During the current drum corps offseason, Open Class coordinator David Eddleman had the opportunity to meet — via video conference — with each of DCI’s participating Open Class organizations.
For the majority of the 22 corps in the Open Class division, there hasn’t been a performance in nearly three years.
“It's been a really good way for a temperature check,” he said. “We were all, of course, concerned throughout the activity about these years off — some of our corps having one summer off, some having two summers off, particularly in the Open Class.”
But make no mistake, those two years have been filled to the brim with ongoing work and planning.
That hard work — grouped with diligence and cautiousness — has Open Class corps across the country excited for the 2022 Drum Corps International Tour.
It’s been a long road, but Open Class coordinator David Eddleman didn’t mince words when describing how impressed he’s been with the work of those organizations.
“I'm happy to report that many of our corps are in pretty good shape and, surprisingly, in pretty decent financial condition,” he continued. “That was one of the big concerns with being off; how is that going to impact everybody? And through some of the government grants and through some prudent finances over the course of these couple of years, they're weathering the storm.”
The key, now, is executing the long-term plans provided by hibernation. Now is when all of that planning comes to fruition, and it starts with piecing together the ensembles that will take part in this summer's DCI Tour.
To put it more simply, it’s audition season.
The winter recruitment cycle has brought its share of challenges but also successes for various Open Class corps, who are looking to fill their corps despite two years out of the public eye.
In many cases, corps have to start from scratch on indoctrinating students into the drum corps activity.
That’s no easy task, but according to Katherine Steinacker — director of The Battalion and chair of the Open Class Advisory Committee — corps are up to the challenge.
“We're seeing a lot of students who have taken two years off of fall programs, or there are now two freshmen classes in these marching programs that are just barely getting their feet wet in the marching arts,” she said. “And they're excited about it, but they just don't know that it’s an option for them moving forward.”
In order to generate excitement, corps are finding that some of their “old ways” are paying dividends in terms of recruitment, and it’s allowing them to create face-to-face connections with schools in their area.
“They're getting out into the school buildings,” Eddleman said. “They're taking some of the more recent recordings of corps performances and reacquainting the students.”
According to Eddleman, while the small handful of Open Class ensembles that participated in 2021 DCI Celebration events have seen it pay dividends in their audition efforts, the many groups who weren’t able to take the field last summer have had to work from one step further back in the reemergence process.
“It's been a little more of a challenge than the corps that actually did something this past summer with students,”Eddleman said. “So we're finding it’s definitely a mixed bag, in terms of them coming back and recruiting.”
But thankfully, regardless of a corps’ status, one of the highlights of the past two years, in Steinacker’s eyes, has been the unity and collaboration among World and Open Class organizations.
The “information sharing,” as she put it, has played a crucial role in helping all groups return from their hibernation, no matter how long it lasted.
“Those corps that were on the road and have gone through the pandemic, either at home or all the way to Indy, are willing to share information and what they learned with groups that were inactive, or are just figuring things out,” she said. “I think that will yield success across the activity for everyone.
“The conversations that are being had,” she added, “and the questions that are being asked, I think will serve us in the long run as an entire group.”