WGI Color Guard Series: Technique Class
Technique Class: Flag
Develop your flag skills with Imbue Winterguard’s Shavon Garcia as she teaches you everything you need to know about flag basics, from weighting a flag, to tosses, and everything in-between.
Technique Class: Rifle
Learn the fundamentals of rifle technique with Robby Jacobson as he covers the most basic spins, flourishes, and toss exercises that build skill, strength, and confidence.
Technique Class: Sabre
Master the sabre with Rosie Queen as she covers the technique needed to spin and toss, as well as exercises designed to increase wrist flexibility and increase your sabre choreography options.
Toss!
Join seven of the top equipment designers and technicians as they teach you everything you want to know about tosses! These experts will cover all 3 pieces of equipment from the basics of the beginning toss to more challenging tosses, tosses while moving, tosses layered on body, and tosses within longer phrases.
Movement Series
Across the Floor
Join Carol Abohatab, choreographer for the Santa Clara Vanguard World Guard and a modern dance teacher for more than 20 years, as she teaches you everything you need to know about methods of travel, getting in and out of the ground, turns, leaps, and jumps!
Technique Class
Sit in on a standing center class with Carol Abohatab that includes technique for the spine, legs, and feet.
Warm Up
Join Carol Abohatab from the Santa Clara Vanguard as she teaches you everything you need to know about strengthening the core and stretching and lengthening of muscles with dynamic alignment.
WGIcon Education Series
When Excitement Becomes Anxiety: Conquering the Performance Roller Coaster
Live performance is an emotional roller-coaster that can dramatically impact your student’s ability to deliver their skills when it really counts! The way you rehearse and prepare for performance can either intensify those changes or neutralize them. Discover the most common experiences that interfere with performance and what causes them.
Growing a Scholastic Program: Vertically and Laterally
Building a scholastic program is marathon, not a sprint. Learn how deliberate planning, slow growth, and culture building can help prevent burnout while keeping excellence a top priority in any division. Topics include starting a feeder program, tying winter season experiences to the classroom, building a community-based culture, and recruiting in the 21st Century.
Business First: Operating Ensembles and Developing a Non-Profit
Groups spend a LOT of time providing resources that answer the creative and educational questions involved in operating an ensemble, but before designers write and teachers teach, your group needs a healthy non-profit organization supporting it that thinks strategically, cultivates responsible revenue sources, and meets governance standards.
Designing on a Dime
In this session, Becca provides advice for producing your program on a limited budget using discounted resources and an innovative approach to color theory. Follow along
and learn how a few small decisions can have the biggest impact on your show’s overall design.
How to Be a Successful Guard Director in Small Town, USA (or Anywhere!)
Bob and Ruth Ann share the methods they used to build and maintain a quality scholastic program in a rural setting with limited resources that can apply to any program. Anyone can program decent pageantry shows, and talented teachers can present the material, but none of this matters if you cannot inspire, connect, and lead your students, staff and parents.
Choreography for Drumline
This class will focus on creating and assessing drumline choreography using foundational movement elements like rhythm, level, space, and dynamics/textures. Rochelle will cover strategies for developing a unique choreographic voice specific to a show concept while aiming to create a common language for judges, staff, and members.
Success with Basic Skills
In this session, Paul Weber breaks down the development of a successful indoor percussion ensemble based on the training and application of basic skills. Designing a show and training program that work together to address the needs and attributes of your students can form the foundation for short-term success and long-term growth.
A Perfect Marriage: Orchestration and Sound Design
This session will arm you with actionable strategies and frameworks for creating, curating, and producing a more cohesive musical score for your ensemble. Kevin Shah will focus on the different processes that go into building a sonic experience, including creative ideation, orchestration, and editing of a soundtrack for a more authentic audience experience.
Sound System Set Ups for a Practically Painless Performance
Learn proper methods of how to route and configure electronics and sound systems so they can work at every show. Decide what gear will work best for your group and get to know the equipment so it can work towards your advantage. Prepare yourself and your students for any obstacles with sound check.
The Secret Behind Sound
Unfortunately, there aren’t any magic words that instantly transform a marching band, concert band, or winds group. Upgrading the sound quality in any musical ensemble takes time, focus, effort, and a well-developed plan. This session will share tips, exercises, daily routines, and a few helpful stories that will hopefully improve your ensemble’s sound
Winds Technique and Training: A Fundamental Approach
Make time to focus on winds pedagogy for A and Open class ensembles. Prioritize the fundamentals of breathing, sound, tuning, articulation balance/blend, and listening skills. Topics include time management and rehearsal planning, as well as prioritizing and goal setting. Participants receive a warm up routine and chorale to take back to their programs.
Indoor Percussion Top Secrets
Modules 1-3
Several of the top designers in the activity walk you through the process of developing a great program, all while keeping the skills and abilities of the ensemble in mind. In ‘Storyboarding a Show’, four of our activity’s top designers take you behind-the-scenes to show you their outlining, storyboarding, and development processes. In Module 3, top designers in our activity share their tips and strategies for selecting great music and expertly orchestrating it for our unique environment.
Modules 4-6
The activity’s top designers and evaluators share their key recommendations for taking your ensemble’s visual performance to the next level, focusing on individual and sectional troubleshooting. They will also show you how to leverage player development and teaching strategies to have your ensemble playing with the best of the best! Developing your ensemble’s signature sound with these proven secrets for balance, timing, editing, and logistics will have your group sounding better than ever!
Modules 7-9
WGI continues its’ quest to offer the most recent tips & tricks of the trade. In the newest Top Secrets educational modules, top designers discuss how to successfully incorporate electronics into your indoor show through Amplification, Sampling, and Synthesizers. These technological advances can help take your show to the next level!
