Hansen Keohane School Feis Review 2014

Posted by:Boston Feis DadonApril 18, 2014   0 Comments

The 2014 Hansen Keohane School Feis was held Sunday April 13th at the Dedham High School and Dedham Middle School in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Venue

This Feis was held at 2 adjacent schools with the majority of the competitions, and all additional Feis happenings being held at the High School, with a select few Championship level competitions being held in the middle school. There seemed to be ample parking both in the school lots and on the surrounding streets. The high school was large and multi-leveled and getting from one place to another seemed to take quite some time. The competitions were held in 2 gyms in the high school, and then in one gym in the middle school. There were 4 stages in the gym that my daughter danced in, they were all connected in 1 long row, with now obvious markings showing where 1 stage ended, and the next began. Combine this with some of the smallest stages I have ever seen and the result is dancers dancing off the front of their stage, or sideways onto the stage beside their’s. If your competition was held in the Middle school gym, you first had to visit the High School to get your number, go down the street to get to your competition, and then go back over to the High School to get your results and awards, or partake of any of the other Feis happenings. Camping was ample in the halls of the school, as I said above the whole school seemed to be used.

Judges

My daughter danced four times and had the same judge for all 3 soft shoe dances, and a different judge for her hard shoe dance. This seems to be standard operating procedure for most feisanna that we attend.

Musicians

In the gym that my daughter danced in there was 1 musician for the 4 stages that were in there. Though during the time we were there only 2-3 of the stages were being used and in was for a single competition broken down into smaller evenly sized groups so this did not pose a problem at all. I do have a gripe with the musician as he did seem to occasionally play the wrong notes which seemed to throw the dancers off here and there. I do want to mention that at one point he stopped playing during the first few notes leading into a new dance to ask the people in the audience to quiet down as a show of respect to the dancers. I think that this was great, as we know it can get a bit loud in there.

Food

We had an after lunch start so we didn’t eat there.

Vendors

There looked to be a decent mix of vendors if you found yourself in need of something at this Feis, and they were off to the side and out of the way making them easy to shop. There was a shoe shop that offered the basics and had some fun stickers, water bottles etc, and a table with hair bows and hair bands and the like.

Results & Awards

Results seemed to be coming out randomly, and the area that they were located in was too small. The results were hand written and haphazardly placed under the level headings in a completely random order. My daughter’s competition was broken into 3 groups with 1 group’s result coming out pretty quickly, not my daughter’s of course, and the 2 remaining groups coming out quite some time later. I would say speed was about average, but organization was well below average.

One issue I have here is that unless you came in first you did not get a ribbon with your medal. Not a big deal, but we all know how the kids love to throw those medals on and wear them the rest of the day. Can’t do that without a ribbon.

Feis Flow

The flow was pretty decent all in all. The competitions seemed to be running on time more or less, and the time for results was average.

Scoring

The Feis itself was pretty average, no too bad, nor a clear stand out in my mind. However, I had a very poor experience regarding my daughter’s registration for this event. It took the school about 5 weeks to cash my check, leaving me wondering if they had received my registration at all. During this time I emailed 2 different addresses multiple time each, as well as called 2 different numbers leaving multiple messages. Not once was my email or voice-mail returned. A friend had a similar experience, and wasn’t sure their daughter was dancing until getting the competitor card that morning at the Feis, as they were not mailed to our dance school as was stated they would do in the syllabus.

With all this in mind I give this Feis a 5.

What Say You?

What did you think of the Cincinnati Feis 2015 (on a scale of 1 - 10 with 1 being lowest)?

  • 7 (25%, 6 Votes)
  • 6 (17%, 4 Votes)
  • 8 (17%, 4 Votes)
  • 4 (13%, 3 Votes)
  • 5 (13%, 3 Votes)
  • 10 (8%, 2 Votes)
  • 3 (8%, 2 Votes)
  • 2 (0%, 0 Votes)
  • 9 (0%, 0 Votes)
  • 1 (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 24

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A Parents Guide to Understanding Feis Judging

Posted by:What The FeisonApril 18, 2014   0 Comments

dana-carvey-snlI am going to be honest, I don’t understand feis judging, at least not completely, so maybe the title is not quite right. Maybe this should be called ‘A Parents Guide to Helping Their Dancer Understand Why.’ Read the entire article over on Antonio Pacelli and let me know what you think.

