Download of the Week: 2009 Carolina Crown

“The Grass is Always Greener” was the most successful show in Carolina Crown’s illustrious history, launching the corps into second place at the 2009 DCI World Championships. The corps was suspected to be a contender during its 20th anniversary year when it topped fellow Eastern corps the Cadets eight shows in a row in late June and early July, after the Cadets won the first four match-ups. Taking first place in Brass and Music Ensemble at the World Championships Finals, the corps solidified its ongoing reputation as one of the brass lines to beat, helping the corps come within 0.55 of winning it all. Perhaps more than any other corps, Crown proved that a corps’ pre-show performance was now indispensable to the actual judged portion of the show. Sneaking onto the field to Copland’s “The Promise of Living,” the brass players amply demonstrated their body sculpture training and seemed to delight in being continuously molded into pliable forms by some unseen giant hand. Quite intriguing was how the volume and intensity built up to a grand company front push as the corps was announced, only to have the front quickly disintegrate. The staff had commented that the show was about yearning for an ideal that may be unapproachable, striving optimistically to always have it better than our real everyday lives. Along the way, we were transported from our idyllic fantasy to fantasies that were anything but idyllic. The quirkiness of the body movements partially represented equally quirky beings we would find on the other side. Naturally, the romance that is also found would be forbidden, and “The Promise of Living” would not be realized until the end of the show.