Drum Corps Evolutions: A Bird's-Eye View of the Movement
Mr. Stuart E. Rice, Steering Committee Chair
Contents.
Introduction
Defining the elephant
What happened?
The elusive obvious
Starting from scratch
The landscape of planar discourse
1. Circuitous ("follow-the-leader" closed)
2. Canonic ("follow-the-leader")
3. Rectilinear (single direction)
4. Polar (relative linear)
5. Anti-linear (variable direction)
6. Rotational (internal focal point)
7. Revolving (external focal point)
8. Formal ("expand/contract")
9. Structural ("reshape")
Conclusion
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Introduction.
Several blind people are standing around an elephant, trying
to determine what this object is. They have never seen an elephant or heard of one, and are
trying to judge from their hands what an elephant is. One feels its tail and says "Why, an
elephant is a long, flexible thing - very much like a rope." Another says, holding an ear, "No, no
- an elephant is flat and wide, like a blanket." Another says, "My dear colleagues, I am afraid
you are all mistaken," as his arms surround one of the legs. "An elephant is round and firm, like
a tree." Though collaboration would certainly help, it by no means offers a solution to the
dilemma of the blind persons, for whom a picture would be worth a thousand words.
Standing as we are in the midst of the baffling presence of drum corps diversity, we are
also lacking only in vision. Perhaps if there were an individual standing in excrement and
another next to the powerful trunk, they might jointly conclude that an elephant is valuable for
making living things grow, and needs an added valve to make its noise more musical,
respectively. Perhaps it would not occur to us as well, that the elephant might itself be a living
thing willing to trample us on its way to secure sustenance. The safest place to be is on top,
which also affords a chance to see things from a higher perspective, for those who can.
Drum corps pride themselves in this beast they parade through the streets of American
culture. They have hired other blind persons to dress it up in decorative clothing, beat a drum in
time with its mighty step, sound a trumpet to inspire its respect, and guard it with weapons, each
according to their first-hand experience of feeling the ears and legs, and hearing the blast of its
voice. Obviously, the collective show is an imposing sight.
However, when feeding time comes, the elephant eats first. Wise owners know how to
care for the beast, because they know what it does. Regardless of the extent of their vision, they
know its needs. They have sat atop it and travelled with it and watched it care for itself. They
know ear, legs, tail, and trunk. They know that its mouth needs food more that it needs to make
noise. They know that when the elephant starves, the minstrels starve. When the elephant has
trouble walking, fewer people will see it.
When the elephant drops in its tracks, the show is over.
Defining the elephant.
An unknown author has provided us with an alternative to
blindness.
The man behind the microscope
Has some advice for you.
Instead of asking what it is,
Just ask: "What does it do?"
From a bird's-eye view, it is perfectly obvious what a drum corps does: (1) it makes
music, (2) it travels in the seated position over great distances, and (3) it marches. Inasmuch as
a drum corps is not judged on the quality of its bus choreography, seated travel is not central to
its interests.
Drum corps do not make music in the true sense. They borrow it. In fact, there is are not
many things that drum corps do not borrow. The uniform comes from the military, and changes
to them have come by way of borrowing as well. "Flag swinging," as it was known fifty years
ago, came from signalling, a practice imported from Europe. Rifles and sabres, of course, were
not originally invented for aesthetic effect. Without football fields (most of them compliments
of schools and colleges), there would be nowhere to perform. Given these facts, one may
conclude that there is nothing drum corps truly own. Just various adaptations of the creative
contributions of others.
Music educators who value choreographed marching point with satisfaction to Albert
Harding's implementation of what is considered the first "design" of a marching musical
ensemble somewhere between 1905 and 1907: the letter "I." Given the technical complexity of
the letter, this would not seem to astounding a feat. Nevertheless, drum and bugle corps have no
such accomplishment to boast. It would seem, therefore, that even "design" is not owned by
drum corps, an idea to be addressed later.
Next came the picture show, which spread in popularity from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Somehow, it just seemed that drum corps were always one step behind bands. The final "blow"
came again from music educators Bainum and Casavant who created and developed "precision
drill" which dominated the drill of the 1950's. By 1954, music educators were brought to the
realization that
"the kind of music and the kind of movement utilized by the marching band are
not quite the same as...others, and therefore should be capable of development in a
wholly unique way. Here we have the ingredients necessary for the development of a
genuine new art form. ...There are no precedents to guide us. Do we reject everything
that has been done and start over? We do not. Yet present practice is full of aesthetic
contradictions. A sense of beauty is not lacking, but it seems to function only
intermittently. ...In short, the choice of music is guided by non-musical
considerations; the choice of maneuvers is guided by non-visual considerations. ...Once
we understand how artistic principles apply to marching band work, we are in a position
to make a simple show just as attractive and striking as a complex one" (R. Cantrick,
"The Marching Band as an Art," Music Educator's Journal, 41(1).
Speculation in music education soared, it seemed as though the drum corps was fated to
live in the shadow of bands. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: music
education.
The marching band found its way to public service and admiration, post-war band
directors began transcribing orchestral works for band. Like Conway, Sousa and Goldman, they
found success in bringing music of increasing reputation to the public. Meanwhile, school
orchestras themselves, perhaps due to the continuing wars, were only beginning to recover from
the 1920's, where they found themselves outnumbered in American schools 3 to 1 (R. Colwell,
"The Teaching of Instrumental Music," 1969). Through being "born for greatness" or having it
"thrust upon them" in this way, band directors increasingly found themselves in the drivers seat
of justifying music education. This new type of band director found room to maneuver a second
band into the concert hall. Before long, the second band went from justifying the first band to
replacing it, and marching band directors found themselves excusing the non-musical practice of
marching rather than developing it.
The mathematical contributions of music educators to choreographed marching were
neither original nor meaningful, though a shrewd adaptation of military marching, in the case of
precision "style." A history of the band was written, sans marching, and band directors began to
retreat from this controversial interdisciplinary borderland which surrounded band music.
Explorations of principles of art design in the 1970's and 1980's only confused band directors
further. These interdisciplinary borders were never again extended as band directors, with
composers at hand, seized the reins of music education. Today, the marching band is a subject
few music educators dare speak openly about. National Standards in music education are more
"strictly music" than ever, and when asked how to implement these standards in a marching
band, Music Educator's National Conference Western Division President Mike Miller soberly
stated, "get rid of it."
What happened?
Music educator's failed to champion choreographed marching as they had intended for
two reasons. First, it was an unjustifiable endeavor in music education, and an embarrassment to
the high-brow interests of 'American instrumental music.' In 1973, Charles Hoffer suggested
that
"...the instrumental teacher...can reduce the effort expended for the half-time
show. One way is to cut down on the number of games at which the band marches. The
other way to cut down on the time spent marching is to simplify the band show. With a
minimum of strain, a band can form the school letters in block style and march up and
down the field. Considerable effort is required, on the other hand, for the band to spell
out words in script and make automobiles, airplanes, and merry-go-rounds."
Though the statements of Hoffer and Cantrick both address the same issue - managing
the economy of choreographed marching - their interests lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. It
is wise to manage movement for economy's sake, as Hoffer suggests. However, it is
aesthetically responsible to manage the expression, which Cantrick advocates. Since Cantrick's
statement in 1954, the official position of music education has been increasingly focused on the
latter.
What happened to the art which music educators proclaimed so proudly 40 years ago?
Politics aside, the answer is that music educator's never grasped the content of the art of
choreographed marching. They never came to understand "how artistic principles apply to
marching band work," because they failed to understand the medium itself. Those who read
introductory principles of art design were correct in one assumption: choreographed marching is
a two-dimensional art. The critical mistake, however, was in assuming that a two-dimensional
art form such as painting or drawing can be justified in a performing medium. Music educators
followed the advice of art design and put principles of form before principles of movement. The
unseen lessons of their failure echo even in today's drum corps and marching band "designs."
