DVD Spotlight of the Week: 1975 27th Lancers

Like last week’s Download of the Week, Dutch Boy is one of the seven corps that made the DCI World Championship Finals as a World Class corps just once. Originally known as the Dutch Boy Cadets, the corps from just over an hour west of Toronto advanced to the Finals in 1990, after slowly moving up in the ranks and making the Semifinals for the first time in 1986. 1990 Dutch Boy is the last time we’ve seen a Canadian corps in the World Class Finals, which was a common occurrence in the early years of Drum Corps International when corps like the DeLaSalle Oakands, Oakland Crusaders, and Seneca Optimists took the field. Dutch Boy in 1990 followed a new Vegas-style identity that the corps had worked to establish over several years. DCI Hall of Fame member Michael Cesario’s glitzy and glamorous color guard costume design may have been responsible for a province-wide sequin shortage in Ontario! The Broadway tune-laden show kicked off with the guard members in full capes and feathered headdresses as the corps blasted an intro fanfare to “Strangers in the Night,” heading into an interlude of “My Way,” which had been a part of the corps’ shows two and three years prior. After the brass section formed a company front while playing the “My Way” theme, the guard removed the capes and revealed a set of brightly colored flags. The opener ended with a return to “Strangers in the Night.”