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Maple City Feis 2015 Review/2 Comments/in , , , /by

maplecityThe Inaugural Maple City Feis was held on February 21st, 2015 at the John D. Bradley Convention Center in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, and was hosted by the Cornell School.

Any feis can have its positives and negatives, and this feis is no different. Not going to pull any punches on the lows, considering this was the first one, or restrain myself on the highs. I mean if I can ding the feis that I was part of, why would I be any different for anyone else 😉

I do think the hand made chocolates in the shape of a maple leaf given to each dancer was a nice touch, especially if the dancer has nut allergies and does not eat anything where we can’t read the label, do she gave it to her Dad. It was delish by the way 😉

Venue

Our initial reaction to this ‘convention center’ was “wow, that’s small.” Might be the fact we are used to places like the IX Center at North Coast, but considering our initial thoughts, I thought this was a pretty good venue. In general, it was of adequate size for the number of competitors that attended, but I thought they could have used the space a little better.

As soon as you walked in, to the right were a number of long tables down one wall, adequate for eating, but really not much else. These took up a great deal of space, were not necessarily located close enough to any stage to see, and ended up being camping so when it was time to eat, seating for eating was hard to come by.

Temperature wise, I thought it was comfortable considering the meh weather outside. There only seemed to be one restroom per gender, but that did not seem to be an issue considering the attendance, and the venue was small enough where they were fairly convenient.

There were two larger rooms off one end of the venue. One served as the Open Champs stage area, and the other held the Champs award area with a podium, the grades awards table, and a section set aside for used dress sales.

The Awards/Dress room was fine, the Open Champ room was a claustrophobes nightmare. The stage was huge and marley covered, raised well above the spectators, then came the judge area, a bit lower but still raised, and then the spectator seating. As always, it seemed that people took as many chairs as their luggage needed, leaving lots of people standing, blocking walkways, etc… At one point, they were three deep at the entrance to the room, making entry and exit nearly impossible. IMHO, they could have taken out a third of the chairs, which, if nothing else, would have made more standing and travel room.

Stages and Seating

There were six stages in all. Stage 6, the Open Champ stage, as mentioned above, was huge, with too much seating, which was a stark contrast to the remaining stages which were, considering the size of the venue, to small, and there was NO SEATING SET UP FOR SPECTATORS!

Stages 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 were combined, with a single musician each (at least the stage I saw, but it only makes sense considering the way they were set up that the other was the same). These stages were set so they were back-to-back, and the best I can tell they were individually about 20ish x 16ish feet each. Thing is, if you line a big comp of dancers up on each one, who, because they are back-to-back, are standing on the stage, and dance two or three dancers at a time, things start getting tight really quickly.

Stage 1 & 2 was covered with what looked like gray (or grey depending on your country) marley, and was used later as a single stage for PC set dances, which was an adequate size for that purpose. Stages 3 & 4 were just plywood, and still to small, but I digress.

Stage 5 was the PC stage, was marley covered, and appeared to be about 24 x 32. Good size.

The feis volunteers seemed to be on top of stage maintenance, and I did not see any slips or falls during the day.

Recommendation: I think there was enough room in the venue to separate the stages so none were joined, which would have reduced stage congestion since dancers would be able to line up behind, instead of on, the stage.

Recommendation: Chairs, get chairs, and put them out for the spectators, not just around the tables and in the OC room.

Oh, and did I mention chairs would be a nice addition?

Camping

Camping was probably adequate, but an area was not marked off, so it tended to spread out and spill over into the ‘walkways.’ Combine that with people standing to view the dancing, and the people who set up their camp chairs closer to the stages, it made it difficult to get around.

Judges

I cannot speak to the grades level judging, other than the fact there was one on each stage. How often or if they rotated I do not know, but I did hear one comment that one dancer had danced for the same judge for all her dances.

There were three judges on each the PC and OC stages, whom seemed attentive.

Musicians

As mentioned, the ‘combined’ stages shared a musician, and the champ stages (5 and 6) each had their own musician. If you were standing near the center of the venue, there was a lot of musical confusion, but it decreased nearer the stages.

