy of performing. Sometimes the actions seemed to counteract the music. Specifically, I’m referring to the climax at the very zenith of the music. Instead of everything breaking loose in exultant display, a lone guard member (everyone else was behind the curtains) collapsed in mock exhaustion on the floor, as the music went on with no action. It was so wacky a minimalist gesture that people laughed out loud. And then the rest of the guard broke through the curtains to bring the show to a dazzling conclusion with aerial fireworks and an emphatic exclamation mark on the production.
1999 Chimeras “Time to Say Goodbye” (7th place)
The first glimpse of the drama to unfold in this unique program was when the large white flags were tossed in unison, did a loop in the air, and then floated down to earth. From then on, the focus was as much on the floor as what was above it. This was said to be color guard at its epitome; sensitive, lyrical, and inspirational in delivery. Banners were continually unfurled across the floor to reveal evolving messages of hope and tolerance, commentaries on contemporary society reminding us of what we could be and the beauty of what we ultimately should stand for. One could watch this program several times and still not understand how these banners expertly wove in and out of each other to creative a most unique visual tapestry, often intertwining to create new groupings of messages. One such evolution of a specific message was when the show appeared to end with “Peace on earth.” Then another banner joined it to ask the hypothetical question, “Can there be peace on earth?”
1999 Aimachi “Overture from Candide” (10th place)
Since this first entry into Finals, the stunning guard from Japan has been a multiple medalist. This and the guard’s 2002 production of “Appalachian Morning” were the most westernized productions the guard brought to America, far different in character than the Orient-Meets-Cirque du Soliel spectacles that came later. The music of “Candide” is enthusiastic to begin with, but Aimachi was able to take it and turn it into a pure celebration of everything that is jubilant in the world. Never have smiles on the floor seen so genuine and innocent. Watch this show if for no other reason than to feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
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