2016 Hero

In the days of the Western frontier, heroes rode to the rescue on horseback, sabres drawn, flags flying. Heroes today still may wear a uniform, but the Troopers' 2016 production, "Hero," will celebrate the heroes who appear among us in our everyday lives.

The program for the 2016 Drum Corps International competitive season was revealed to the corps members during their camp March 18-20 near Dallas. What they saw was a Troopers show that moves the corps in a modern direction, with a visual design and musical book that the instructional staff said dials up the sophistication and demand a couple notches from 2015.

They also saw a new look to the corps uniform that is sure to command attention. "Hero" will begin with a single voice of a Troopers member. Then a second voice will join the first, followed by another and more until dozens of Troopers' voices create a cacophony of testimony to the heroes in their lives.

The rising buzz of voices unleashes a joyful fanfare, "Hero," composed by brass arranger Robert W. Smith, which transports the scene to the military battlefield. The percussion then picks up an original composition by Paul Rennick, mixed into the warlike electronic soundscape of corps sound designer John Davidson. Paul Lovatt-Cooper's "Walking With Heroes" brings the troops home from war, complete with a giant yellow ribbon. The color not only is associated with homecomings, but also "pulls at the heart of everything that is Troopers," said visual coordinator Michael Raiford.

It's at that point, Raiford said, that the production "moves you away from that in ways very unexpected for the Troopers." The focus shifts from military heroes to those who have suffered or died from AIDS, thus taking on a subject that has had a real, though largely unspoken, impact on the drum-corps community. The intensity of the Grammy-Award-winning music -- never before performed in DCI -- and the velocity of the movement will produce what Smith called "rock 'em sock 'em drum corps" that resolves into a "loving, warm" hymn-like statement to end the second movement.

That's when fire alarms sound and other heroes emerge: first-responders using ladders as a primary visual motif. The original music, composed by Smith, is big and urgent, and the guard is busy with weapons work. And of course, there's a dramatic rescue.

Safely pulled from danger, the rescued woman is draped in a pink sweater -- the color of ribbons worn by breast-cancer survivors -- as the chords to Coldplay's 2005 hit "Fix You" rise from the brass. "It builds and builds and builds," Smith said, "into a massive statement" celebrating the heroes in our families who struggle against the disease.

As the show draws to its poignant climax, the familiar symbol of ribbons take over the field. "If you take a ribbon, put a circle on top, and dashes on side, you get a symbol that looks like a paper doll," Raiford said. It's a symbol that will appear throughout the production, he said, "as an idea of community."

Corps director Fred Morris said the show has a universal appeal. “There is no one on the field or in the stands who can’t relate to this,” he told the Casper Star-Tribune.. From first step to last, Raiford said, the corps will move in ways that take cues from sign language. "Much less 'marching,' he said, "and more 'movement.'"

If the show is new territory for a corps that will mark its 59th year in 2016, so is the look. The Troopers will bring out a new uniform, featuring a cream-colored jacket evoking a 19th-Century figure, topped by a white Stetson.

In drum corps, the tension between history and the future is always near the surface, perhaps no more so than in Casper, where Western heritage runs deep and which the Troopers have personified since 1957. Raiford said the question on the table was a big one: "How do we move a legend forward?" By connecting the heroic spirit of the wide-open West to the heroic battles of every day. A new kind of show, and a new, lighter look.

"We wanted it to feel human, accessible. We were looking for the human quality of it, with clear nods to history, " Raiford said.

Besides, he said, "Good guys wear white hats."

---

Final Placement

14th Place: 83.80

---

Repetoire

Hero by Robert W Smith
Walking with Heroes by Paul Lovatt-Cooper
Symphony No. 1 by John Corigliano
Fix You by Coldplay