I did hear one musical negative, and that was regarding the keyboard player. He seemed to start each of the pieces in a less traditional way. One sounded to me like the start of a 50’s rock and roll song, and I heard a similar comment from another spectator. I really didn’t put to much thought into that until I heard dancers saying that it was hard to get a good count with the way he started the songs.

Food

Convention center food, pizza, wraps, salads, fried stuffs, drinks etc… which was not super expensive. I shared a wrap with TGC that was pretty good. The pizza looked good and the slices were large, so no complaints. There were two concession stands set up and there really never seemed to be an obnoxious line.

Well, there was one complaint, I did not find out till late in the day I missed an opportunity to have poutine. THAT won’t happen again.

Vendors

Only a few, and not all dance related. You could probably get any necessities for dance, but compared to other feiseanna I attend, the vendor pickings were a bit sparse.

SIDE NOTE: They did have Cadbury, but no Smarties 🙁

Feis Flow

I am torn here…. lunch break was set to end at 12:30, and close to 1:00 our stage had not resumed while others already had. When you have been STANDING AROUND (yes, that is a no chairs remark) for hours, it starts to wear on both the dancers and the spectators.

That being said however, when they got started, they were through the hard and soft shoe rounds, and the set for a ‘larger’ comp in just about an hour. Makes you wonder where the disconnect on getting lunch done on time if the morning had run the same way.

Awards and Results

Results

Results for grades were posted along one wall near all the tables. I liked the fact that they posted just competitor numbers and no names, but the size of the font was a bit hard to read and could have been much larger considering the limited info on each results sheet.

For champ results, I am used to waiting at least 60 minutes, and most often about 90 to get results, so I was VERY IMPRESSED that results were ready in about 30 minutes for TGCs comp.

maplecitymedalAwards

There were medals in the shape of the feis logo which I thought was cool.

Each of the ‘placers’ got a small momentum that looked like a nice glass statue, but on further  investigation, were just plastic and felt a little cheap.

Champs had sashes for top 3, and some other chotchkies. Didn’t get a close enough look at them. The 1st place dancer recieved a bottle of maple syrup in a maple leaf shaped bottle. Very cool touch.

Misc/Social Media

No real social media effort that I saw, but ONE OF THE BEST FEIS WEBSITES I HAVE SEEN. Parallax scrolling, very geeky and appreciated by those of us who notice stuff like that 😉

Maple City Feis Overall Score – 6.75

I really think this feis has potential. A number of the ‘cons’ I think could be easily corrected. I know it was the first one, so I am interested to see where it goes in the future.

What Did You Think?

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Celtic Spirit Feis PC/OC Review 2014

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csThe 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.

Judge Score: 7

Music

Actually, the setup of the musicians and the issues I encountered with that setup on Saturday, remained on Sunday, so the score is the same.

Musician Score: 7

Results

Awards were in the same large area as the day before so there was plenty of room, but the time from the end of the comp to the announcing of results was a little slower on Sunday at just over 2 hours.

Results Score: 8

Feis Flow

I can sum up the flow like this, by 1p.m. it looked like over 95% of the comps had finished, and there was dancing on very few stages. That feis moved along. Great job!

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: 8 – Not quite as good as the day before due to poorer Judge and Results scores. A better Flow score helped.

And the WTF Rating is 7.86… not terrible, and definitely worth another chance..

What Say You?

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American Pride Feis 2013

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4-231x300The 1st Annual American Pride Feis was held on November 2, 2013 at the Embassy Suites Nashville – South/Cool Springs in Franklin, Tennessee.

Venue – From a hotel standpoint, it was great. For a feis venue, um, not so much, sorry. Not really a big fan of hotels as feis venues and this one was no exception.

The stages were in the big ballroom that had been divided into smaller rooms with partitions. Stage 1 was partitioned off by itself, Stages 2 & 3 shared a room as did 4 and 5 (someone fact check me on that one please, I really only peeked in and do not remember).

The stage sizes were not bad with the smaller ones (2 & 3) being about 20 x 20, 4 & 5 about 24 x 16, and 1 around 24 x 24. Stages 2 & 3 were combined for an actual area of 20 x 40ish with tape down the middle to divide them. Stages 4 & 5 may also have been combined (sorry, waited to long to write the review 🙁  ).

