Seattle Cascades show designers wanted to do something a bit different for 2025.
According to program coordinator Nick Benson, one of the corps’ main goals is steady growth.
“We’ve really been focused on the philosophy of solid, stable growth,” Benson said. “Not trying to imagine that we’re building for a show that’s five years from now, but to say that this is who we are, and really embrace it and love it so that we can grow naturally.”
As part of its growth process, Cascades decided to go back to the basics.
The corps’ 2025 production, “Primary” is an exploration of fundamental elements — such as colors, shapes, emotions, and instincts — coming together to create something greater than the sum of their parts.
With a high-contrast visual design and a diverse musical repertoire, both pulled from an array of artistic media, “Primary” aims to provide an innovative and immersive experience for performers and audiences alike.
“This year we’re aiming to add a little bit more depth and layers,” Benson said. “Especially musically, as the group is growing, that’s kind of our next big step. We’re really trying to dig in a bit more and challenge the membership.”
According to Benson, one of the Cascades’ benefits is flexibility.
“We’re not really beholden so much to what people expect a Cascades show to be like,” he said, “which is really pretty wonderful and freeing, to be honest.”
“Primary,” according to Benson, provides the Cascades the opportunity to delve into something potentially more intellectual than the more story-oriented productions of their recent seasons.
As such, the timeline of the production doesn’t follow a start-to-finish story arc. Creative director Kurt Jull and Benson described it as more of an “anthology.”
“We’ll start with void and darkness,” Benson said, “and then we will do the three primary colors as movements. Then, the end is basically going to be — without giving too much away — some sort of fusion of everything."
Musically-speaking, Seattle Cascades’ program will pull from a diverse repertoire. Much of it, as well, carries a high degree of recency and popularity.
For one, the corps plans to perform Coldplay’s “Yellow” — titled after a primary color — and Selena Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song.” Further, though, much of the corps’ repertoire comes from various forms of Asian music, including K-Pop, J-Pop, and anime genres.
“‘Yellow’ from Coldplay is an obvious choice,” Jull said, “and will connect with a lot of people who are very familiar with the piece.”
Cascades’ inclusion of “Butterfly” by the South Korean pop group BTS — as well as “Usseewa” by Japanese singer/songwriter Ado — according to Jull, garnered especially strong, positive reactions when introduced to the corps’ members.
“When they saw that they were playing ‘Butterfly’ by BTS, they definitely roared,” he said. “I think the biggest roar that came out of the members was for ‘Usseewa’ — they completely jumped up and freaked out about that.”
As one might expect, Seattle Cascades’ visual plans tie back to the primary elements that serve as the show’s focus.
According to Jull, though, the corps’ plan is to touch on these various elements in a more subtle way, with neutral colors serving as more of the show’s basis.
“It’s not our intention to bombard the costuming and set design with all of the primary colors all at once,” he said. “In some ways, the styling of the show is going to be very black and white. So every time we do introduce color, it will be very dramatic and isolated in some ways, which will be kind of interesting.”
“We plan on having multiple props out there,” he added, “and there will be lots of shape and lots of color.”
Benson added that Cascades plan to use choreography to embody the various emotions and characteristics invoked by the primary colors.
“Another big component of what we’re doing visually is the embodiment of character and energy, and how each segment has its own emotional quality,” he said. “We’re really trying to be very clear about those shifts in ideas from one section to the next, offering variety, which will challenge the performers in a lot of different ways.”
Fresh off of back-to-back top-25 finishes since returning to action in 2023, Cascades will debut “Primary” on the 2025 DCI Tour June 30 in Ogden, Utah.