Spotlight of the Week: 1983 27th Lancers

The DCI World Championships visited Miami’s Orange Bowl Stadium in 1983, now the site of Major League Baseball’s Marlins Park.

DCI’s 12th-anniversary season became the first to be won by an eastern corps when Garfield Cadets topped the rest of the field with a show primarily based on Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.” Cadets’ show featured George Zingali’s developing style of drill writing that was often compared to the movement of water droplets. Florida’s own Suncoast Sound finished in 6th place, earning a finalist spot for the first time after moving up in placement four years in a row.

The point spread between the 1st and 12th place corps in Finals set a record high that remains to this day. Compare that spread of 20.65 points to small 11.875 spread between the 1st and 12th place corps in the 2018 Finals.

 

The 27th Lancers finished 1983 in 10th place. Founded in 1968, the corps rose from the ashes of the 1967 breakup of the Immaculate Conception Reveries, also from the same hometown of Revere, Massachusetts. The name of the new corps has an interesting pedigree, inspired by the 1936 film, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” based on the Alfred Tennyson poem of the same name. In the movie, set in 1854, Errol Flynn was stationed in India with the 27th Lancers of the British Army.

Watch the 1983 27th Lancers on DVD

Lancers’ 1983 production opened with William Walton’s “Orb and Scepter,” a march composed for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The work stylistically has much to owe to Walton’s “Crown Imperial,” written 17 years earlier and premiered at the coronation of King George VI, the father of Elizabeth.

The first part of the movement featured symmetrical drill formations centered around the 50-yard line, with the color guard performers and drum line pushing forward as the horns fanned out in arcs from the center, quickly evolving to everything becoming wildly asymmetrical in the total opposite extreme. The flag bearers slid their silks to the front sideline about a half second before catching new flags that were tossed to them from the front by the rifles, leading to another symmetrical push that evolved to an ending of curlicue forms.

 

A percussion break of less than a half-minute in length provided a very brief glimpse at “The Lost Lady Found,” the sixth and final movement of Australian composer Percy Grainger’s 1937 concert band masterpiece, “Lincolnshire Posy,” leading into “Camelot Medley,” based on the Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner musical from 1960. The medley opened with “Overture,” performed in standstill, followed by the instrumental introduction to “The Lusty Month of May.”

The instrumental interlude is a rambunctious and occasionally odd-metered ditty that isn’t heard on any soundtrack as it didn’t make it into the 1960 film. During this, the rifle bearers carried jousting lances and passed through two swinging jump ropes. The medley moved into the tender strains of “If Ever I Would Leave You,” the heart of the musical, ending with a brief coda of “The Lusty Month of May.” Next, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sea Songs” of 1923 provided a chance for the color guard to dance a jig to the accompaniment of percussion, the extended percussion feature continuing with Williams’ “The Running Set” folk dance music of 1933.

The show ended with “Danny Boy,” the traditional Irish folk melody that was performed by the corps nine times prior.

The making of a drum corps icon: 27th Lancers and “Danny Boy”

 

After playing the elegiac introduction of the melody to the backfield, with only a baritone soloist facing the stands, the soprano bugles played to the backfield the lilting triplet-feel of “Lisbon” (formerly known as “Dublin Bay”), the opening movement to “Lincolnshire Posy.” The color guard’s single flags suddenly turned into double flags as the forward push to “Danny Boy” set up by the corps’ iconic rotating wheel of horns, surrounded by a large circle of double flags. Each of the flag spinners tossed their double flags backward to the guard member behind them in what was now a half-arc partially surrounding the horns, the horn line kneeling to further emphasize the flag routine.

Inside the horn form, the rifle spinners laid back all the way to the ground, spinning from a prone position in an 11-person block triangle. Each then jumped up to just as suddenly to thrust out their right leg while balancing on their kneeling right leg.

With the flags spinning furiously, the rifle spinners jammed the butts of their rifles into the ground in one final act of supremacy, reminding all that the guard had, in the words of famed guard instructor Denise Bonfiglio, long “taught the activity how to use a color guard to be entertaining, exciting, and [to] do it with a high degree of excellence.”

1983 Overview

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Michael Boo was a member of the Cavaliers from 1975-1977. He wrote about the drum corps activity for more than 35 years while serving as a staff writer for various Drum Corps International projects. During his lifetime Boo wrote for numerous other publications including an honors-winning book on the history of figure skating. He also was an accomplished composer. Boo passed away in 2020 and was inducted into the DCI Hall of Fame posthumously in 2021.