If the link above does not work, you can copy and paste this into your browser’s address bar: https://www.antoniopacelli.com/community/article/a-parents-guide-to-understanding-feis-judging

ADDENDUM

In discussing the latest blog post with TGC yesterday, she mentioned a Voy post about bribing judges. In an effort to find that, I found another discussion that focuses on some of the politics behind judging.

Check out Zebadiah B’s comments. He hits some of the same points I mention in my post, only he did it years earlier (so much for my ‘original’ post idea :(  ) , but he also covers a topic I had not considered. The whole discussion is worth a read: http://www.dance.net/topic/8765577/1/Irish/politics-in-judging.html

MORE ADDENDUM

Had some interesting comments on our facebook page that I wanted to share (with the permission of the submitter). More food for thought.

“One of the factors that affects placing well in one dance and less well in another at the same feis is that all dancers “hear” some types of music better than others. We say there are “reel” people and “jig” people based on which type of music they respond better to. That extends to the other three types of music as well; some dancers who are very good at other types of music never can get the hang of slip jigs, for instance. There are dancers who excel at hornpipes but, unfortunately, dance their treble/double/heavy jigs as though they were hornpipes, and that creates problems. They may both be hardshoe dances but they demand different styles, and that’s true of the soft shoe dances as well. I had one elfin student who couldn’t score in her single jig to save her soul. I told her to growl before going on stage for single jig competition. It embarrassed the heck out of her but it worked – the single jig was the dance they boys did back in the era when boys weren’t allowed to compete slip jigs (late 1980’s; boys still don’t compete slips in champs) and they’re supposed to have an aggressive, muscular style while slips are flowing and graceful. Dancers who dance all their soft shoe dances with the same style will score well in those which fit that style but not so well in the others. That’s “musicality.””

and

“Also, does your school pass on adjudicators’ comments to the dancers? We do. A lot of them are “turnout” and “point” which are nearly universal, but the biggies are anything to do with timing or rhythm, and the kiss of death is “late start” which can put you in last place even if everything else was excellent. We feel that if the adjudicators took the time to write comments, our dancers need to see them. It helps to understand scores.”

Thanks Bill!

Buckeye State Feis, PC/OC Review 2014

Posted by:What The FeisonApril 6, 2014   5 Comments

FeisLogo_nodateThe 6th Annual Buckeye State Feis was held on April 5th, 2014 at the The Franklin County Veterans Memorial in Columbus, Ohio.

NOTE: This is for the PC/OC stages and results. If you have comments for the Grades stages and results for the feis, please contact me and I can share them in a separate post, thanks!

Venue – This is the fifth feis I have attended at Vets Memorial. Buckeye has been held here every year since its inauguration,  and we have been to all except one due to a dance school change.

I like the venue. It is big and there is plenty of room for the stages to be spread and still be good size. There were six stages, but I was focused on Stage 1, the OC stage (but some PC comps ended up dancing on it), and Stage 2, the PC stage. Stage 1 was 40 x 32, and stage 2 was 32 x 32, which, if I remember correctly, are the biggest stages I have seen at a ‘normal’ feis.

I did see some a few slips and falls, but the feis volunteers were very proactive trying to stay on top of stage maintenance. Dancing came to a stop on one of the stages so they could mop it after one fall, and they kept a wet towel by the side of the stage so dancers could wet their shoes before dancing.

Seating was plentiful for the most part. There were some feis shaming incidents, but in general we were always able to sit to watch TGC dance.

Results for champs were held over on one side of the hall, away from most stages which was good, but, it was too close to the concessions. During one awards ceremony, they had three large comps, along with the parents and other observers waiting to hear results, and it was so packed that some dancers had a hard time getting to the front if they were called.

Camping, I thought, was pretty good, with lots of areas set aside to store gear. This made the feis shaming incidents more obnoxious because there was really no need to take up seats with gear.

The concessions (except the actual built-in stands) were grouped together on one side of the hall, and vendors were setup together towards the front of the hall. Very convenient, but see the note about Champ results above.

Parking was good and all located right next to the hall but may have involved a bit of a walk depending on when you arrived. There was a drop zone for dancers and gear. Parking was $7.

Venue Score: 8.5 

Judges – The PC/OC  stages, as always, had 3 judges each. They were attentive, kept things moving, and took very few breaks.

Judge Score: 9.5

Music – Lots of space between the stages, with each stage having their own musician. No musical confusion, and although I could hear other musicians from where I was sitting between dances, I could not hear them when our stage musician played.

