The 25th Milwaukee Feis was held at the UWM Student Union on August 9th, 2014.
The Good
In celebration of the 25th feis, all dancers (or whomever made it to the registration tables) were given a quarter. When you get money (albeit $.25!!) back for dancing, it can’t be a bad day!
Venue is easy to get parking (garage or street). If you know the area, lots of great restaurants and things to do.
Stages are spread apart and have ample room. Some even had super comfy chairs that had desk surface attached, which was awesome.
Food court was reasonably priced and the variety was great.
Run back to back with McMennamin Feis, which gives many dancers fantastic competition.
Results were posted within MINUTES of competitions being done. It was the fastest posting ever.
The 25th Annual Milwaukee Feis was held on August 9, 2014 at the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The feis was run back to back with the McMenamin Feis, and so some aspects of this review apply to the review for the Sunday feis as well.
This is the 3rd year we have attended this feis, and we have always found it to be a pleasant experience. This year was no different, and we anticipate returning again next year as well.
Venue
The student union makes a nice home for a feis, with separate rooms for each stage, plenty of seating and areas to spread out away from the stages. There is ample practice room, plenty of accessible bathrooms, and lots of food options for hungry dancers (and their families).read more
The 4th Annual McMenamin Academy Feis was held on August 10, 2014 at the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The feis was run back to back with the Milwaukee Feis, and so some sections of this review will refer to the Saturday feis review in order to avoid duplication.
This is the 2nd time we have attended this feis, and we have generally had a pleasant experience and would likely return again next year.
Venue
(See Milwaukee Feis Review for commentary)
Overall Venue Score: 9/10
Judges
My dancer danced 6 times and was seen by 4 judges, which is pretty darn good judge rotation in my book. My only complaint is that 2 of the 4 judges who saw her on Sunday had also judged her on Saturday. I know it would be difficult for the 2 feiseanna to coordinate completely new judges for grades dancers on Sunday, but it would be nice to see an attempt made.read more
The 2nd Annual Dairyland Feis was held on Sunday January 19, 2014 at the Olympia Resort and Conference Center in Oconomowoc, WI. The feis was run back to back with the Wisconsin Winter Feis, and so some parts of this review will refer to the review for Saturday’s feis to avoid duplication.
This was our 2nd year attending this feis, and we have generally had a pleasant experience.
My dancer danced 6 times and was only seen by 1 judge, and that judge had seen her for 4 of her 6 dances the day before. In my mind, this is totally unacceptable. Even with running by level, judges could have been rotated so the dancers were seen by 3 judges.read more
The 14th Annual Wisconsin Winter Feis was held on Saturday January 18, 2014 at the Olympia Resort and Conference Center in Oconomowoc, WI. The feis was run back to back with the Dairyland Feis, and so some aspects of this review apply to the review for the Sunday feis as well.
This was the first year we attended this feis, and we had a pleasant experience overall.
Venue
The Olympia was a new venue for this feis this year, and I thought it was nice. It was an older hotel, and a little remodeling probably wouldn’t hurt, but structurally, it was a nice facility for a feis. There were several ballrooms for stages, room for vendors & practicing, and a nice remote (and pretty much unused!) location for camping.read more
The Celtic Spirit Feis was held on May 4th, 2014 at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, WI.
Editor’s Note:
Back to back feiseanna were held at the Wisconsin Center this weekend so the summaries and scores for Venue, Food and Vendors here are the same for the Saturday feis. Scores are below. Full descriptions can be found here.
This review is for the PC/OC portion of the feis. If you have comments for the Grades portion of the feis, please contact me and I can share them in a separate post, thanks!
Venue Score: 7 | Food Score: 7 | Vendor Score: 9
Judges
I actually had an issue with the judges for day 2, or more specifically, one judge. This particular judge during the time I watched, seemed to focus on a particular dancer if they noticed something they did not like about the other dancer. It came across as a snap decision, ‘nope don’t like that dancer, not going to look for anything good about them.’ Just gave me a bad impression and therefore did not like the judging on Sunday as much as the judging the previous day. This was on Stage 1.read more
The Wisconsin Spring Feis was held on May 3rd, 2014 at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, WI.
Editor’s Note:
Back to back feiseanna were held at the Wisconsin Center this weekend so the summaries and scores for Venue, Food and Vendors will be the same for both days and only listed in this review.
This review is for the PC/OC portion of the feis. Sorry, it got to hard to monitor stages and results for grades and pay attention to what was going on with TGC and her schedule. If you have comments for the Grades portion of the feis, please contact me and I can share them in a separate post, thanks!read more
We had an eclectic little restaurant recommended to us because of the filets, and were told they had some gluten free options. Did a quick Google search and found the Via website. Looked good, so we checked it out and were not disappointed.
Via offers plenty of gluten free pizza and pasta options, and the gluten free crust (according to the boy child) was pretty good, which is hard to do. All of us had pizza and it was the best Pizza Diavola I have had in the U.S. I had the opportunity to visit Italy a few times for the Navy and really enjoyed their pizza. These pizzas were more Italian style, made in a brick oven, and were pretty darn good right over here in ‘Merica,read more
The 4th annual McMenamin Academy Feis was held on August 11th, 2013 at the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Editors Note: This feis is run as a back-to-back with the Milwaukee Feis and that review covers a few sections for both feiseanna. In an effort not to duplicate content and get myself banned from search engines, this was the easiest way. Sorry for the extra trouble.
The 24th annual Milwaukee Feis was held on August 10th, 2013 at the Student Union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Editors Note: This feis is run as a back-to-back with the McMenamin Academy Feis and this review will cover a few sections for both feiseanna.
Venue – This is the first time I have done the Milwaukee Feis, in fact, this is the first feis I have done in Wisconsin, and I enjoyed it.
There were 7 stages at the feis, divided into two levels of the Student Union. The stages were each in its own space with plenty of seating, but, in this reporters opinion, limited camping.read more