Stages 2 & 3 were used as one of the champ stages late morning so it provided a nice size stage for those comps.

Stage condition seemed good and I did not see any slips or falls. I do not recall any stage maintenance. (I really need to do these reviews right after the feis weekend or take better notes… jeez).

Seating for viewers was not adequate in my opinion, and the rooms were so tight, that standing off to the sides or in the back was very cramped, and only served to hinder traffic flow in the rooms. There was of course the issue with people camping in the viewing chairs, or should I say their stuff was camping, and one woman actually had a bit of a hissy fit when my family sat in ‘their chairs’ to watch the special at lunch time, even though they had not been in the room.

Side Note: Dear rude lady, there was no need to yank your coat off the chair from behind my wife. We are well mannered and gladly would have moved had you let us know we were in ‘your chairs.’

The hallways around the ballroom had the vendors, which inevitably cramped them all the more, and between those and support pillars in some areas, traffic congestion was bad, especially between the dance area and the results room which was around the corner.

Camping was not terrible, especially since the venue was also the feis hotel, but hallway camping is never sufficient, and there was really no area for personal chairs if you happened to bring them.

Parking, to be honest, I cannot comment on. We parked Friday night when we got to the hotel and did not leave the hotel until Saturday evening after the feis. If someone wants to weigh in on parking, feel free.

Venue Score: 5 –  Limited seating, cramped halls, conjoined stages, hotel feis, sorry, not a fan…

That however, is the only low feis score, and now for the highlights.

Judges – TGC had three dances and three judges. Can’t get any better.

Judge Score: 10

Musicians – Stage 2 & 3 shared a musician, 1 had its own musician, and I am assuming 4 & 5 shared one. Although I am not typically a fan of sharing musicians, I really did not see any issues with it on stages 2 & 3, and only twice did I witness a stage coming to a halt because of this. The partitions were sufficiently sound dampening so that bleed over was not an issue.

Musician Score: 8

Food – We did not eat any of the concession stand food but did buy canned sodas that were a bit pricey at $2 a piece. Can’t really rate this one sorry.

Food Score : NA

Vendors – Limited. George was there, and another shoe seller, wigs, tshirts and that was pretty much it. No fun Irish swag, just the feis necessities (feisessities?). There was a nice lady from Refeis That Dress, a solo dress consignment and rental service that I thought was a pretty nifty idea.

Vendor Score: 6

Results – The results and awards room was around the corner from the dance area (see note above about traffic flow, ugh), but that inconvenience does not take away from probably the best results turn-around I have seen. Out in hard copy on the wall in about 5 minutes for the ones I witnessed.

Awards were right next to the results wall, so it was very convenient. Plus, they had some unique trophies for 1st place Prizewinners.

Results Score: 10

Feis Flow – In general, I thought the feis flow was pretty good, but there was one incident that could have been handled a little better.

I noticed that the stages (well 2 & 3 anyway, I heard from a Mom that stage 1 dragged) were moving pretty quickly, and the schedule had a clear lunch break in dances on it. Well, at about 920 stage 3 posted check-in for one of the after lunch dances since they were moving so quickly. This really caused some confusion because 2 & 3 were slated to have champ dances on that combined stage before lunch, and for a while people, present company included, were in a panic because it really was not clear what was going on and dancers were not ready to compete if that checkin post was accurate. It took about 15 minutes to get it sorted out, but when they did, the rest of the day proceeded according to the original schedule and ran smoothly.

Feis Flow Score: 8

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 – Extremely respectable for an inaugural feis.

Overall Score: 7.83 – A better venue and a bigger variety of vendors and that would be higher, but still WELL DONE American Pride!

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Great Lakes Feis 2013

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image001The 11th Annual Great Lakes Feis was held on August 18th, 2013 at the Lansing Convention Center in Lansing, Michigan.

This is the third, fourth, ah who knows, time I have done the Great Lakes Feis. You can see last years review here but that was before I had scoring for each section of the feis, and just had an overall score.

Venue – The venue is great. The feis uses what I assume to be the biggest hall in the center and there is plenty of room.