Musician Score: 9.5

Food – They had the normal convention center fare in the halls concession stands, but they also brought in outside vendors, a gyro stand, a Hawaiian shaved ice truck, a specialty coffee truck, and some others. Prices were OK, but I thought drink prices were a bit gougy, and you weren’t ‘supposed’ to bring in coolers.

Food Score: 8

Vendors – George the shoe guy, with his daughter who follows WTF on FB… Hi George’s daughter!  :)   A tie-dye t-shirt guy, the typical wig and feis jewelry booths, and one other small jewelry table. No real Irish swag, and TGC was disappointed that no one had any Irish candies :(  You can see a list of the vendors on the feis page.

Vendor Score: 7.5

Results – We got there kind of early (as usual) so there was a few hours between when we arrived and when TGC danced. We watched other champ comps, and it seemed that results for them were very slow. After TGC danced however, it was only about an hour before her results were announced, which, while not the best we have seen at this level, was better than I expected after monitoring for the previous few hours.

Results Score: 8.5

Feis Flow – Feis flow was pretty good. From the start of TGC’s first dance to the presentation of her comps results was between 2 and 2 and a half hours. The feis peoples were on top of what was going on on the stages, and rearranged stage use on the champ stages to keep things moving. Well done.

Feis Flow Score: 10

Scoring

Two part scoring with a Feis Score consisting of Judging, Music, Results and Flow, and then the overall consisting of everything.

Feis Score: 9.375 – PC/OC is always helped by judges and music, but the Results and especially Flow were pretty good.

And the WTF Rating is 8.79… Good job Buckeye!

What Say You?

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Minneapolis Feis Review 2014

Posted by:What The FeisonApril 6, 2014   1 Comment

The Minneapolis Feis was held on April 5th, 2014 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  WTF and TGC were not able to attend this feis due to adjudicator conflicts, but some comments have come in from other participants so we thought we would share in an impromptu review.

“My review from day one of feis is that it was well organized, very nice that the boards for each stage were on TVs mounted high enough to see over heads. Plenty of chairs at stages.

No outside food and slim, crowded choices for lunch within but we were lucky to may grab lunch after. Minneap is a clean downtown with great sidewalk access too!

Only real complaint is they put beginners in a narrower room so to compensate, dancer lineup was in the hall behind the stage. But you could only exit the stage from the back of the room. So you either leave your 5 year old in their own in a giant convention center (!) or you bolt the second they go backstage to get back to the other end and stand to watch them dance. This was only on stage A-B, CDEF were traditional lineup to the side… so I’d suggest they have older dancers get dropped off not the littlest.”

Christy W.

Let me know if you have comments to share. Names are not necessary. Thanks!

What Say You?

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Quincy Feis Review 2014

Posted by:Boston Feis DadonApril 4, 2014   0 Comments

Special Thanks to Boston Feis Dad for sending in this review. Hopefully it is the first of many!

The 2014 Quincy Feis sponsored by the Forbes School of Irish Dance was held Sunday March 30th at the North Quincy High School in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Venue

This Feis was originally scheduled to be held at the Quincy High School but had to be moved to the North Quincy High school due to a double-booking. This information was posted on the school website, and also mentioned in the email from Feisweb that provided the dancer card. One main concern with this venue was a serious lack of parking. The school is located in a city just outside of Boston where the major means of transportation are bus or train. The school lot was very small, with many people being forced to park illegally at surrounding businesses, or on side streets that were posted with time limits of 1-2 hours. We all know that 1-2 hours at a Feis is simply not realistic. People had to leave their cars where they could, and had to hope not to be ticketed or towed.

Once inside we found that the Feis was running at least an hour late, and by the time my daughter danced it was closer to an hour-and-a-half late. The school was large but only a small part of it was being used and it felt very cramped. There were 8 stages, one for opens in an auditorium, and the other 7 in the gym. 6 stages were all in one area with 3 connected in a row back to back with another 3 stages. The stages were small and cramped, and more than a few times dancers found themselves on the wrong stage, leading to 4, and sometimes as many as 5 dancers on one small stage at a time. The 7th stage was in an adjacent area separated by a large plastic curtain. Seating was in the form of bleachers on one side of 3 stages, and standing room only on the others. The groups of dancers were large and were split at the time that they danced so some people would be forced to move once they had found a spot to watch their dancer as they were moved to a different stage.