In order to correct the continuing errors of unprepared music educators and others, we
must return to the very roots of choreographed marching and outline its medium, its history and
its heritage.
The elusive obvious.
"Mobility is the first, prehistoric condition; sessility (attachment or fixation to one
place), a later historical condition" (The Mind of the Traveller: From Gilgamesh to
Global Tourism, 1991).
In the debate between form and movement in choreographed marching, the body, as the
basis of form, is the only form we need to serve. The rest -- lines and shapes -- takes care of
itself. If the body serves planar movement, then planar movement may serve the body.
By following the advice of the "man behind the Microscope," Anthropologists have come
to a consensus as to what we, as a species, "do." Since an estimated four million years ago,
bipedal locomotion ("two-footed walking") has characterized our physical capacity as distinct
from the animal kingdom. The mechanical problems of balancing and moving our body atop
two limbs have led to many of the distinctive anatomical specializations and mechanical
wonders of our species. For "freeing of the hands" and "long distance travel over flat
terrain...this locomotor adaptation was probably the first adaptive breakthrough that
characterized the origins of hominids. The ability to walk on two legs preceded the later
hallmarks of human evolution" (Fleagle, "Locomotion," Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and
Prehistory, 1988, Ian Tattersal, ed.).
Accordingly, our bodies were made not only for locomotion, but for "flat terrain." N.A.
Bernstein devoted much of his pioneering research in biomechanics to "bipedal locomotion on a
level surface in a straight line. ...Bernstein's studies of walking and running in children
demonstrate the rather surprising fact that precise cerebral control of the forces arising from
movement is achieved on a time scale of decades comparable with the learning of language and
'skills of culture." His findings on these companions of culture and language, Trevarthen
believes, "provide an important insight into inherent mechanisms of human communication"
("How Control of Movement Develops," Human Motor Actions: Bernstein Reassessed, H.T.A.
Whiting, ed., 1984).
To discover how one would perform locomotion "over flat terrain" in an efficient or
correct manner, as is befitting the interest of an art based on this behavior (as is choreographed
marching), one need only examine what makes it possible: uprightness. Though precarious, this
"specific mode of being in the world" gives us the ability to change our surroundings. This is not
only necessary for social interaction -- our survival depends on it. "Because upright posture is
the "Leitmotiv" in the formation of the human organism," states Erwin Strauss, "an individual
who has lost or is deprived of the capacity to get up and keep himself upright depends for his
survival completely on the aid of others. Without their help, he is doomed to die. A biologically
oriented psychology must not forget that upright posture is an indispensable condition of man's
self-preservation. Upright we are, and we experience ourselves in this specific relation to the
world." Whatever we express in choreographed marching through this mode on our plane of our
existence, we would do well to remember "the shape and function of the human body are
determined in almost every detail by, and for, the upright posture" ("The Upright Posture,"
International Research in Sport and Physical Education, 1964).
Such sentiments lend new insight about choreographed marching and the arts, with
individuals such as Twyla Tharp suggesting that the recent funding crisis is due to "the belief
that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence" (M. Isokoff, "To Be
or Not To Be," Newsweek 125(4)). Nowhere is this aesthetic link to survival more evident than
in choreographed marching.
Because the language of choreographed marching is essentially a planar locomotor
language, one may say not only that it is our species most defining act, but also that it could well
be our species most defining art. It is how we express who we are in the most fundamental
sense. When we stand and move in ways that inhibit uprightness, we struggle against and
degrade our own structure.
Further, there are many influences and practices in choreographed marching which
cultivate and reinforce this degradation. Among these are the rotational displacement of the
head; the misalignment of the spine due to poor management of the instrument; lack of balanced
control of turns and changes of direction due to the practice of pivoting (usually unnecessarily);
inability to cultivate and maintain balance through changes of momentum and direction due to
the unnecessary hazarding of balance.
These influences on the upright structure have become widely accepted concessions to
waste and frustration in the absence of qualified, regulated, and standardized training. This
training was not had in abundance since 1943, when the unprecedented military advocacy of
fitness preparedness saw sports extinguish drill in physical education. As military instruction
dissipated in schools and drum corps after the wars, drum corps no longer had access to
individuals who knew these degrading influences - influences they knew firsthand from
marching great distances relatively undisturbed by the demands of today's choreographed
marching.
The real danger of these structurally degrading practices is cumulative and evident not
only functionally, but also aesthetically. "The body is really an objectification, a tangible record
of the most long-standing and deeply established habits that have been laid down during a
succession of generations" (Brian Wells, Body and Personality, 1963). Hopefully, this record we
pass down through the bodies of generations to come will speak of dignity, rather than
degradation.
Starting from scratch.
"Jameson, faced with what he sees as the global confusions of postmodern times,
'the disorientation of saturated space,' calls for an exercise in 'cognitive mapping'"
(Doreen Massey, "Politics and Space/Time," Space, Place and Gender, 1994.
How do we begin searching for the art glossed over by music education? With the
obvious. Choreographed marching is an art of collective behavior expressed by individuals who
march or otherwise perform locomotory horizontal movement. Its record has been imprinted on
some of the earliest rock art from countries such as Spain, India, Asia, Africa, Australia, Russia,
and throughout North and South America. From a functional perspective it consists of getting
individuals from one place to another via purely translatory locomotion. Thus, the art of human
planar movement is most effectively and easily served by functional marching, rather than by the
various embellishments which have visited marching in various settings and ensembles.
In the big picture, choreographed marching is strictly a two-dimensional art, and any
other activities associated with it. Flags, music, fashion, props -- even its locomotory execution,
are secondary to its interests of two dimensional expression, regardless of their length of
involvement with the art.
This two-dimensional expression is created by the syntactical (a term derived from
"tactic," or "order of battle") arrangement of its movements. These movements may be
classified, as the man behind the microscope suggests, according to what they do. These
elements are better understood in an historical context than they are by technical alliteration,
which may be found in the appendix.
The landscape of historical planar discourse.
Each of the nine movement types enjoys distinct periods of development and expression
throughout the history of choreographed marching. We will examine each in turn, from the most
simple to the most complex. As we do so, we will find developmental trends, some of which
occupy only a century or two, and others which stretch over vast periods of time. From the
geographical "marches" whose paths stretch back beyond the horizon, to the vast maneuvers of
WWII, choreographed marching was a developing language whose creative expression has been
a long time coming.
1. Circuitous ("follow-the-leader" closed).
"He keeps coming back, circling, like the predator he is" (Whyte, "How Footpaths
Get Started," When Strangers Cooperate, 1988).
This movement is easiest to perform because it requires that one simply maintain their
pattern of movement and relationship to a leader. This is a popular form of protest marching,
and where marching first appears in territorial form.
Circuitous marching is functionally a territorial act, and therefore, immediately "guilty by
association" with war in the eyes of some. However, "territoriality is a primary geographical
expression of social power...the means by which space and society are interrelated. ...by
definition, territoriality must contain a form of communication"(R. Sack, "Human Territoriality:
Its Theory and History," 1986). It behooves our creative interests in the territorial behavior of
choreographed marching to separate the art from the violence which has for so long
accompanied it, and we have plenty of evidence to do so.
First, the word "march" was by record a noun before it was a verb. Our earliest record of
the word dates from the 13th century, and was derived from the equivalent of the word "mark" in
Old High German, Old English and Old Saxon (Oxford English Dictionary). It denotes a
territory or boundary in dispute until as late as the nineteenth century. It is likely that the act of
"marching" (or marking) one's territory, along with the form of music known thereby, was later
derived. The month of March appears to have derived its name similarly, as it was heralded by
Roman officers who marched about the city of Rome during that month (The American Book of
Days, Jane Hatch, 1978), rather than being named after the War God, Mars. There is virtually no
evidence to support this popular belief, apart from the fact that March may have been considered
by some to be the month of the March, and well as the month of Mars.