There were six stages with numbers 1 and 2 at one end of the hall for OC and PC, and 3 – 6 more towards the other end for the other level dancers. The stages were huge compared to many feiseanna I have attended. The smallest I saw, if my visual measuring system is even close to accurate, was about 24′ x 28′, and the stage we were on was closer to 32′ x 32′. There was also good separation between the stages, on the order of tens of feet, if that makes sense, not a few feet or attached like other recent feiseanna.

I did see multiple slips and did not see any mopping during the day, so stage maintenance could have been a little better, but overall, stage condition seemed pretty good.

There were plenty of chairs for spectators and a good amount of room behind them for the standers.

There was more camping then there were campers, which is a unique experience at a feis. People were able to spread out which is not what they did, which struck me a bit odd. I don’t try to figure out what people are thinking at feis anymore.

Results and awards were at the far end of the hall, opposite end from the PC/OC stages, and were at tables right next to each other so it was all very convenient. The champs had a separate stage, still within the hall for their awards that was near their stages, and far enough away from the other stages so as not to be a distraction.

Parking was available at different garages near the venue, but this year we just left our car in the feis hotel parking, which was convenient considering the hotel was attached to the venue by an enclosed pedestrian walkway. I am afraid I cannot comment on the price of other parking in the area.

Vendors were grouped together in an area between the champ stages and the other stages which provided even more separation.

Venue Score: 9.5  

Judges – The girl child danced 3 times and was judged by 1 judge. Like the Milwaukee Feis last week, the dances were grouped very close together so rotation is limited… HOWEVER, in between the first two dances the judge on her stage changed and then changed back. The third dance was the first after lunch, and the same judge came back to the stage, which I think would have been a perfect switch time. I am really torn on this one because the same judge for all dances can be unfair to the dancers, but there is that whole ‘all close together’ thing, but there were opportunities. You can see the judge list here, although I did see judges working that are not on the list.

Judge Score: 6

Music – Each stage had their own musician and the stages were spaced far enough apart where music bleed over was not an issue.

An interesting sidebar – one musician, an older gentlemen who played the violin (or is it a fiddle?) stood the whole day while he played. I had not seen that. This however is the same guy who apparently came to the feis on a skateboard, so who I am to judge.

TGC did comment that the music on one of the stages she was not, on was ‘funner and kinda techno’ than the music she had, which begs the question, do they ever rotate musicians?

You can see who played here.

Musician Score: 10

Food – Convention center food at reasonable prices, $4 – $5 for a sandwich/burger, salads, pretzels etc… The popcorn chicken and fries were pretty good, I shared with TGC, so overall, not bad.

Food Score: 8

Vendors –  George the shoe guy was there, and two wig tables, which was good because we showed up first thing to get a new wig. NOTE: If you let your dancer dye her hair, consider the dance wig first!  Some nice souveniry type items, hats, shirts, etc, some jewelry, and the tshirt guy and a photographer. A nice little selection. View the vendors.

Vendor Score: 7.5 

Results – Mixed feelings on results. I was told they would be doing results electronically on QuickFeis but I did not see that being utilized during the actual event. The volunteers were taking pictures of the board and posting them on Facebook, but that was after they had already been posted (obviously). It wasn’t like a FeisWorx feis where they are posted in minutes, most times before they hit the results board in the hall.

Time to post on the wall varied, and appeared to be around 30 minutes for TGC’s first 2 dances, but it was closer to 45 – 6o minutes for her last result.

I did appreciate the fact that the awards table were able to print out the dancers score sheet with comments after their last dance had been posted. It is a nice touch that you can see what the judges had to say right away.

Results Score: 8

Feis Flow – Not too bad. We started at 11ish and had the last dance and results by 2. That would have been quicker had they not stopped for lunch when TGC had already checked in, and they went a little more than an hour for the lunch break.

I do like close dances even if it can affect judge rotation.

Feis Flow Score: 8

Scoring

2 part system in place, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating for all items.

Feis Score – 8 – could have been better if the judges rotated at least once.

And the WTF Rating – a 8.14. Good Job Great Lakes!

What did you think?