Camping was here, there, and everywhere. From under the results, to all around the stages, and in the cafeteria. This left little room to try and view the results, let the volunteers stage the kids before dancing, or find a spot to practice a few steps.

Judges

My daughter danced four times and had the same judge for all 3 soft shoe dances, and a different judge for her hard shoe dance. There did not seem to be much in the way of a rotation for the judges. They also seemed to be getting a bit irritated by the confusion that came when a new group would take the stage and they would need to split the group due to it’s large number.

Musicians

As I said above, there was an area with 6 interconnected stages. These stages were all served by a SINGLE musician. This definitely led to the feis running behind schedule as all 6 stages could only move as fast as the slowest stage. Once you start factoring in different speeds for hard shoe dances, and the various options for the traditional set, you have a lot of dancers waiting around for their turn to dance. Another issue with the music is that the musician from the 7th stage could be heard at the other 6 stages and vice-versa due to insufficient separation. I also heard that one of the musicians early in the day was quite poor, and that the music was not being played at the proper speed.

Food

We had an after lunch start so we didn’t eat there. From the looks of it though the majority of people who were eating had soda and pizza, not much else looked to be offered.

Vendors

There were not many vendors at this Feis, and those who were there were very difficult to get to as they were sharing space in the cafeteria with people eating, changing and camping. I suppose if I NEEDED something I would have tried to make my way over, but the cramped space discouraged casual browsing.

Results & Awards

Results seemed to be coming out very slowly, which was unexpected as my daughter was part of the first group that danced after the lunch break. I assumed that they had caught up on all pre-lunch competitions during the break and while the after lunch comps were being danced. Then there was an issue with my dancer’s results. Due to confusion with splitting groups the judge had put the wrong competition number for her group. As the large group of frustrated parents, and tired dancers continued to wait word trickled through the crowd of the mistake made it’s way around and we found that our results had been on the wall for quite some time, just no one from Feisweb or the school had bothered to mention it. I can’t even imagine what happened when the competition that used the number that had been wrongly attributed to my daughter’s comps came through later in the afternoon.

Feis Flow

As I’m sure you have gleaned from the above sections, the flow was pretty bad at this feis. From a lack of parking, to cramped quarters, ever changing stages, and lots of standing around waiting for other stages to get done for the music to change.

Scoring

I am not going to score this feis as I do not think it would be entirely fair due to the forced venue change because of a double booking of the original venue. I did not attend the previous year’s feis, as my daughter wasn’t feising yet, but I hope that next year’s will be better organized.

 So What Did You Think?

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West Virginia Feis Grades Day 2014

Posted by:What The FeisonMarch 30, 2014   0 Comments

The West Virginia Feis for Grades was held on March 22nd, 2014 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. Since the feis was held in PA, I have listed it under both PA and WV reviews.

NOTE: This is for the Grades day of the feis (Saturday), which I did not attend, but I did have a comment or two from others so wanted to post them. If you have comments, please add them at the bottom. Thanks!

“I will only add that I wish when they are finishing a group prior to lunch they would push through and finish their TS. One of my biggest pet peeves is to finish their core dances and then have to wait around forever to do ONLY the TS after lunch. Of course this may just be me….

I think Jim Gravens did a great job of starting on time, and keeping the feis moving. Results were emailed on Sunday evening. The new floors were great, and none of my dancers danced in the dungeon room of stage 4…so it was a great feis. Results were a little slow in coming, I thought. Nice to see some new vendors, often I think we see the exact same ones at every Mid America feis.

My two cents!”

and from the Feis Chair:

” Thanks again for your very positive assessment.  (WhatTheFeis says – that part refers to the review I did for the PC/OC day)

The only thing is that the grades day(Sat) is the busiest part of the feis. We were able to do it in 8 hours with the usual  4 stages-3 in the main ballroom and the 4th in a smaller ballroom-Im lucky that i have very efficient,enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers.”

How would you rate the WV Feis for Grades?

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West Virginia Feis PC/OC Day 2014

Posted by:What The FeisonMarch 24, 2014   2 Comments

The West Virginia Feis PC/OC was held on March 23rd, 2014 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. Since the feis was held in PA, I have listed it under both PA and WV reviews.

NOTE: This is for the PC/OC day of the feis (Sunday). If you have comments for the Grades day of the feis, please contact me and I can share them in a separate post, thanks!

