Color Guard: Teaching Jazz Runs to Marching Band

This past week I had to teach the band members (winds and percussion) how to jazz run because one of their drill moves requires them to move quickly and cover a large distance. It got me thinking about how I was able, in only 30 minutes, to get them all looking infinitely better than when we started...and I wasn't the first one to try to teach them this season!

Here are the elements of what I taught:

• Start with the left foot back, so that you step with that foot first
• Take one step all together first, and explain that you have to take a very large step and push off the back leg
• Then explain that you have to stay in plie (which we explained meant "fold" because you're folding your legs...and oddly enough they already knew what a plie was!)
• Then we sprinkled the guard members throughout the band so they could watch around them
• I had them add in their arms at their attention position (similar to below, but our band actually touches finger tips together instead of the traditional fist, because it requires even more stability)

• We gave them the rule that when they get across the stage, they must turn around and watch the people behind them (i.e., the rule isn't that they don't talk, but no talking is a result of them watching)
• Then we repeated multiple times with each line leading off every 8 counts, so they get the hang of it; each time I gave them ONE thing to think about and told them to make ONE thing better (See my post about Rule #7: Make One Thing Better)
• Then, because there were just THAT many corrections I needed to give, I had one line go at a time, all the way across; I gave them corrections and then had the next line go
• We then showed the band director a few times and he was impressed by their improvement!

Have you taught jazz runs to your marching band before? How'd you go about doing it?