Download of the Week: 2005 Cadets

“The Zone [dreamscapes in four parts with door]” of the 2005 Cadets was one of those shows that shouldn’t have worked, and yet it did. It was so intentionally strange, and yet the audience loved it. The brass and percussion sections were wearing their uniforms backward and the color guard started the show with backward faces, leading fans to wonder if the corps was coming or going. However, it worked. Those wacky elements didn’t stop the corps from scoring 99.15 (tying the 2002 Cavaliers for highest score ever), while taking Overall General Effect, Visual Performance, Brass Performance, Percussion and Color Guard. That’s all of the top honors. And the door…What was with the door? It even made it into the title of the show. On a night in Foxboro, Mass. that broke a 101-year-old record for heat and humidity, the Cadets pulled magic out of a hat and delivered a performance that left the sweating, heat-exhausted audience stunned. Prior to the week of the ’05 World Championships, the corps had lost to the Cavaliers seven times and beaten their nearest competitor three times. But then the corps won all three shows in Foxboro and opened up a 1.525 spread in the Finals. Much of the music in “The Zone” was from the movies Kill Bill and Bjork’s Dancer in the Dark, mixed with original material created by staff arranger Jay Bocook. The whole show was very surreal. Or maybe it wasn’t. Perhaps it was normal and those of us in the stands were figments of the imaginations of the creative staff. At least, it seemed that way at times. During the un-judged opening segment, we were introduced to the intrepid schoolgirl who was about to enter the door as corps members whistled “Twisted Nerve” from Kill Bill. A narration based on Rod Serling’s introduction to “The Twilight Zone” let us know we were about to enter “The Zone.” The schoolgirl approached the door amid cries from the audience proclaiming, “Don’t do it!” Apparently, she neither heard those warnings nor noticed the address on the door was 1313. She was instantly spit out the door, wearing a raincoat as color guard members spun water-reflective flags to Jay Bocook’s “Liquid.” (In truth, there were four different schoolgirls, allowing the door to seem to ingest and regurgitate the dimension-traveling girl at will.)