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.

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