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Cleveland Feis

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gcfsLogoThe Cleveland Feis was held on May 26th, 2013 at the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Venue – This is the first time I have attended the Cleveland Feis and the first feis I have attended at the Wolstein Center, and I thought it was just OK as feis a venue.

There were ten listed performance stages for the feis, but I only saw eight of them in the arena (3 – 10) so I am not sure where stages 1 and 2 were, and therefore cannot comment on those. I walked the entire upper area of the arena, and the awards and vendor area, so 1 & 2 must have been in a different section of the arena if they were set up.

Each stage in the arena was separated by large curtains hanging down from the arena catwalks. The curtains were on 3 sides of each stage (except the one on the end) and really seemed to constrict the area around the stage, making them seem really tight. They were so crowded in fact, that they had the musicians crammed into one corner and there was only room for one row of dancers at a time during a set.

Stage 3 was the ‘big’ stage that I saw at 24 x 24 feet and the size seemed adequate, but I did see a number of dancers slip on that stage. Not sure if there were any high or slick spots. The other stages I saw were small-ish at 16 x 20 feet and I saw at least one dancer go off the edge of the stage and finish her set on the side. I think the stage size was OK, but a little bigger would have been better for some of the more advanced dancers who ‘travel’ while dancing.

There was probably 10 – 15 feet (it seemed) between the judges table and the first row of seats where viewers could watch the dancing, and very little room for dancers to line up for their dances next to the stage, so dancers tended to congregate in the 10 – 15 feet behind the judge. This not only made viewing difficult for people in lower seats, but also made it hard to get from one place to another on the floor.

Feis results were posted on a big temporary wall at the far end of the arena, and the awards were on the same end of the arena, so all fairly convenient.

Parking was adequate with a parking garage less than a minute walk from the center. It was pay parking but the pay machines I found were out of order, plus, by the time we left, the gates were raised so I cannot comment on the cost.

A negative, arenas are not the best for older viewers and those with mobility issues, as well as parents with small children and strollers. I did not see any elevators to get from the upper area to where the results were (not saying there were none). I also saw A LOT of people trip on the steps in the arena. Step heights, even the cement steps were uneven and a bit hard to navigate. (Not the feises issue but a venue issue).

Venue Score: 6 

Judges – Daughter danced 4 times and had 2 different judges. With as many stages as they had, I would think they could have rotated more often.

Another thing I saw was one of the judges seemed to be very easily distracted by things going on around him. While the girls were dancing he would glance off to the sides and even behind him instead of watching what the dancers were doing. Others commented on this too.

Judge Score: 4

Music – Each stage had a musician or two, and as long as you were close to the stage, you could hear them fine. I asked my daughter if she had any issues hearing them and she said no. If you were higher in the arena, there was a lot of ‘musical confusion’ and it was hard to tell one musician from the other. The musician at stage 3 seemed really loud.

On stage 10 I understand there was some tempo issues and the musician was playing to fast for some of the dances.

Musician Score: 7

Food – Convention center food at stupid prices. It cost me $10 to get 2 pretzels and a bottle of water. Other food choices were pizza, hot dogs and nachos, if you could get those, since when lunch hit, the concession stands started running out of food. The one I was at had no pizza, only a few pretzels and from what I could tell, not enough hot dogs to feed the number of people in line. Small sodas were $3 and large were $5  just to show how stupid some of the other prices were.

A man I asked said the pizza he had wasn’t the worst he ever ate, for what that is worth. The pretzel my wife had was greasy and she could not eat it.

They also had a no outside food rule. Sorry, if you are going to have no outside food, you need to have:

  • healthy options
  • reasonably priced options
  • enough to feed everybody
  • enough variety to handle dietary restrictions (we have nut and gluten issues in our house)

Food Score: 1

Vendors – George the shoe guy, and the other shoe guy, the feis tshirts, some glittery stuff and a nice jewelry table, but no ‘fun’ Irish stuff.

Vendor Score: 5

Results – And it goes downhill from here…

The first result we waited for was not posted for nearly 2.5 hours. When I asked about it, the lady researched and found that it had been filed without being written on the wall. She did admit that it had still taken almost 2 hours to get to them. The results for the rest of the dances all hovered around the 1 hour mark.

