As the clock struck zero during the second quarter of Saturday’s victory against Maryland, the Spartan Marching Band was accompanied by a few extra performers for one of the most stunning halftime shows ever performed in Spartan Stadium.
The routine was called “The Art of the March: Cues from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War,’” and featured “an amazing display of color, lights and sounds” as well as five tracks from the film “Crouching Tiger,” according to a press release.
Drawing its influence from Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” the performance featured 600 performers, 300 of which were band members, in addition to smoke, dancers and even a dragon.
The coordinator of this audacious event was Jennifer Ma, the same person who choreographed the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.
While Ma acknowledged Spartan Stadium was a strange venue for a cultural Chinese performance, considering neither football nor marching bands exist in China, a massive arena on campus was “the perfect venue for bridging cultural understandings.”
“Shared experience of watching creates community,” Ma said in a press release. “Art isn’t just in the walls of a museum or in a theater. It’s really important we go outside those walls and bring a shift in perspective, a new experience, to millions of people.”
The show had many on-campus figures and students excited.
“This collaborative partnership shows a unity of purpose and focus across disciplinary lines, which exemplifies MSU as one of the world’s leading international universities,” Dean of the College of Music James Forger said.
Students were also intrigued by the spectacular performance. Political science freshman Carla Chambliss was in the performance Saturday and witnessed the expression on the crowd’s faces.
She had multiple individuals, namely students, approach her after the show and congratulate the band and the other performers on the performance.
Members of the marching band were also more than happy to aid in such a dazzling orchestra of music, dancing, and visuals.
Kinesiology junior Connor Miller said the Spartan Marching Band spent weeks in preparation and coordinated with departments from all over the university.
“This week’s show was an amazingly unique combination of two drastically different cultures,” he said, “And it all came together on the football field Saturday.”
