Good God Girl, Get a Gun!!

Back in the day—and by "day" I mean a time before Reagan promised trickle down economics would work and Woody Harrelson had hair—when you dropped your equipment during a show you left it there and continued your routine. The pursuit of synchronized precision was such that performers were expected to go on with the show, even if they left the show somewhere else! Judges watched every move giving a "tick" for each mistake they saw. Interestingly, George Bonfiglio spoke at one of our corps banquets and told us that Don Pesceone was such a scrupulous judge—even so far as to give negative scores—that DCI chose him as the first executive director, mostly to keep him from judging!

Nowadays, if you drop, pick it up and get back into the choreography as quickly as possible. Gone are the "tick sheets" of yesteryear, replaced with credit for recovery. And thank goodness! Audiences shouldn't be forced to stare at an abandoned rifle, waiting to see how many clarinets trip over it. No matter how precise the performer who lost that rifle can "air guard," the static prop lying alone on the astroturf steals the spotlight every time.

For decades now, most instructors have taught their students the importance of recovery. Buuuut, every now and then the antiquated air guard philosophy sneaks its way back in. Imagine my horror last weekend—IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND TWENTY SIX—watching a unit who had a rifle drop and pantomime her imaginary rifle along with her floor mates! I wanted to scream a slightly modified Latrice Royale favorite, "Good God Girl, Get a Gun!"

Let me try to explain it for the newbies who were apparently taught by some really old-bies: dance—or color guard—is very simply the art of linking poses and gestures. In a typical sixteen count phrase there are simply sixteen poses that need to be synchronized with other performers. Imagine that you take a picture on every count, you would have sixteen pictures (32 for the seasoned instructor who knows to also clean the &-counts). If a performer drops their equipment on count 4 and leaves it there, only to air guard the last twelve counts, TWELVE pictures are not the same as everyone else! If they pick it back up and get back into the choreography by count 8, they've only messed up four pictures. And yes, pick it up EVEN IF it's the last count of a song, but do it very, VERY quickly.

And finally, the judges' sheets credit recovery. In the five box system, Box Five says, "mistakes rarely occur, but when they do recovery it's effortless." Let's teach our students to recover professionally and if they drop, get back in and make the audience forget it happened. This is also a nice metaphor about life—for all of us old-bies who learned the hard way.