News You Can Bruise for 2005 June 13

Permalink [Comments] (5) Mon Jun 13 2005 21:33:

Sumana has been playing a CD of marches so I have been marching around. I invented a march I call the Dinosaur Stomp March. In this march you stand perfectly still and pose like T-Rex in the third panel of Dinosaur Comics, and move your left leg up and down in time to the beat, stomping on something. It's kind of an avant-garde march because it disregards what's generally considered the primary purpose of a march: getting you somewhere else. On the "things stomped per measure" metric, though, it's off the scale.

site-meta/Best Of NYCB

Comments:

Posted by Kristofer Straub at Tue Jun 14 2005 05:06

Is that really the primary function of a march? I think the march was designed to give crowds something to watch as you go somewhere else. You've just confined it to the single axis, the "something to watch." Hmmm, that makes me wonder where other moves would fit in this coordinate system.

Posted by Susie at Tue Jun 14 2005 10:17

You are so cute! I was telling John the other day about how we were in marching band and had to march around town at 7 AM.

Posted by Leonard at Tue Jun 14 2005 13:13

I think we have different perspectives because I used to be in marches and you, it seems to me, used to be forced to watch them. I would submit that because marches are so boring, the "going somewhere else" is actually an essential part of "something to watch". If people had to watch the junior high band march in place for twenty minutes there would be rioting.

Posted by Alyson at Tue Jun 14 2005 20:34

Good job, Leonard. I'll bet Sumana had sense of humor enough left to laugh at your Dinosaur Stomp March.

Posted by Rachel at Wed Jun 15 2005 23:04

It's both, isn't it? I mean, marching starts with the need to get somewhere ie across Belgium, then it's so long and strenuous and boring they have to devise entertainment. Plus singing will help keep the rythm and patriotic fever running high. Of course when you are marching somewhere symbolic, ie down the Champs Elysees, you have to put on an impressive show. Then you get home-town parades, which are a good way of entertaining mass amounts of people while giving the junior high marching band, girls scouts, and veteran's clubs something to do.

Leave a comment