It’s August, it must be creeper season…

Sorry for the title, trying to get your attention. If you have been a What The Feis groupie for a while, you have probably already seen the article I posted last August about the guy videoing dancers at a feis. If not, here is the link again.

Why am I bringing it up, well, it happened again this weekend and I wanted to share the story from a follower who messaged it to me via Facebook.

Wanted to write to you and let you know that we were at the Missouri State Championships in St. Louis this weekend and while watching the PC/OC stage we sat next to an older gentleman. We noticed that he was not just watching one particular child and when a young little dancer would walk by him he would write her number down on a sheet if paper. When I took a closer look at the sheet he was writing on there were LOTS of different dancers numbers. We went to let the volunteers know and in about five minutes staff of the Feis and hotel security were talking to the man. He stated he was just watching his “granddaughter” but he became very uncomfortable while they talked with him. Staff then looked like they were leaving but the hotel security guard sat two rows back. We watched as this man crumpled the numbers sheet up and dropped it on the floor and then he got up and walked out of the room. The security guard followed him out. We later caught back up with the staff and security guard and they stated they took his photo and all staff would have his picture for Sundays Feis. It was just scary to know that this happens even though we read about it this hit home for our school and we spread the word for dancers to be vigilant about what they are walking around in and also who is talking/watching them.

She also added:

the STAFF for the Feis did an amazing job at handling this! I think they need to know that too. :)

It truly saddens me that these kinds of things happen, but this should serve as a reminder that we have to be always watching. That is not easy at a feis, with everything that is going on, but if just one person reports anything ‘out of the ordinary’, it will make a difference.

Please share this with everyone, the more people that are aware that it CAN happen to them, the better. It happened to us.

You may also want to take a look at some of the other posts about safety I have put together. If you have any to share, please do and I will post links to them.

Thanks, and please be careful out there!

Rockland County Feis 2014 PC/OC Review

rocklandThe 41st Annual Rockland County Feis was held on July 20, 2014 at the German Masonic Park in Tappan, NY.

Venue

Outside, in an open field. Bring your tents and chairs because it can get hot and the premium real estate goes fast. There is parking all around the venue, with parking attendants to direct the drivers. Trying to lug your Zuca bag through the rocks in the parking lot brings its own challenges, but the dancer managed it well. Bring your money, there is a per person gate fee attached to this feis, of course, dancers do not need to pay. There are activities going on all day – singing, music, kids games, even a playground for the siblings of bored dancers.

Rating 9.

Food

Good, typical food with relatively good prices. Typical sandwiches in the afternoon and bagels in the morning. There was a large beer garden over by the music section. I did see many dads in that section. I wonder why?

Rating 9.

Vendors

Nothing special. All essential feis items were represented.

Rating 8.

Stages

Multiple grade stages across from three champ stages. I did not get out a measuring tape, but I would bet that at least one of the champ stages were not to regulation. They were awfully small. Many dancers were seen maneuvering corners and “going around” other dancers. Grade stages appeared to be the correct size.

Rating 5.

Musicians

Loud enough with good music. These musicians were smart, bringing their own tents to keep cool.

Rating 9.

Awards

So, so. Trophies for champs, no sashes and no podiums. A podium would have been nice so parents could see who the winners are. Remember, most of the dancers are shorter than the parents and it was crowded in the red and white small circus tent. Volunteers tried to call out the names of winners to the background noise of passing trains, making it very difficult to hear. I found myself asking “Who?” many times. Some of the higher level champs had perpetual trophies and they looked very nice. Grade trophies and medals were nice.

Rating 6.

Flow

The stages appeared to go off as scheduled. There was a nice speaker system that had a gentleman announcing the progress on stages and times of awards. Award times were posted on Twitter – though sometimes as they were starting “Results for 215 – now”… not very helpful when trying to get a dress back on and put down your beer cup from the garden.

Rating 8.

Overall – 8

What Say You?

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Governor Thomas Dongan Feis 2014 PC/OC Review

medalThe 26th Annual Governor Thomas Dongan Feis was held on Saturday July 19, 2014 at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY.