Another issue is that they only had two people handling results and there seemed to be confusion posting, as I saw a number of results posted in the wrong comp numbers. Someone had complained to me about that before I even went to the results area and I thought it might have been a fluke, but while I was standing there, I pointed out to the poster that they had just put 412 results in the 512 comp blocks. There was a lot of comps and I think those people could have used some help to spread out the responsibility.

Results Score: 3

Feis Flow – Just OK. My daughter danced 4 dances and from start to finish (including waiting for results) she was done in about 4 hours. They only had three different age comps on the stage but  they seemed to rotate a little slowly. I think the fact they could only put around 10 girls on stage at any one time, and some of the comps had over 25 dancers contributed to this.

I thought the awards table needed more help too. We were standing in line and the people behind the table would be moving stations, restocking awards etc… and we had to wait a bit to pick up an award. It seemed a bit unorganized and there were not set roles for the people working that area. It was a bit chaotic.

Feis Flow Score: 5

Scoring

Been thinking about it and I probably need to separate the ‘feis’ score from the overall score since the feis people do not control (necessarily) the venue, food, or vendors. Scoring will now have 2 parts, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating.

Feis Score – 4.75

And the WTF Rating – a 4.42. Sorry, a number of negatives hurt this feis overall.

What did you think?

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Bluegrass Feis

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The 2nd Annual Bluegrass Feis was held on May 12th, 2013 at the Lexington Convention Center in Lexington, KY.

Read this whole review, starts a little negative but has its great points and finishes very strong!

Please add your feis rating for the Bluegrass Feis at the bottom of this review!

NOTE: If you are going to do two feisanna and write reviews in one weekend, take notes. Surprising how fast things overlap in the brain 🙂

Venue – This is the first feis I have attended at the Lexington Convention Center, and I liked the space for feis venue, but…There were seven performance stages in one large room but I do not think the space was used well for stage setup.

NOTE: We were in and out of this feis pretty quickly so I really only saw the OC/PC stage and the stage my daughter danced on. Comments about other stages appreciated.

Stage 7 was set up for OC and PC and it was big, but that is where good stage size stopped (remember my note above).

We were on Stage 5 which was literally attached to Stage 6 with only a strip of tape separating them. I saw dancers crossing over the tape while dancing, so if that is any indication, the stages were too small. Mix the stage size with some big comps and things were crowded.

Camping was adequate and as far as I could tell, people honored the No Camping signs. People did do that ‘camp in the viewing seats and right behind the seats for the stages’ thing, which made viewing more difficult. Seating at the stages for viewers was not to bad in spite of that, but if all the comps were big it would have been tight.

Feis results were posted on a big wall at the far end of the hall, kind of in one corner, and the awards were on the same end of the hall at the other corner, so fairly convenient.

Parking was adequate and FREE, but was a bit of a walk from the dance area. There was an option to drive up to drop off however.

Venue Score: 6 – Sorry, the stage setup was an issue in my opinion. (see note above)

Judges – Daughter danced 3 times and had 2 different judges. Would prefer a different judge for each dance, and I actually saw judges from the Queen City Feis sitting in the viewing area, so they were available for rotation, but I of course don’t have all the info. Rating is based on what could have been based on my observation.

Judge Score: 6

Music – Remembering I only saw our stage and the Champ stage. There was only one musician for stages 5 and 6, sitting behind the stage were the two stages were joined. There were times when one stage was waiting for the other to finish dancing before they could continue because of the musician issue.

Musician Score: 5

Food – I cannot rate food because I only saw one stand off to the side of the hall, and did not look for others. We did not eat there. Food score not included in this review.

Food Score: NA

Vendors – George the shoe guy, the feis tshirts, and a few small tables. Extremely limited. I like to shop for Irish stuff so this was disappointing.

Vendor Score: 5

Results – Here is were things start sounding a lot less negative 🙂  Great job here! Results were out quickly, and were in the 15-25 minute range. A friend tweeted me that FeisWorx was posting results real time, but the hard copy made it to the wall very quickly.