Secondly, this territorial behavior was originally peaceful. To mark a territory by foot
was a community tradition in Europe, accompanied by the populace, bands, banners and a
clergyman responsible for recording the boundary and "testifying to its accurate perambulation"
(B. Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and community in England 1700-1880, 1982). This
form of "processioning" was also known as "beating the bounds" and "Riding the Marches," the
latter of which was attended by townspersons, brass bands, fife and drum, and a choir (William
Walsh, Curiosities of Popular Customs, 1925). These territories were regulated by the local
parish, which tradition may have survived to the present day in the form of "praise marches"
(Christianity Today, 35). There is little argument that they follow a tradition which dates back
through the earliest records of the Christian church to the birth of Israel as a nation. It is also
likely that perambulatory traditions such as "wassailing" are also later remnants which
developed as a result of "rough" populations lured to the processional ritual by the refreshments
afterward. Before that, a curious term: "ganging ground," was given to denote a place where
"ganging" was required to maintain these boundaries. In Middle English, as with Old English
and Old High German, "gang" is synonymous with the action, mode, or course of "going,"
walking," or "travelling" (Oxford English Dictionary).
Though this form of marching met its violent demise as would most forms of military
marching, Anthropologist of dance Judith Lynne Hanna declares its unequivocally inherent
aesthetic nature: "Assertion of territorial possession occurs through dance as a conceptual
boundary marker" ("To Dance is Human: Some Psychobiological Bases of an Expressive Form,"
The Anthropology of the Body, John Blacking, ed., 1977).
The circumambulatory military procession was enlarged (along with territorial units) to
the extent that the individual could not return to their original position via a circular route.
Carneiro estimates that the approximately 600,000 territorial units in existence about 1,000 B.C.
have been reduced to less than 200 presently (Robert Carniero, Studying War: Anthropological
Perspectives, S. Reyna, Ed., 1994). These larger units required a different form of maintenance.
One form was through markers or landmarks, which had been incorporated into the processional
earlier, and were treated with the gravest of respect. Another was by the creation of a march
system, whereby borders could be managed in pieces, divided by "staging posts," as made use of
by Spain in the Eighty Years' War (1567-1648). These chains of replenishment were used until
after 1870 (A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, A Corvisier, ed. 1994), and
were survived into the twentieth century by an unusual custom of "marching money," which was
paid per mile to some physical educators as it had been paid per day to soldiers.
2. Canonic ("follow-the-leader").
This popular category of children's play-marching is all but owned by the Nazca of South
America. 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, the Nazca demonstrated a healthy appreciation for
processional marching by wearing paths, or "geoglyphs," into the Nazca Valley floor in the form
of birds, insects, zig-zags and spirals thousands of feet across.
Whereas the designs (an accurate term for the geoglyphs in this case) of the Nazca were
clearly aesthetic in purpose, more often processionals were functional in nature:
"Processions and marches are recurring forms of social behavior throughout
recorded history. People have moved together from one point in space to another in
search of food and water, to escape persecution, to go to battle, to worship, and to
celebrate the status transitions of marriage and death.
Processions have also figured prominently in state coronations, inaugurations,
weddings, funerals, and in homage to visiting dignitaries" (C. McPhail, "Collective
Locomotion as Collective Behavior," American Sociological Review, 51(Aug.).
Processional marches which are not designed to return an individual to their starting
place are perambulatory rather than circumambulatory. Examples of these type of marches are
often migratory in nature, and thus notable examples of long-distance marching. Lewis and
Clark directed the world's longest expeditionary march in history (3,555 miles) between 1804
and 1806.
The 2,060 mile march of the Mormon Battalion in 1846-1847 set the world's longest
infantry march until Mao Zedong's forces in 1934-1935 moved that mark to the current record of
just over 6,000 miles.
A stunning example of the migratory culture of canonic performance is the Aztec or
Mexica migration recorded pictorially
and textually in a "score of documents preserved from the sixteenth century. All of them ... were
created after the conquest, but many are direct reflections of pre-Columbian codices or oral
recitations." Only one is structured "as a cartographic history, wherein events are presented
sequentially ...in the form of a map." Elizabeth Hill Boone describes the ceremony in vivid
terms:
"The journey itself is the foundation of the narrative or the story line, with
individual scenes or episodes defined and separated as they would be in a play. ...What
the narrative strategy of the pictorial manuscripts suggests is that the Aztec migration
from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan is a drama. More than being a series of events that
happened in the past, it has the qualities of a performance. It can be thought of as a
historical or narrative play, but it is too ideologically and culturally important to be
merely a secular play. It has all the trappings and stylizations of a ceremony, and I think
it most similar to a ritual performance -- in particular a ritual performance of great social
and ideological significance for the Mexica and for all of the later Aztec world"
("Migration Histories as Ritual Performance," To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial
Landscapes, 1991).
In South America, the inhabitants of Nazca Valley demonstrated a form of ritual
performance endowed entirely of creative, rather than narrative content which was drawn not on
parchment, but on the surface of the valley floor in the forms of animals, zig-zags and spirals
hundreds of yards across. These forms suggest a developing aesthetic appreciation for
processional marching which crossed the line into the appreciation of its intrinsic rather than
narrative value.
Not unrelated to the lines of Nazca is another phenomenon to emerge from the
perambulatory mode is the maze or labyrinth, which dates back to at least 3,000 B.C. This
medium was believed to have been originally employed as a defensive military measure, and has
a rich cultural tradition which flourished into the 19th century. The labyrinth has become more
a mark of Western Culture, apparently transcending its recreational value, and becoming
endowed with spiritual significance. After flourishing in Greece and Rome, "the labyrinth
design began to appear on the floors of cathedrals (particularly in France) in the 12th century, as
a penitential path symbolizing the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the way to Calvary, or indeed the
path of life" (Mathematics Teaching 117). "All actions of mankind/Are but a labyrinth or maze,"
Declared Johnson's "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue" in 1618 (Art and Magic in the Court of the
Stuarts, Vaughan Hart, 1992).
As the ceremonial landscape exited the mazes of the wilderness to enter straight and
level modernized roads, participants in this vast ceremonial history would be faced with a new
problem: How to march a straight line.
3. Rectilinear (single direction).
"Behold me -- I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over six inches of Space--"
"Of Length," I ventured to suggest. "Fool," said he "Space is Length" (Edwin A. Abbott,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, 1983).
Rectilinear movement was made possible by the level plane, which were sought in
ancient contests. In Ming Dynasty China, the practice of mutually selecting and mutually
preparing these plains. They would remove growth and "fill up the holes to make a wide and
even plain as a playground in order to adapt to the ideal shape of formation" (C. Tien, "Chinese
Military Theory," 1992). These allowed the discourse of planar movement to explore lateral
space, which gave Rectilinear movement context and development.
"Battlefields were usually broad flat plains. They were selected apparently by a
kind of mutual agreement in the spirit in which athletic fields are selected today. An
army desiring a decision, drew up for battle in such a position. If the other army did not
seek a decision, it did not go to the battlefield. Rarely was an army forced to battle;
never did an army select a battlefield especially suitable for itself" ("Training," Outlines
of the World's Military History, William A. Mitchell, 1940).
As one might expect, these decisions first came about as a result of Canonic movement
(Appendix). As Canonic movements gained the capacity to become self directed and unified,
soldiers developed the capacity to enter into the territorial dialogue of choreographed marching.
At first this dialogue consisted of travelling in a single direction in order to meet each other.