Venue

After several years of attending this feis, I still have no idea why I can’t find the actual venue. Everyone says to drive to the “big egg”. I can see the big egg, but it always takes me 15 minutes to figure out how to park near the big egg. This year was a little better, with only 10 minutes of circling the venue and its three surrounding blocks before I paid my $5 to park. Bring cash with you upstairs, because each adult is charged an additional gate fee. Grade stages are in the main room, with champ stages in two separate rooms.

Rating 8.

Food

The rooms are closely guarded with volunteers who will not let in ANY outside food. If you want something to drink, you must buy it there and eat it outside. One volunteer actually tried to stop my child from walking in with her water bottle. The food is OK, long lines around lunch time.

Rating 8.

Vendors

The typical ones, shoes, socks and tee shirts. All of the essential feis items were represented.

Rating 8.

Stages

I am always amazed when this feis starts. There are four grades stages, all running concurrently. All stages start at once because they share the same musician. The stages are on a convention floor, only the dancers are allowed in the stage area. Stage volunteers do a great job lining dancers up to be ready. There are plenty of seats around the stages (higher up) for all of the parents to view. Stages 5 and 6 are in separate rooms, one with a raised stage, the other flat. Both rooms had adequate seating for on lookers.

Rating 9.

Musicians

One musician for 4 grade stages. The reels start and they don’t stop until all of the stages are complete. It always amazes me that they seem to keep to their published schedule. The Champ stages basically ran to time when we were there as well. Great job!

Rating 9.

Awards

Uh, not much to say here. Champ awards included sashes and tiny ceramic vases with near dead tiny flowers. Medal rounds included clear plastic “medals”. The grades had the same plastic “medals” and first place trophies as well. With all of the money collected at the gate, I would think better awards may be a possibility, but what do I know.

Rating 5.

Flow

Good, kept to schedule. Awards came out relatively quickly. Parents were updated on Twitter with times of awards and pictures. Over all good.

Rating 9

Overall score: 8

What did you think?

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Feis Dads – Extra Strong T-Shirt Design

UPDATE: It is now available for purchase, click here.


 

I rolled this out to a few dozen people a few weeks ago and it was received really well. So I would like to formerly announce the upcoming release of the Feis Dads – Extra Strong T-Shirt.

Inspired by some old Irish drink labels, in case you can’t tell,  Feis Dads Extra Strong is a play on a dad’s ‘typical’ role in Irish dance. The date is based on info I found about when feiseanna became an organized sport.

feisDadsExtraStrong

The initial release will be on black t-shirts and I hope to have them available the weekend of 7/12. It will be priced in the $21 to $23 range due to the two-color design.

Let me know what you think and if you love it, share it  ;)

St. Ambrose Spring Feis 2014

The 22nd annual St. Ambrose Spring Feis was held Saturday, May 10, 2014 to Sunday, May 11, 2014 in Pomona, CA. This was our second year in a row attending this feis. We enjoyed ourselves so much last year that we decided to give it a go again and were not disappointed.

Venue

The venue for this feis is one of our favorites. This feis has been held at the Sheraton Fairplex Hotel and Conference Center in Pomona, California. The huge conference center building has all the stages and vendors in the same place plus a huge area to practice on the side, making it nice for parents with multiple dancers or parents that dance as well. There were quite a few dances that I was able to look down the line and see my daughter dancing while I was waiting in line to dance. Usually, I have to miss some of her dances because we are in separate rooms. It was a bit more crowded this year than last, however, we were only there on Sunday for the grades, not Championships. The building was nice and cool and the hotel is located in a safe little neighborhood close to the freeway. Parking is a breeze as there is always plenty of parking right in front of the conference center, and free too!

Judges

Most of the judges looked like they were having a good time and happy to be there. There were a few that were a bit more stern and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the dancers, but you never know. One of the best parts of the day was watching one of my favorite judges hide the microphone from the announcer with an impish grin and then scurry off. The mood was playful throughout the day between judges and announcers and made for less nerves and butterflies for the dancers.

