After some rather restrictive mitigation efforts were put in place last year, the Greene County High School Marching Band is looking to increase its participation this year.

Director Wes Anderson says after taking a couple of years off, the marching band will be attending the Iowa High School Music Association State Marching Band contest in Fort Dodge. In preparation for the contest, Anderson says their more traditional marching show features a new performance style with a narrative, called “Dragon Hunt.”

“It starts out with a narrator telling the audience that there’s been a dragon terrorizing these parts for the last couple of years. Then the show goes on to kind of describe the battle between the villagers and the dragon. Some heroes come along, played by our color guard members, to slay the dragon in the end.”

Anderson says these types of marching band shows are new in terms of integrating technology and writing for different instruments.

“The music is easier, but it sounds harder, and the technology that’s involved is just extremely cool. I couldn’t pass up on it because it was just a really cool show, and I thought, ‘Meh, let’s try this out and see how this goes.’ And then it just kind of led to other ideas like getting back into competition as well.”        

Anderson invites the public to attend home varsity football games, where the band will perform portions of the show until the state contest in October.