One could view this form of consensus, on the level plain, as Polar movement, without
stretching the point. The appearance of the first densely packed infantry formation in Assyria in
3,000 B.C. is the first evidence we have of the cultivation of the truly Rectilinear movement
which in turn brought lateral form. Until that point, Canonic movement, which surrendered
one's Rectilinear volition to the leader and to geographical demands, was prone to distraction.
At about this point, however, horses were known to have been used in Russia, and the
introduction of this vehicle would forestall the mastery of Rectilinear movement until the Greek
phalanx in 675 B.C. ('rank and file') which even by then was still functionally a collection of
Canonic files.
Nevertheless, Canonic movement did allow a formation the opportunity to practice
Rectilinear movement in rank and file. Rank formation allowed attention to the lateral
relationship, which came to prepare military units for more complex demands. The phalanx
taught that form could be maintained two-dimensionally. The fighting force was as dependent
on the replenishment of the front rank via the file as they were the maintenance of the position
and interval of those fighting in the front rank. To disturb either permitted an opportunity for a
foe to divide the force, and officers knew this well enough to demand the integrity of the front
rank, upon penalty of death (just in case the danger of its disintegration was not motivation
enough). This tended to focus the Roman mind on the planar dialogue.
As territorial units continued to enlarge, it became expedient to maintain borders more
easily via roads. These roads saw the birth of much of what was to be considered "marching" in
the aesthetic sense. In fact, they paved the way for a new cultural forum of marching: the
parade. In this sense, Rectilinear movement did indeed enter the stream of public consciousness.
Rulers were quick to recognize the payback in public relations that this venue offered
their territorial or political ambitions, and they made it a point to enroll the power of highly
disciplined planar language in these ambitions. King Nabopolassar built a long, straight
processional road in Babylon to honor the god Marduk. "Such grand processional avenues, or
kingsways, were to reappear in various cities throughout history" (M. Lay, Ways of the World: a
History of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles That Used Them, 1992).
Hitler, too, knew the power of these forms of public discourse. He viewed that power in
political, rather than cultural terms. His "Marchfield" was paid tributary by "a processional
avenue a mile and a quarter long and 264 feet wide. The army was to march down this avenue
in ranks 165 feet wide." However, Hitler's enlistment of planar discourse did not stop there:
"At the Southern end of the [Nuremburg Party Rally Site], was the Marchfield;
the name was intended not only as a reference to the war god Mars [who also enjoyed the
tribute of "Mars Field," where Roman choreographed marching was rehearsed], but also
to the month in which Hitler introduced conscription. Within this enormous tract, an
area of 3,400 by 2,300 feet was set aside where the army could practice minor
maneuvers. By contrast, the grandiose area of the palace of King Darius I and Xerxes in
Persepolis ((fifth century B.C.) had embraced only 1,500 by 900 feet. Stand 48 feet high
were to surround the entire area, providing seats for a hundred and sixty thousand
spectators. Twenty-four towers over a hundred and thirty feet in height were to
punctuate these stands; in the middle was a platform for guests of honor which was to be
crowned by a sculpture of a woman. In A.D. 64 Nero erected on the Capitol a colossal
figure 119 feet high. The Statue of Liberty in New York is 151 feet high; our statue was
to be 46 feet higher" (Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, 1970).
Jacob Black-Michaud offer us insight as to how the ritual practice of planar discourse
choreographed marching has been manipulated for selfish interests:
"Honour, it will be remembered, constitutes predominantly non-realistic prize in
conflict. ...Now I suggested earlier that there was some congruence between Coser's
notion of conflict for predominantly non-realistic goals and Leaches' use of the term
ritual. In both types of action there is a lack of directly perceptible functional
orientation. This absence of a relationship between means and ends causes the purposes
of both nonrealistic conflict and ritual action to be blurred or ambiguous; and it is this
ambiguity which allows self-seeking individuals room for manoeuvre so that they can
manipulate the social system to achieve their own largely realistic objectives" (Cohesive
Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1975).
Hitler's most intimidating discourses in choreographed marching, therefore, were
reserved for the streets of Germany:
"The importance of marching and "der Kampf um die Strasse" in the Nazi
persuasion was expressed by Hitler and various lesser Nazis. ...Goebbels too contended
that whoever conquered the streets would conquer the state one day for, as he saw it,
every form of power politics and any dictatorship had its roots in the street. "We frankly
admit," said Goebbels, "our goal was the conquest of the street." ...Lesser Nazis took up
the theme. Marching, said one writer in the propaganda ministry's publication "Unser
Wille und Weg," is a symbol and an expression "of participation of the individual in the
whole. To take part in the whole means to be its servant" (Haig A. Bosmajian, The
Persuasiveness of Nazi Marching and Der Kampf Um Die Strasse," The Rhetoric of
Non-verbal Communication, 1971).
It is the manipulation of this "whole" of collective behavior which constitutes the locus
of control of the language of choreographed marching - whether it is creative marching, or
destructive marching.
Street marching was a very persuasive form of enlistment, both for those who saw beauty
in it, and for those who did not. "National Socialist Franz Six saw the German people as being
especially attracted to marching and parades: "It is a fact from the history of political struggle
that parades and marching impress the mood of the people most deeply and they can have the
strongest effects on the soul of the people" (Bosmajian). Indeed, it was just this medium which
won the hearts of the people for the upstart Hitler when, before taking power, he staged a bloody
and unsuccessful march on a local seat of government. His prison sentence (which produced
"Mein Kampf") was lamented by the people, who saw in Hitler the solution to their country's
economic shambles.
It is interesting to note that the "lack of directly perceptible functional orientation"
mentioned by Black-Michaud is precisely the danger faced by drum and bugle corps today, who
lack both the tools for meaningful self expression in choreographed marching, and the objective
of service which gives accountability in 'taking part in the whole.' Given a lack of clear
objective and identity, drum corps are faced with the alternative - the continued pursuit of
prestige, which "implies a ranking and is therefore something of a zero-sum game. ...with few
exceptions, we can say that the accumulation of prestige by some entails the loss of standing for
others." Because we cannot find in drum corps its inherent meaning and aesthetic purpose, the
self-defeating perpetuation of prestige becomes our only means of evaluating its meaning and
purpose.
However, "prestige is something that others confer, not something that can be unilaterally
acquired." Hence, our emphasis on the audience. "The large popular audience who turns out to
witness the display helps, by its numbers, enthusiasm, and patriotic garb, to add an air of prestige
to the proceedings" (James C. Scott, "Prestige as the Public Discourse of Domination," Cultural
Critique, 12 (1989). But what happens when that audience disappears? We must rely on
something outside of the audience, which has obviously become overburdened by the
responsibility of maintaining prestige. Whether we find that "something outside" at Disney
World or through a simple cross-section of the International population, we are bound to
acknowledge that there is value in knowing "something outside."
On a positive note, there seems to be evidence in Melanesia that marching actually was
transformed into a political medium serving neither prestige nor territoriality. As a large United
States occupation finished the fighting on Guadalcanal (July 1942-February 1943), an unusual
political movement of uncertain origins began with the name "Marching Rule," which seems to
have received its characteristic emphasis on unity through the islanders' observation of American
soldiers. Their generosity, in fact, "so impressed the islanders...that in 1943 some of them
attempted to 'buy' American rule. Their money was accepted for the Red Cross and this
convinced some of the islanders that they were now under American protection. ...One of the
impressive facts about the movement was that although it brought Solomon Islanders together,
working in amity for the first time in some areas, it allowed a great deal of autonomy in its
organization" (Janet Kent, "Essays in Co-operation," The Solomon Islands, 1972).