Music

The music at this feis was ok. It was a little faster than most feisanna as some tend to be at times. The only major negative I found with this feis was a music issue and it wasn’t really the musicians fault. Being that the building was so large and had a VERY high ceiling, the fact that the musicians were stationed at one end of the stages made for some very distorted sounding music by the time it reached the other end of the stages. It was very hard to dance to and a lot of people were complaining about that. I think they finally turned on a speaker at the other end halfway throughout the day.

Food

This feis had three food options on site. One feis food cart and a little pre-made sandwich shop from the hotel were located within the building, while the hotel lounge/restaurant was a few minute walk across the courtyard. I personally, did not eat at any of these but I heard that they were all pretty costly. As with most feisanna, we brought our own food to munch on during the day. Being that this was in Southern California there are a variety of really good Mexican restaurants within minutes from the hotel and we took advantage of one of them after it was over. There are plenty of other eating options in the area if you want to drive there.

Vendors

Not as many booths as most of the feisanna we attend. Two or three shoe/wigs booths and the feis shirt guy was about it at this one.

Results

Results were on time and posted on the huge wall over on the other side of the room so not much crowding and shoving to see them which is always nice.

Feis Flow

This feis was very on time and flowed very nicely just like last year. Once it started there was not a lot of waiting in between dances and the day went by very fast and was fun.

Summary

This feis was super fun and very low key. It is located in an area with lots to do and see as well. Cleary is well organized and makes it enjoyable. We hope to be able to come every year. One thing I really like about this feis was the amount of adults that competed. The numbers were a lot higher than most feisanna and if you are an adult dancer this is a great one to move up in since there were way over 5 in all my dances.

I give this feis 9.0

So what did you think?

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Dayton Feis 2014, PC/OC Levels Review

The 42nd annual Dayton Feis was held on June 27th, 2014 at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

This is the third time I have done the Dayton Feis at Sinclair. Here are the posts about past experiences if you are interested, but its going to sound like what is below ;)  In fact, so little has changed, I am copying and pasting sections from last years review where approprite (indented and italicized). Why rewrite history?  ;)

Venue

Stages and Seating

The feis was split into three floors of the building. The competitions held on the lowest level in an indoor track and field building, a second floor that had a cafeteria, the tabulation room and where the OC/PC presentations were done, and the top level where results were posted and awards were presented. Lots of stairs so not the best for people with limited mobility, but there were elevators available.

There were six stages, which in general were good sizes. The smallest was 24 x 20 and the largest was 32 x 32 (one of the champ stages). While the smaller stage is bigger than some I have seen, the issue with this one is that it was half of a joined stage (stages 5 & 6) that were split down the middle by a piece of tape.

The stages were slippery, but the feis crew was VERY proactive trying to keep the stages safe. I saw multiple times where they stopped activity on the stage to mop. Sure, it slowed things down a bit, but in the interest of safety, who can complain.

Chairs seemed adequate, but… oh if you have read any of my reviews you know what I am going to say… although adequate, they were not used inefficiently and there were lots of standing viewers. :(

Camping and Access

Camping in the dance area was very limited, but the second level had a lot more area available, just not as convenient.

It actually seemed like there were more people there this year than in the past two years. Very crowded and more difficult than usual to get around the venue. Camping was an issue.

Awards and Results

The results and awards were two floors up for Grades level dancers. Room to move around, but running up and down a few flights of stairs could be draining and not easy at all for mobility challenged visitors.

Awards and results for PC/OC was on the second floor on a small stage in the cafeteria area and there was plenty of seating and viewing room. There were three ways to get to the stage so there was no need for dancers to crowd around close which made it less congested than usual.

Parking

Parking was plentiful, in the schools parking garage and lots, and there was a covered walkway from the garage to the venue. Parking in the garage was only $2. It was a bit of a hike from the parking area into the venue and as far as I could tell, there was no where where mobility challenged viewers could be dropped fairly close to the door.

Other

The other ‘item of note’ that they have done in both years previously is the bathrooms. Considering the number of females at these events, they turned some of the men’s rooms into women’s rooms for the day, in fact, the only men’s room I knew about was on the top floor. I feel sorry for the potty training male parents or smaller-bladdered men.

