The 20th Annual Ryan-Kilcoyne School of Irish Dancing Feis was held on October 11, 2014, at the Maple Point Middle School in Langhorne, PA.

Venue

A school. A very small, tight school. This mainly presents issues when it comes to parking and navigating the halls. There are vendors in the small hallways, right next to award postings. It is a difficult feat to get between a beginning mother and her much needed pictures of her newest dancer who just received her first 1st. It could take you several minutes to get to the gym navigating the maze. There are many unused hallways in this school. Why does everything need to be crowded into 2 narrow hallways?

Rating 6

Food

didn’t see any, but it may have been there. Trying to stay as far away from the crowded hallways as possible.

Vendors

Typical vendors nothing out of the ordinary.

Rating 8

Stages

Most of the stages including one preliminary stage are in the gym. Once you take 5 stages and all of the dancers, parents and feis gear into one small space, I bet you can guess what happens next? Lack of floor space. After about an hour of dancing, it is difficult to even find a path to walk to any stage in the gym. Camping occurs everywhere and anywhere. If there is an open spot on the floor, by all means, drop your stuff there. It won’t matter if you are in the direct path of the stage. The person behind you will need to navigate that one.

Rating 5

Musicians

Good musicians, but it is always difficult for dancers to hear when 5 stages are in close proximity.

Rating 8

Awards

This is the worst part of this feis. The champ awards are held on the opposite side of the school from the prelim stage. The background is a lovely set of red lockers. There is no school banner covering the lockers. Even after the placements are called, the volunteers didn’t even attempt to move out of the background for the parents to take photos. I actually have a picture of my daughter on the podium with a volunteer picking her nose in the background. I think I will frame that one. I understand that you are dealing with limited space, but a simple banner would fix some of this.

Rating 4

Flow

Good, kept to schedule. Awards came out relatively quickly.

Rating 9

Overall score: 7

Did you make it to this feis? What did you think?

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