Whatever its purpose or origin, Marching Rule truly united the islanders. "Marching
Rule entirely cut across traditional divisions and united tribes which had never before acted in
concert" (Peter M. Worsley, Gods and Rituals, John Middleton, ed., 1967). "It had soon become
apparent that Marching Rule was not a tiny cultist affair confined to a corner of one island. It
had spread to many areas and was growing. The power of Marching Rule could not be denied.
At a meeting held at Auki on Malatia over 7,000 people assembled and decided that the
movement should take over the native courts. At the order of their leaders, whole villages were
uprooting themselves and moving down to the coast where Marching Rule 'towns' were being
built. ...People refused to pay taxes. The leaders produced a Marching Rule flag" (Kent).
However, when efforts to resist a census resulted in the fatality of a policeman patrolling the
district, the new leaders of Marching Rule (the original leaders being imprisoned) renamed their
organization the Federal Council. As authorities today struggle over the origin of the name
"Marching Rule," we know that certain high ranking officers were known to have administered
drill, and that on at least one occasion, a matter of business was attended to via a deputation of
300 marching men (Kent, p. 145).
Despite some rather unpleasant associations, choreographed marching has, in the
twentieth century, managed to otherwise escape the fallout of its politically exploited history via
sports (though this forum itself is not exactly purged of political interests). Even after further
development, it remains the people's art, and is thus still very much subject to the whims of the
people. Its creation of a repertoire now guarded by bands is an example of how free that
medium has exercised. Frederic Ramsey, Jr. described in 1964 this condition by contrasting the
cultural purity of its music to what had become of folk music. It reads like an epitaph of what
has since then become of band music, and perhaps facets of the drum corps medium as well:
"In this brief article, I have suggested two factors which gave away at our folk
and popular culture: 1) the removal of a folk/popular music from its environment, and its
subsequent exploitation as a large, paying phenomenon under staged conditions that tend
to destroy its spontaneity, different standards of entertainment and professionalism; and
2) the siphoning off, through academic misunderstanding, of those parts of the
folk/popular tradition that are demonstrably "vital and characteristic." I have also
suggested that we might hope to find some of these same vital and characteristic parts
still in existence in some areas as yet unexplored by promoters or academicians. One of
these areas may be that of the music still being made by native marching street bands"
("Marching In the Streets," Sing Out, 14(5)).
As well could this high-powered industry of drum corps be also siphoning off its 'vital
and characteristic' parts. Certainly its musical transformation has taken drum corps quickly into
range of the sophisticated listener.
Regardless of its creative companionship, the planar language has lost none of its power
to communicate culture or foster mobile art forms - even through Rectilinear movement. Judith
Lynne Hanna provides a very concrete example of how this is done. She notes a polonaise
('stately processional dance') still extant in Polish villages,
"whose name is actually 'chodzony,' the 'walking dance.' ...The body is kept
upright, whilst the dancer steps from the heel onto the whole foot, with relaxed knees.
...It is absolutely different in form and function from ordinary walking. It has become a
poetic transformation of it, and acquired unusual features if compared with utilitarian
movement; it becomes dance, it becomes art. Accordingly, the movement texture of
ordinary walking has changed. In this danced 'walk', the steps are designed not to carry
the body to a particular spot, but in such a way as to supply the performer with the
sensation of 'being carried'. This is the essence of any dancing" ("Some Notes on the
Anthropology of Dance," The Anthropology of the Body, John Blacking, ed., 1977).
Choreographed marching is always transporting some form of culture or another, and
from the words of Hanna, one might think it carries dance itself. One cannot underestimate the
power which the open plain wielded in our discovery and mastery of space through Rectilinear
movement.
4. Polar (relative linear).
"Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love
with a dot. "You're the beginning and the end, the hub, the core and the quintessence,"
he told her tenderly, but the frivolous dot wasn't a bit interested" (Norton Juster, The Dot
and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, 1963).
The first signs of the phalanx undergoing a transformation of function could be seen by
the time of Phillip II of Macedonia, who was familiar with the emerging weaknesses of the
phalanx. The phalanx was being extended laterally (rank), so as to envelop the enemy, at the
expense of depth. This lateral extension had stretched itself to the limits, and led to Phillip II's
son, Alexander the Great, to suggest that the army "March divided and fight united" in the latter
4th century B.C. This led to a revolution in tactics which integrated each element, according to
its mobile capacity, into the planar dialogue. By about 700 A.D., reliance on the phalanx was
relinquished, and the single element of forward movement became divided into two or more
elements. Thus, the two-dimensional awareness developed by the phalanx became counterpoint
which introduced choreographed military marching into two dimensional dialogue.
The Frankish infantry, however, was slow to acknowledge the emerging dialogue of the
multiple element enemy, and when in 554 A.D. it matched its single element phalanx with a
Byzantine army containing both infantry and cavalry in Casilinium, Italy, the result was a
disastrous bit of choreography which the Franks took
another 150 years to rewrite.
About 50 years prior to the slaughter of the Frankish infantry, an unusually successful
game was invented, now known by the name of "chess." "...evidence establishes...that the game
of chess was the conscious and deliberate invention of an inhabitant of North-West
India...aimed only at symbolizing the different methods of movement of the elements of the real
army" (H. Murray, A Short History of Chess, 1963).
The invention of gunpowder by Roger Bacon in 1249 brought fearful new possibilities to
the destruction of form. Gunpowder explosions were initially employed as a weapon of "fear
and affray," as Bartholomaeus Anglicus said about the same time about thirteenth century
military bands. The Old English term for band, J. Ruckel reminds us, "is synonymous with
'noise'" (MEJ 57(6)).
However, only a few decades earlier, Machiavelli, in his "Libro della arte della guerra"
stated also that military music was an aid to marching. In comparing these two early accounts of
the purpose of military music, there can be little arguing what military music was before it was
courted by a kings' composer. Truly, military music, in the truer sense of the word, is
accompaniment for marching. This does not mean that choreographed marching ought not to
solicit serious compositions for its accompaniment. It does mean, however, that in doing so,
choreographed marching is courting kings instead of fulfilling a function.
5. Anti-linear (variable direction).
"And yet he continued trying and failing and trying again. Until when he had all
but given up, he discovered at last that with great concentration and self-control he was
able to change direction and bend wherever he chose. So he did, and made an angle"
(Juster).
It was not enough that Polar movement advanced choreographed marching from the
monolithic, single element of one-dimensional movement. Once trained in the one-dimensional
world, individual training brought two-dimensional options (not Canonic movement, in which
only the leader moves in two-dimensional space, but actual, universal two-dimensional liberty)
which allow one to do more than merely exist in a certain direction as part of a higher but
inscrutable Polar design.
One could say that drill wasn't really drill until one was taught how to change direction.
Lawrence L. Gordon suggests that this ability was developed in military drill in the fifteenth
century.
"Drill, in anything like the form which we have today, originated in the French
gendarmerie. ...The gendarmes were, as their name states, men-at-arms who were raised
by Charles VII in 1439 to maintain order in France after the English had driven them out.
They were organized in companies of about 450 strong whose main object was to replace
the lawless mercenaries who, as described elsewhere, as soon as the fighting stopped
roamed in large and small bands all or the country instituting a reign of terror" ("Drill,"
Military Origins, 1971).
It is interesting to note that within 150 years, the act of marching earned its first known
use as a verb (Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 9, p. 359, 1989).
However, it took until 1625 for the first drill book, titled "The Double-armed Man" to
find its way from the pen of editor William Nead to Charles I, who in return gave Nead and his
son commissions to instruct "the members of the trained band" (Gordon).
Likewise, six years later John Bingham had offered in black and white his observations
of the implementation of Aelian's ideology on the matter:
"For to dispose and enable an Army, skilfully to march, to encampe, & to
embattaile, is a matter of no small consequence. In asmuch as we often find mightie
Armies through their disorder to have been defeated by a handfull of men wel disciplined
& exercised" (The Art of Embattailing an Army, or the Second Part of Aelian's Tacticks,
1631, [1968 facsimile]).