Judges

Only really saw the judges on our stage. There were three of course, and I thought one of them seemed a bit distracted and saw that judge occasionally not watching the dancers. The other two were very attentive.

Music

Even I could tell there were music issues this year. There were complaints from dancers and I saw the musician fiddling with the speakers multiple times. Neither TGC nor the girl she was dancing with could hear well enough to start, and told the judges. The musician turned up the speakers(again) and the girls were able to complete their steps. I have seen this musician plenty of times with no issues, so I am wondering if it was an equipment issue. I thought there was a lot of ambient noise which probably contributed to the issues.

Food

Using the college concession worked to the feis advantage. Food was plentiful, had some variety and was priced for college students. There were also healthy options like fruit cups and hummus and chips in addition to pizza etc…

Vendors

Actually not as good as last year! I saw George the shoe guy, and the wig people, and the t shirt table that had a nice variety of add-ons for the t-shirts. The photography guy was there, and there was some ‘crafty’ stuff, but really nothing else ‘stood out’. Not an M&M in sight either.

Results

I have mixed feelings about the way awards were handled for PC/OC. For as long as I was there, they made Champ results announcements every hour at fifteen past the hour. Not really a bad system necessarily, but they only did a few comps each time, so if your comp didn’t make the cutoff, you would have to wait an extra hour. Since I was ‘associated’ with the feis, I found out the results for TGC’s comp had been tabulated in about 90 minutes (the average), but, they were not announced for about 2 and a half hours after she had finished dancing because we ‘missed the cutoff’. NOTE: I did not have access to results, just knew when the tabulations were done.

The other thing this feis does is announce overall placers first, and then announce the ‘shoes’, all the while having the overall winners stand on the stage. Sorry, not a fan. Do shoes, then overall :)

Two other thing I thought was out of place, no podium, which I suppose can be attributed to the venue, but the ‘worst’ thing (tongue in cheek worst of course), there were no sashes! OMG!

Feis Flow

Flow was actually pretty good. TGC and her comp got through both steps in around an hour, and they were staggered on the same stage with another comp. There were an average number of dancers so I thought an hour was pretty good.

Also heard an announcement that stages were moving pretty quickly and would be rearranged to move things along a bit faster. I remember the same thing happening last year. This can be good but can also cause issues if parents and dancers aren’t being attentive to the possible changes.

Scoring

Another tough one to score. A local feis and I have volunteered for the past two years. I know how hard the people work but there are some ‘things’ that could be done a bit better. I tend to think that we are outgrowing that venue, granted I don’t know what other options are available. Mix that with some of the music issues and the results comments I had, and I would have to put Dayton in the 6.5 – 7 range. Sorry Dayton, love you guys, but I gotta call them like I see them. Gimme a call, when can go out for a beer and talk about it.

Of course we will be back.

What did you think?

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Celtic Fling Feis 2014, PC/OC Levels Review

cfLogoThe Celtic Fling Feis was held on June 28th, 2014 in Manheim, PA.

This is an outdoor feis, combined with an Irish-Scottish festival. Be aware that each adult needs to pay to get into the feis (it includes admission to the fair) even if you do not want to go to the fair. The parking is well organized with parking attendants leading you to your appropriate spot. A short walk later and you have been transported into a Renaissance Village with the signage to prove it. Ye Enter Here! Be prepared for long lines to get tickets and dancer numbers, although there is an option to pick them up the night before.

Venue

The dancers loved the Renaissance look. As far as trying to lug a Zuca bag through the village…. not easy. The paths are all rocks and hard to push or pull the required many items that feis people need. The smart people arrived early with their tents and chairs, camping in the very small amount of shade available. Overall, since it wasn’t really humid, it wasn’t raining and it wasn’t all that hot, it was nice once you managed to get your gear past the rock path.

Rating – 9

Food

There is a small snack stand close to stages 4 and 5. The offerings were pretty slim. Think granola bars, fruit and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Nachos, chicken fingers and soda for lunch. My guess is that they keep the offerings minimal because the good food is over at the fair. Prices were reasonable.

