The Rio Vista High School marching band calls its UIL contest routine “Arabesque.”

It could easily be subtitled “In the Heat of the Night.”

Taking the field before a fire started at the Georgetown stadium and lit up the surrounding sky, Rio Vista snared second place Saturday at the Class 2A area competition to qualify for the first time ever for the state contest next Monday at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Rio Vista will be the 15th of 18 bands performing in the preliminaries. Seven bands will advance to the finals.

Clifton was first and Ballinger third.

The Eagles were jubilant.

“We’ve never been to state before in band,” said 10th year band director Michael Cox. “We’re only the second group activity from Rio Vista to get to state. One-act play advanced in 2004.”

Cox likes the Eagles’ chances at San Antonio.

“I’m a little superstitious, so I hate to say,” he said, “but I think the kids have a shot if they continue to work hard and don’t let performing in the Alamodome get them unnerved. It’s a shock for country kids to go into a big stadium like that, but after what they pulled this weekend, they can do anything they set their minds to doing. We just have to fix one or two little problems we had at area.

“Clifton did really well this weekend, too. They have a really good 2A band. They’ve had strong success for decades. My kids are just starting to experience that success. A lot of 2A bands have never been to state and never will. We’re one of 18 that will out of 200 bands.”

For Rio Vista, success in band hasn’t come overnight.

“It’s been a slow building process,” Cox said. “We’ve been gradually building year after year. The kids have worked really hard. This is the year everything started to fall in place.”

Cox settled on “Arabesque” in early summer. The band began putting the pieces together in August, using three definitions of the word “Arabesque” in three performance movements.

“Music and drill are used to portray each definition,” Cox said. “We took music that already existed and spliced it together to make it work with the concept. We came up with the concept in June and started working on the show in August.”

Cox wanted music with a Middle Eastern feel.

“I found music that had kind of a Middle Eastern melody,” he said. “I was looking at all kinds of words and ideas for a good title. I came across ‘arabesque,’ looked up the definition, and found three. One is a ballet pose. Well, our color guard can do the ballet poses.

“After we started working on it, the kids really enjoyed it. We got a lot of good crowd reaction. I knew by the time we had our first football game and had our full show on the field that we were going to do well at least in region.

“As we got closer to area, I felt we started to have a shot at going to state. Last week, the kids started getting really involved and believing they had a chance. They kept their cool and focus during the performance.”

By necessity, the Eagle band has a one for all and all for one mentality.

“Because of the size of our band [40 students], every student has to play every note of the performance,” Cox said. “Nobody can rely on anybody else to take up their spot. So they really have to keep up their endurance and perform for 7 and a half minutes.”

The band’s reaction to the No. 2 placement?

“Raucous,” Cox said.

The energy level was already high.

“We had an extra bit of entertainment when the stadium caught fire, and everybody had to be evacuated,” Cox said. “We were all huddled in the parking lot, trying to find out the results. Those of us who advanced to state had to stick around even longer to go to the press box. That was pretty late in the evening.”

Cox didn’t mind staying up late Saturday. He doesn’t mind getting up early again this week.

“This is definitely worth having early morning practices,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll gladly do that for another week.”