Bingham suggests that "Foure kindes of Motions are set downe by Aelian whereby upon
any occasion the battaile may be somewhat changed: Turning of faces, countermarch, wheeling,
and doubling..." (Bingham). As for form, Frederick the Great once boasted that "within a single
square mile, a hundred different orders of battle can be formed" in the interest of an effective
planar discourse (R. Bowen, Tactical Order of Battle: a State of the Art Survey, 1975). It is
interesting to note that naval tactics were beginning to reflect a formal sophistication of their
own. Because planar discourse was more unforgiving, they learned to implement ship
formations that allowed greater flexibility of movement, such as Grenier's "lozenge" formation
of 1787. It resembles something of the letter "s" constructed of straight lines, and was "one of a
number of methods for avoiding the rigidity of the line" (B. Tunstall, Naval Warfare in the Age
of the Sail: the Evolution of Fighting Tactics, 1650-1815, 1990).
The introduction of Anti-linear movement into choreographed military marching
constituted the first attempts to intentionally practice and regulate the body itself in marching.
When King Louis XIV reviewed his troops, it was noted that even tight uniforms contributed to
this regulation of the body:
"Posture was rigid and the bodily motions stiff, and this psychological influence
was especially effective since the men were themselves the means of control, being
forced to participate in regulating their own bodies. The images effect suggested a
machine" (S. Myerly, "The Eye Must Entrap the Mind: Army Spectacle and Paradigm in
Nineteenth-Century Britain," Journal of Social History, 26(1)).
The practice of this new level of intelligent spatial response thus placed the locus of
control in the hands of the individual, who learned to regulate his own body with great control.
Within a relatively short period of time, this control was found to facilitate not just Anti-linear
movement, but also more subtle curvilinear movements which made Rotational movement
possible.
6. Rotational (internal focal point).
In accordance with the formations and theories of Li Quan's "Yingfujing" (Ming
Dynasty), battle grounds are mutually prepared "wide and even...as a playground in order
to adapt to the ideal shape of the formation (Tien 1992).
The development of Rotational movement saw the high water mark at which
choreographed marching was attended to in the military. At the battle of Corinth, the
Lacedaemonians used a 90 degree wheel to defeat the Spartans in 394 B.C. (H. Delbruck,
History of the Art of War, Vol. 1, 1990, p. 155). Not an easy maneuver, with 6,000 men! The
difficulty of this early example of Rotational movement lies in the fact that, unlike flanks, the
soldier must demonstrate a greater mastery of his body (as cultivated by Anti-linear movement
in two-dimensional space) for the management of the entire form, rather than for the mere
management of the body *in* form. The difference is the placement of emphasis: before the
advent of Rotational movement, one was responsible for the management of their own body in a
variable but one dimensional context. With Rotational movement, however, there could be no
Canonic aid - one was not only responsible for the entire form itself, but was also responsible for
moving that form in true two-dimensional space.
Interestingly, it is just at this point, the point at which choreographed military marching
entered true two-dimensional space, that it was barred from further applications of
choreographed marching. The battle-field would thereafter become an intensely violent habitat,
and any infantry attempting a maneuver that required as much collective concentration for as
little displacement was likely to be shattered by an artillery shell or guns. Perhaps it was
because ancient infantries such as the Lacedaemonians did not face such dangers that Rotational
movement found application on the battlefield at this early date at all.
Applications of these movements are difficult to identify in history, and there is a good
reason for this - they were largely impractical. Two factors account for this. First,
choreographed military marching did not reach this stage of development until the 18th or 19th
centuries. Second, by this time, choreographed marching was under attack as never before.
Artillery, trench, guerrilla, fortification, and other forms of warfare had made the field unsafe for
the unprotected body, and the invention of the gas engine in 1876 was soon to propel the armed
soldier in the seated position across the bloody canvas of combat and even into the
third-dimension of winged flight.
It can't be that soldiers weren't acquainted with Rotational movement - drill manuals are
replete with examples. However, Rotational movement was time consuming and risky when
faced by one's foe. It required consummate composure and collective skill to execute, and
became more unwieldy as the form increased. Further, after the invention of balls propelled by
gunpowder through tubes ("guns"), the principle of applied violence had come to dictate that
when one is in range of the enemy, the options of choreographed marching were, due to guns
and artillery, reduced to just one movement - forward. Thus, the cooperative benefits the
infantry derived from this movement warranted its practice in training, rather than application.
Even more striking than this "graduation" to the training field, choreographed military
marching did not retreat from the battlefield assault. Rather, it saw a stunning array of
methodologies in practice by the time of the Civil War, some of which saw daring (yet doomed)
application. Drills in use were taken from a wide range of drill manuals either from Europe or
semi-official adaptations thereof, resulting in a virtual melting-pot of marching formations and
drill tactics.
"These were the modern tactics of manoeuvre and decisive battle -- the fruit of
fifty years' cogitation on the lessons of Napoleonic combat. There was evidence that
many American officers understood and sympathized with the basic assumptions of these
tactics, but none...adapting the drills to the particular learning processes which the Civil
War armies would face. The result was that these advanced methods were often badly
applied on the battlefield. On the other hand the engineers could offer a quite different
set of tactics -- a 'kindergarten' set designed specifically for use by shambling armed
mobs -- which enjoyed an extensive background literature and doctrinal explanation.
This was the idea of fieldworks of fortifications, which, ...with lip-service to mobility
and manoeuvre, represented essentially a static conception of tactics. ...Its simplicity and
promise of personal safety for the individual gave it a head start over the risky
choreography of Hardee and Scott -- and by the end of the war it had generally been
accepted in practice as the best way to fight."
"As it was there were many pressures acting against a resolute assault, ...while the
disintegration of drill would remove an important motor of unified action" (P. Griffith,
Battle Tactics of the Civil War, 1989).
7. Revolving (external focal point).
"Movement has been called "the soul of war," which is true, for movement is to
organization what range is to weapon power -- it is the governing element. Thus, when
the energy from which military movements were derived was generated by muscle
power, because of muscular energy of the horse was greater than that of man, tactical
organization was built around that animal" (J. Fuller, Armament and History, 1946).
Choreographed marching had a solution to the problem of range, too, though not an easy
one. By acknowledging the range of one's danger, be it gun, artillery, or visual contact, it was
possible to march around its focal point. This brought distance marching into play for more than
just the purposes of travel, and this principle worked hand and glove with that of separate but
integrated fighting forces -- and ideology which, after the phalanx, remained the hallmark of
tactics even into the twentieth-century (though certain specializations have extended this to the
third-dimension and beyond).
What Rotational movement introduced as an planar awareness for ensemble execution,
Revolving movement mastered on a grand scale.
Meanwhile, those advocates of formal drill who did not learn to steer clear of the dangers
of range and entrenchment met serious challenges to the maintenance of form and movement.
"Some large assaults in columns or a succession of lines met with success -- enough to keep the
idea alive throughout the Civil War -- but more often they were a failure" (Griffith). Moreover,
the lack of uniformity in official United States drill doctrines had caused disastrous
consequences for which the War (Defense) Department has been criticized ever since (Griffith).
8. Formal ("expand-contract").
"Straightway I became conscious of a Presence in the room, and a chilling breath
thrilled through my very being. ...desperate with fear, I rushed forward with an
unceremonious, "You must permit me, Sir--" and felt him. ...There was not the trace of
an angle, not the slightest roughness or inequality: never in my life had I met with a more
perfect Circle. He remained motionless while I walked round him, beginning from his
eye and returning to it again. Circular he was throughout, a perfectly satisfactory Circle,
there could be no doubt of it. Then followed a dialogue...[Stranger] I am not a plane
Figure but a Solid. You call me a Circle; but in reality I am not a Circle, but an infinite
number of Circles, of size varying from a point to a circle of thirteen inches in diameter,
one placed on top of the other. When I cut through your plane as I am now doing, I make
in your plane a section which you, very rightly, call a Circle. For even a Sphere -- which
is my proper name in my own country -- if he manifest himself at all to an inhabitant of
Flatland -- must needs manifest himself as a Circle" (Abbott).