Rating – 6

Judges

The ones that I saw seemed attentive. The dancers rotated stages so they were able to experience different judges.

Rating – 10

Musicians

We had a well-known musician on our stage, who is always fabulous. On one of the OC stages, there were reports that a less than wonderful musician was present. Stories of wrong music, wrong speeds and a lot of starting and re-starting. It may not be a good idea to place a new musician on an OC stage where these dancers can clearly call the musician out….just a thought.

Rating – 6

Awards

The champ awards were nice. Medal round awards for only the first place champion dancer. They did have crystal awards instead of trophies (a nice change) and nice sashes. The grades awards came out relatively quickly with happy dancers receiving trophies and medals. There were even ribbons for places greater than third.

Rating – 9

Vendors

Only 3. One shoe, one tee shirt and one “feis essentials” vendor. Nothing special. The real vendors were at the fair.

Rating – 7

Overall

A nice feis as long as the weather is good. The flow and results are good and everybody can enjoy some traditional Irish and Scottish music and games post feis. Get there early and bring your chairs and a tent and you will have a good day.

Overall Score – 9

Did you Fling? What did you think?

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What goes online, stays online…

foreverThis morning, while getting caught up on things in my home office, with my ever present social media streams going on the monitor, I saw a well-known dancer who I have always admired post a rather derogatory over-generalization.  I won’t say who or what, you can probably find it, and that is the point of this post.

I know people use social media for all kinds of reasons; to praise, to complain, to share, to seek, to buy, and so on. What lots of people seem to forget, or maybe not realize in the first place is, that temporary rant that is on your screen right now, and off it 15 seconds from now, is still out there.

I am not guilt-free here, I have bitched, posted negative reviews, and criticized companies online. I realize that these comments will be out there and will most likely be seen by the ‘targets’ of those comments, and in general, that is my intention, hoping to get a reaction that fixes an issue. My comments are posted intentionally, with a purpose. I am not saying that makes it right, I am saying that what you post could have results, some that you may not have intended.

So when I saw that post this morning, and know what an influence this dancer has on so many, I began to wonder how her comment might be perceived by her audience, and how it might affect what others think. Please note that I saw the comment as a rant, a vent, blowing off steam at a current situation, and it was not unlike similar comments made by thousands everyday. It just made me think.

I imagine some of her fans who see the comment and think to themselves ‘well if she sees it that way, and I admire her, than I should maybe think that way too.’ On the other hand, I can see people who look up this person after hearing about her for the first time, seeing that comment and thinking ‘what a diva, I don’t know why she is so popular.’

So what is the point?

You are thinking, I am not popular, I don’t have thousands of followers, what I say doesn’t matter. Yes, yes it does. It may not matter right at this very moment, and truthfully, it may never matter, but before you post something, you need to think about the fact that someday it might matter. This goes for words, for pictures, for videos, for whatever, because what you post today, in that moment of anger, sadness, joy, whatever will still be out there years from now. Is it something you want your Dad to find, your Grandmum when she finally joins Twitter, or your potential boss in two years when you are going for that $50K a year job?

And if you do have thousands of followers, it may matter more. You have thousands of followers for a reason, they think the things that come out of your brain are important, or funny, or informative. You affect people. Please remember that in that moment of ‘insert emotion here’ when you post that ‘insert potentially negative stuff here’, because it might affect somebody in a way you never imagined.

But I never use my name, no one knows me…

Or so you think.

In the interest of full disclosure, we had a social media incident in the WTF household. TGC had an anonymous Twitter account which started innocently enough, but which ended abruptly when she made a snide comment about a dancer at her school. You see, although she never used her name, or her school name, there was enough info there that some of the dancers at her school knew it was her posting, but never revealed that they knew. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the TCRG telling me about the account.

It took her a long time to rebuild the relationships she had damaged because of that social media account, and the one time she posted something hurtful is what caused all the damage, the one time.

I am off my soapbox now…

Sorry, as you can see this is a subject that hits close to home. Remember your words do not go away. Please pass this on to whoever you think might be able to use it. BTW, that is all of us :)