Results Score: 10

Feis Flow – Excellent! My daughter danced 3 dances (skipping the TJ again) and from start to finish (including waiting for results) she was done in about 2 hours. They had six different age comps on the stage and they rotated very quickly, but five of the six comps had only 5 – 10 dancers, one comp had over 20 dancers.

Something else that impressed me was the awards table. Each person at the table had a laptop and when the dancer walked up, they looked up the dancers number and had all the results for the dancer. No searching through folders, no hard copies, no initialing papers, etc… Very cool, first time I have seen that (I think).

Combine that with the quick results and good venue(potential to be better), I would say I was very pleased with the flow of the Bluegrass Feis.

Feis Flow Score: 10

And the WTF Rating – a 7.0. For only the second feis, I thought Bluegrass did a great job and the score was brought down by some things they could probably change fairly easily (I have never run a feis, so that is my opinion). I thought they did some things REALLY well and I highly recommended this feis. Looking forward to seeing it develop in the future.

What did you think?

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Pittsburgh Halloween Feis Review

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NOTE: When you are done reading, please see the comments for a follow up by the Feis Chair.

The Pittsburgh Halloween Feis was held on October 6, 2012 at Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, PA.

Venue – The Hyatt wasn’t terrible as a feis venue, but I did have some ‘issues’ with it.

From the syllabus I see there were five stages but I really only saw three of them. They were good size and although they were all in the same room, there was adequate room to move between them. They also had sufficient chairs for viewers.

OBSERVATION: I did not see any ‘campers’ in the seats around the stage, not saying it did not happen, but it was not rampant as it is in many feises. A nice, less aggravating seating plan 🙂

Camping spots were available in the halls and other meeting rooms around the ballroom and seemed adequate.

A venue ‘issue’ was the concession set up. They set up serving tables in one of the halls which happened to be the main hall between the dance areas and the results area, and the lunch rush was just a huge traffic jam of people trying to get from one area to the other. They could have used one of the meeting rooms which would have helped the congestion.

Vendors were also set up in the halls which constricted flow a little, but it was not terrible.

Parking was bad and due to construction at the airport was extra bad. We ended up in extended stay parking the first attempt, and the nice man in the exit booth routed us to the right parking. Hotel parking (aka Long Term) was very full so there was a bit of a walk to the hotel, not good for some attendants. The feis did pay for parking, and they provided us with tickets to pay, but it was not obvious on how they were to be used. I saw some ‘aggravation’ with people trying to leave who were unsure what to do.

Venue Score: 6.5

Judges – My daughter danced four dances and was judged by three different judges, pretty darn good.

Judge Score: 9

Music – Each stage had their own musicians, always good. Our stage musician took several breaks, one seemed a bit ‘extended’, so much so that it was obvious. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary.

Musician Score: 8

REALIZATION: I think I may be getting burned out on feising…. I feel like I was not quite as observant at this feis.

Food – Hot dog, pretzels, pizza, salad, drinks and sundries… all reasonably priced. A negative, a quarter pound hot dog was $3 and a salad was $5, which kind of put the kabash on healthy eating decisions. Not bad, but could have used a little more variety since it was catered by the hotel.

Food Score: 6

Vendors – A feis tshirt guy, and a shoe booth (not George)… always there. Nice jewelry and knit goods, the wig ladies, need I go on?

Vendor Score: 7.5

Results – This was a huge negative. My daughter danced her first dance between 11 and 1130, they broke for lunch, and then continued dancing. She finished her 4th dance at nearly 2 and the results for the first dance had not been posted when we checked before her fourth dance started. It was out shortly after, and the last three results came out by 3 so it seemed to speed up some, but in the meantime, there was a LOT of grumbling from dancers and parents.

Results Score: 3

Feis Flow – I thought the feis flow was pretty good. Age group dances were kept together with only a few dances between, always help the flow. During the lunch break I saw one of the feis staff go around announcing break was over, and got everything going again about 30 minutes after break started. I thought that was good and had not seen that much effort put into keeping the flow. (I did find out there was a wedding reception planned for later that day in the same room since the hotel double booked, which may explain the extra effort).

Feis Flow Score: 8

And the WTF Rating – a WTF Rating is 6.86.