The Paul Laurence Dunbar 2023 marching band show is entitled “Blown Away.” The show features dandelion props, several different brightly colored flags, stunning uniforms, and much more.

The marching band started their season on July 24 with two weeks of full-day Band Camp, and they will continue through the month of October.

Throughout the season the band will compete at Lafayette High School, Bryan Station High School, South Oldham High School, and George Rogers Clark High School. Their state finals competition this year will be held at Western Kentucky University on Oct. 28.

When most people first hear about the show theme it does not sound incredibly interesting, but the show is completely brought alive by all of its different elements and the energy of all the performers.

The show goes through how dandelions die and are reborn, and the beauty of this process.

“The show is really about renewal, the dandelion seedlings are blown away and then they come back,” Nick Crawford said.

The show represents this as its colors gradually change from a yellow and green scheme to white, and then to yellow again. The props that cover the field are white dandelions covered in seedlings that throughout the second and third movements of the show are slowly pulled out by the band and the color guard so that the flower props can open and bloom into a yellow dandelion for the final movement of the show.

This show is slowly beginning to change the mindsets of all the band members and all of the other people involved in putting it together, including the drum majors.

Junior Sky Elser said, “This show is honestly just really special. It makes me so happy to see all of these people doing an amazing job bringing the show together.”

The band is currently working on toughing up movements one, two, and three, and they will start work on the fourth and final movement soon. The third movement of the show, the ballad, features the song “One Day I’ll Fly Away” from the Broadway musical Moulin Rouge. This along with several other beautiful songs make the show even more entertaining to watch and listen to.

This show has come a long way already and hopefully, all of the effort and hard work will reflect in all of their performances throughout the season.

Head drum major, junior BeiBei Sheng said, “I think the show really has a deeper meaning of hope, and I really do think that it has the potential of getting our band to finals this year.”

Hopefully, Dunbar students and families will get an opportunity to come out and watch the band
perform at either a home football game or at one of their competitions before the season ends.