Choreographed marching would not roll over and take the advent of twentieth-century
warfare laying on its back. Even the result of its losses introduced yet another innovation: the
third dimension. This was not to be the introduction of the airplane, however, or even the
three-dimensional application of four-dimensional warfare (propaganda). It was the advent of
the study of the art from above - military science.
The choreographed marching version of military science began as did the military itself:
with the purposes of maintaining the political order through two-dimensional space. The
recognition of this type of ordering gained respect early on:
"The most obvious sense in which citizenship is 'mapped' on to space it the one
signalled in classical antiquity, the Greek 'city-state' as a settlement centered on an open
public space where all significant inhabitants (the 'warriors') could meet around a circle
as equals who in principle would be fully interchangeable one with another. Franco
Farinelli (pers. comm.) regards this arrangement as a founding moment in the
conceptualization of social relations in spatial-geometric terms, and Derek Heater (1990)
traces the connections from the model to actual city-states functioning (if partially) as
bounded spaces in which citizenship was instituted and acted out. In his "Politics"
Aristotle had declared that 'man is a political animal'" (J. Painter, "Spaces of Citizenship:
an Introduction," Political Geography 14(2)).
Not until the American Civil War threatened the spaces of citizenship of the free world
did a government act to secure the study and expression of the "political animal". In 1862, The
United States Congress passed the Morrill Act, or "Land-Grant Act," which allotted land to state
colleges which offered instruction in subjects of national interest, military drill and science
being among them. Military drill was made compulsory physical education in Countries such as
Great Britain (1870), Japan (until 1871 and at intervals thereafter), Canada (1892), and other
European Countries.
This act met with favor in the industrial era, and was adopted for workers by
industrialists such as Great Britain's Samuel Smiles "Wonderful is the magic of drill -- drill is
education") and Edwin Chadwick ("With such training, three might eventually do the work of
five"), and America's own John Harvey Kellogg, who encouraged "patients" of his combination
medical boarding house-hospital-monastery-country club-spa-revival camp to end the day with
the "Grand March" where they "marched as a drill team, weaving in and out to the tune of
Samuel Siegel's "Battle Creek Sanitarium March."
Despite its more popular effects, military drill in schools was a serious matter, and more
so for those physical educators who were pulling for sports, which did not shake its associations
with hooliganism until well into the twentieth century. "Fifteen of the eighteen [physical
training] bills introduced into Congress between 1898 and 1917 were aimed toward the
improvement of the physical fitness of youth through a program of military training" (A History
of Physical Education and Sport in the United States and Canada, E. Zeigler, ed., 1975). This
was seen by some as a corruption of youth, and the effort to introduce drill into elementary
schools at one NEA meeting in 1918 was seen as serious (D. Van Dalen, A World History of
Physical Education, 1953).
Military drill found a comfortable home in high school military training and physical
education, where it was uncontested until the War Department opted to endorse sports for the
sake of preparing soldiers for the fitness demands of WWII. Choreographed marching gained
more than its share of advocates at this residence, gaining written support of at least three
different College Physical Education Departments until as late as 1964. However, the flood of
competitive sports drowned out the call for a more moderate form of exercise. Nevertheless,
physical educators by 1917 had done more with Canonic "Fancy Marching" than music
educators could do with it on the football field for the first half of the twentieth century (H.
Monroe, "Explanation of diagram for fancy march," Physical Training, 14(4)).
Military Science offered many students their only opportunity to view choreographed
marching from above. The only way in which they were denied a full exposure to planar
discourse was in the influences of geography, which in some cases dictated the objectives of
choreographed marching. From above, the lessons of planar discourses exchanged in the past
were seen in full view, and the successes and failures measured in lives saved and lost. This
knowledge armed the American public and its infantries with an objective awareness,
understanding of, and confidence in the deadly positions in which they would place their lives.
However, some (especially physical educators who knew fitness was fast becoming the
key to combat preparedness) were not so easily enamored of the value and beauty of
choreographed marching.
As the matter came to a head in English schools around the turn of the century, Balfour,
Scotland's Secretary of State negotiated the matter in 1905: "I am prepared to advocate ordinary
physical drill as part of the general curriculum of education; I am not prepared to advocate to the
same extent anything which seems to train the military side of human nature (D. Kirk, Defining
Physical Education, 1992). In America, "No system of physical education," asserts R. Barney,
"came as close to being universally adopted in the nation's public schools as did the controversial
but ardently defended practice of military drill" ("To Breast a Storm: Nathaniel Topliff Allen
and the Demise of Military Drill as the Physical Education Ethic in the Public Schools of
Massachusetts, 1860-1890," Canadian Journal of the History of Sport, 18(2), 1987). This was
training which the military could no longer afford, as it was becoming consumed by the
increasing demands of war technologies.
The effect this training had on choreographed military marching found realization in the
Allied Powers of WWII, which exerted contractive force on Hitler's borders. A smaller scale
demonstration of Formal movement could be seen in the Battle of the Bulge, wherein Hitler's
invading forces were gently squeezed back into the borders of Germany by contractive
movement, or by the Battle of Berlin, wherein Germany, surrounded by Russia's sweeping
offensive, was reduced to a point.
9. Structural ("reshape").
"Mobility transforms and ennobles peoples. It has always been so" (Mark
Jefferson, "The Civilizing Rails," Economic Geography, 4(1928)).
The sheer power of the further development of planar discourse through Formal
movement made itself felt in an immediate way. Forms of discourse past began to be reshaped
into language in the literal sense. Interestingly, the musical accompaniment of this innovation
(by which instrumental music gained its most important foot-hold into the curriculum) can be
credited to two sources. First, Albert Harding's block letter "I" is confirmed to have been
introduced by 1907 at the University of Illinois via marching band.
On the other hand, the Purdue University "All American Marching Band" (which was
founded as a drum and bugle corps in 1886) managed the slightly more imposing feat of forming
the block letter "P" in the same year.
Within a short period of time, music educators were extolling their fascinations with
their new "discovery," with some help from military training borrowed from physical education.
Russell B. Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Military Science and Tactics at the University of
Pennsylvania and Drill Instructor of the University Band ("marching band" was an oxymoron
back then) was one of many military drill instructors thrilled by the mating of the foot with this
new implement. In the spirit of Alexander the Great of Prussia, he exclaimed in 1928 "There is
no limit to the variety of band formations and evolutions appropriate for football games. These
exhibitions may take the form of constructing large, single letters, or whole words, or other
desired formations" (Drill and Evolutions of the Band, 1928). Interestingly, he was equally
comfortable exclaiming in the same breath that "The basic difference between a band and any
other musical organization lies in the fact that the former is an organized group of *marching*
musicians."
Within another decade or so bands had transformed choreographed marching into yet
another language -- pictures. In the tradition of the motion pictures which aided in the
deposition of Sousa, they coupled these pictures with music in 1945 via the 22 and 1/2 inch
stride -- music educations' most important contribution to choreographed marching. This
brought still other explorations into the mathematical language via kaleidoscopic "precision
drill," which were yet further examples of how music education never really discovered the
essential language of choreographed marching and its nine manifestations.