Venue – This is the third feis I have attended at the Hyatt, and though I wasn’t thrilled with the venue the first time, and even less impressed the second time, I didn’t mind it at all this time. Lots about the venue was the same, but considering it was a champ day, there were a LOT less people there and it made it a much more pleasant environment.

The syllabus listed 3 stages, but I only saw 2 (and actually didn’t realize there was a third). Stages 1 and 2 were in the large ballroom and were separated by a temporary partition. This was a much better setup than having 3 stages in the same room and allowed more chairs for viewers and better traffic flow. Combine that with less people and it was a win-win.

Stages were huge, I am guessing 30 x 30ish, or maybe bigger. It was hard to tell since they covered the normal 4 x 8 sheets of plywood (which is how I do my normal measuring) with that black material which made a much better dance platform. I did not see any falls and only one minor slip while I was watching the competitions.

Due to the level of the dancers, results were announced instead of posted. This was in the hallway on the way to the back doors and blocked the hallway completely, which was an inconvenience but only minor (depending of course on who you ask).

Camping seemed adequate and I saw no NO CAMPING signs. People did fill up viewers chairs and the tables that had been set up in one of the side rooms, but I rant about that elsewhere if you are interested. There were lots of chairs though, and we did not have any trouble finding seats.

The concessions and vendors were setup in the halls as in years past, but with less people, it wasn’t as congested.

Parking was plentiful but may have involved a bit of a walk depending on when you arrived. There was a way to pull right up to the hotel to drop off dancers and gear though. The feis did pay for parking which was cool and saved me $13.

Venue Score: 9 (so much better then the past with less people)

Judges – PC/OC  always has 3 judges monitoring the performance. You really don’t get much better than that. The judges seemed attentive on our stage and took no breaks that I saw.

Judge Score: 9.5

Music – Each stage had their own musician and there was a lot of distance between them. I could not hear the music from the other stage when I was watching dancers perform on our stage.

Musician Score: 9.5

Food – Same as for the last feis, breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, pretzels, pizza, salad, drinks and sundries… all reasonably priced, except maybe the drinks which were $2.50 for a small bottle of soda. I didn’t eat but my wife said the fries had been sitting out for a while.

Food Score: 7

Vendors – They had the airbrush artist back which I like. Otherwise the standard feis tshirt guy, shoe booth, jewelry, feis and Irish themed apparel, knit goods, the wig stuff, nic-nacs, paddywacks, etc…

Vendor Score: 8.5

Results – As the morning progressed I was more and more impressed that ‘the feis guy’ would come out and announce ‘awards for X will be in 5 minutes’ about 15 minutes after the comp finished. Based on previous PC experience, this is the best PC/OC results I have seen. TGCs comp did take longer than the others, and was between 30 and 45 minutes, but there were a lot of dancers in her comp, so I can understand the extra time. Even with that, it was handled better than I have seen at this level so far.

Results Score: 9

Feis Flow – Big KUDOS for feis flow. ‘The feis guy (aka Jim)’ I refer to above was outstanding keeping things going, and keeping people informed on what was going on.  I saw a continuous flow of dancers within and between comps, and there was very little down time.

Jim also ran the results and kept that smooth and quick. He does have a ‘not from around here’ accent and speaks quickly, and my wife had a hard time keeping up when he read results, but I had no trouble, of course my Mum has that same accent ;) .  If there was any comment, he could slow down a little.

From my viewpoint the flow was handled exceptionally well.

Feis Flow: 10

Scoring

Two part scoring with a Feis Score consisting of Judging, Music, Results and Flow, and then the overall consisting of everything.

Feis Score: 9.5 – PC/OC is always helped by judges and music, but the Results and Flow did not disappoint either.

And the WTF Rating is 8.92… pretty good ;)  You can add in your rating in the What Say You section below.

EDITORS NOTE: During the results, Jim took an informal poll of the dancers. It has been the habit of the feis to give all dancers at this level an award considering they have worked so hard to get to this level. The poll was to see if that should continue, or if they should just award top half as it is for most other feiseanna. Seemed the majority (not all) of the dancers thought the status quo (all awarded) was the way to go.

My opinion was that I thought it was nice that they do that, but something seemed amiss. It was when my daughter and I were chatting on the way home that I figured out what that was. She said she liked the fact they gave awards to everyone, but by doing that, they were taking some recognition away from the top half placers. She suggested that maybe a different award might be appropriate, so that the dancers who placed had something signifying their placement, instead of the same award that they all got for participating. I tend to agree and hopefully that came out right :)

What Say You?

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