Like all of the nine types of planar movement, the recent development of Structural
choreographed marching is not without certain precedents. The earliest - "dark clouds
formation" -took place in China ca. 4,500 B.C., according to one source written a thousand years
later. This maneuver was "likened to the flying crows and flowing clouds that disperse, gather,
and move constantly," according to General Xu's "Taigong Liutao Jinzhu and Jinyi" (C. Tien,
Chinese Military Theory, 1992). The planar language has been with us since we stood upright,
in all of its forms. However, today we consistently express it for the defense of our lives, for the
eventual transformation of our relationships within today's complex social landscape of planar
dialogue, and for creative expression itself. This ability we did not achieve until we had
mastered this language, one movement at a time.
Conclusion.
"Train your heart to govern as spacious an area as it can. Encompass through one
century, then through two centuries, through three, through ten, through as many
centuries as you can bear, the onward march of mankind. Train your eye to gaze on this
vision with patience, with love and high disinterestedness, until slowly the world begins
to breathe within you, the embattled begin to be enlightened, to unite in your heart and to
acknowledge themselves as brothers" (Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God: Spiritual
Exercises, 1960).
Apart from a history of the taxonomy of choreographed marching, there are only a few
other ideas which I hope to have forwarded in connection with this presentation:
1. Choreographed marching is movement, not form. What is true in dance is even more true in
an art such as marching, expressed within much greater spaces. In the words of Eric J. Leed,
"...there is no reality to motion once its consciousness is denied, when it is articulated in discrete
portions between points in a space" (Leed). The age of marking our spots and running endlessly
back and forth between them, or marching at the mercy of form, is past. It is time that drum
corps stood upright, set its gaze on the horizon, and marched with the rest of humanity.
The dangers that applied to choreographed marching in physical education and music
education also apply to drum corps. The lessons they have left unlearned cannot escape the
tread of choreographed marching. Such lessons were outlined long ago by E. Hilderbrant, who
spoke in 1918 against drill in physical education: "It affords little training in the use of one's
own judgement" ("Military Training in High Schools," Educational Review 55(May)). Its legacy
was abandoned by the nation for more basic reasons than those drum corps faces today: "In
school tactics the very act of carrying a gun which would be an essential part of the training is
ruinous to good posture" (Hilderbrant). Its problems regulating its art are not monetary: "Talent,
genius and natural gifts are ignored" (Hilderbrant).
Our position as choreographed marching's most accomplished advocate is beginning to
resemble that of the music educator in 1976: lost among the 8,000,000 viewers of the Drum
Corps International World Championships and staring complacently at televisions' window to
what may have been our 'Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame'.
2. Drum corps is a marching art. Because choreographed marching will not be championed by
drill teams or any other medium in the near future without serious musical accompaniment,
there is no one to do our job but us. Marching bands cannot do it: choreographed marching is
much appreciated by the curriculum but has never been acknowledged as being worthy of
administering and disseminating proper instruction. Music educators cannot educationally
justify choreographed marching, nor should they be expected to. That is our job.
3. Drum corps is a military art. As such, drum corps have fallen heir to a distinguished and
immense history of humanities first language. Choreographed marching is our most important
language and is the only contribution we have to offer of significant worth to the arts
community. I highly doubt anyone is going to assume this responsibility for us with any degree
of success.
4. Drum corps history is inextricably linked to its military past. Drums, fifes and bugles were
payrolled soldiers in the military. Bands, which were supported out-of-pocket by officers were
not. Bands were comprised of musicians. Drum corps were comprised of soldiers. To have the
luxury of both today is a debt we owe to those who gave their lives to the last words of planar
discourse, wherein lies our responsibility to the musical accompaniment of marching (and not
vice-versa) and to choreographed marching itself.
We are the sons, daughters, and survivors of the bloody, planar orations of these heroes.
Not bands, whose history spans only a few hundred years.
5. Without history, drum corps knows neither where it has been, where it is, nor where it is
going. This is the most frightening thought of all, as we march into a world where no expense is
too great for the sake of entertainment.
In an interesting article entitled "Should the Drum and Bugle Corps Be Replaced -- by
the Brass Band? (Instrumentalist 14(3), 1959), Arthur L. Williams found 40 college band
directors answered "yes," and 35 "no." About twenty-five had experience either playing or
conducting drum corps. One respondent suggested that "Drum corps have a proper place, I
suppose, but they seem to me to be in somewhat the same relationship to a band program as are
majorettes. I think drum corps are a symptom of poor musical taste and have no place in an
educational institution. ...The problem seems to me to be one of raising musical intelligence and
thus decreasing the interest in such groups." Obviously, drum corps has gone way out of its way
to disprove that ideology. Now the question remaining on most minds is "where does drum
corps belong?"
In the words of Sears, "Our future may depend less upon priority in exploring space than
upon our wisdom in managing the space we live in" (The Inexorable Problem of Space, 1958)
Appendix.
There are three categories of movements, each with three subcategories:
1. Movements which give and maintain the identity of form are called "Periodic" movements
because they periodically return an element to its original state, thus defining and maintaining its
original identity through movement.
Rotational (internal focal point). Pure Periodic movement maintains shape, size, position
and composition during movement, which allows a form to rotate around an ideally central focal
point.
Revolving (external focal point). When rotational movement does not maintain all but
its position, its focal point exits and the movement revolves a form around an external focal
point, which demonstrates a ttendencyor bias toward Translatory movement (change of
position).
Circuitous ("follow the leader" closed). When Periodic movement maintains shape, size,
and position but not its composition, it is ccircuitous This movement demonstrates a
Contrapuntal bias in that its composition maintains the form through complex, multidirectional
movement.
2. Movements which are not acted upon by external forces demonstrate unified action by its
compositional elements in changing location, translating a form from one location to another.
The essence of "Translatory" action is change - change of location, with a change of
direction or even shape.
Anti-linear (variable direction). Movement in which a form maintains its shape only
demonstrates unrestricted planar movement with uncompromised unity. It has a tendency to
change both position and direction, while maintaining a constant form.
Rectilinear (single direction). When pure Anti-linear movement surrenders its volition to
change direction, it becomes biased toward Periodic movement - it maintains its course, which,
as far as curved space is concerned, may eventually return it to its original state.
Canonic ("follow-the-leader"). When unrestricted, unified Translatory movement
becomes influenced by Contrapuntal (transformational) forces, it demonstrates a tendency to
change form as well as location and direction. Change of form sees the relocation of this form
accomplished in compositional order.
3. Movements which express complex translatory intentions are Contrapuntal ("marked by
counterpoint"). These movements demonstrate a tendency to transform a relationship between
two or more elements in a stationary position, thereby describing the nature of the relationship
between elements of a form.
Polar (relative linear). Pure Contrapuntal movement affects the relationship between two
or more elements without respect to form. Because Polar movement maintains no other formal
relationship but distance, this relationship is measured in relative distance between elements.
Formal ("expand/contract"). When Polar movement maintains formal while
demonstrating changing relative distance between elements, this form of contrapuntal movement
demonstrates a bias toward the Periodic class. Its relationships change in distance, but not in the
location, shape and size of form.
Structural ("reshape"). Contrapuntal movement which demonstrates change in shape of
form demonstrates a bias toward translatory yet stationary movement. In this sense, the
translatory influence moves the form not to another place, but to another state.
In the truly creative sense, this is what drum corps "do:" these nine movements and
combinations thereof.
Acknowledgements.
I would like to mention some very important help that I couldn't have written this paper
without.
First, I would like to thank my God, for mercy and for light and for my wife. I would like
to thank my wife for her saintly patience and eternal companionship. I would like to thank the
many teachers who taught me to create; especially Mr. Ronald Crosby, for being the first to
believe.
I would like to thank the RAMD Virtual Symposium 1995 Steering Committee for
supporting and serving this project, and RAMD for sharing ideas with me.
"Drum Corps Evolutions: A Bird's-Eye View of the Movement"
Copyright (c) 1995 by Stuart Rice