As a public service to the Irish Dance community. The average feis-going family spends a non-trivial amount of money in travel, lodging, food, and entry fees for each one they attend, and other than word-of-mouth there is no other means of helping them spend their budget wisely.
Also, committees can sometimes be too close to their feis to notice problems. An outside observer will often notice things that organizers will miss. I know of two feis committees that have taken action on items I have written up in reviews, and suspect there are a few others that have but haven't admitted to it.
Because Clan Seger didn't go to it. This can be due to one or more of the following reasons:
Because it's the way I think about them. Specifically:
Certainly far more than stream-of-consciousness, I can assure you... :-)
I start with a blank template file. If the feis has a website, simple internet reconnaisance on my part will mean that we leave for the feis with most of the Organizational section and (sometimes) some of the Schedule and Facilities sections already written. The rest on feis day is good old-fashioned news reporting -- Devonna and I observe things throughout the day, supplemented by the occasional question to our children or others.
The drive home is where Devonna will sometimes bounce her observations off of me, ostensibly to keep me awake at the wheel. Once home, I'll whip out the rough draft before Devonna incorporates her notes. She also serves as my sanity check, oftentimes moderating my original draft wording. Once we both agree on it, the review gets scheduled for the next batch of uploads to push out to the server. Reviews will usually be posted the night after the feis concludes unless there is some type of extenuating circumstance (like, for instance, a 16-hour drive) preventing me from doing so.
At the time I started writing feis reviews in 2000, I assumed that dance schools sponsored them. I have since discovered that while some are school-sponsored, some aren't.
In addition, where that level of information was lacking, I had been taking educated guesses based on online listings of which dance schools were located where. After a rather spectacular wrong guess on the 2001 London, ON Feis that inadvertantenly damaged the reputation of an innocent dance school, I have had to re-think this policy. Starting with the 2002 season, I will not be including this information anymore when it is not glaringly obvious who is responsible for a feis.
Force of habit, I guess...
Because.
I feel there are certain issues in the Irish Dance world that require editorial comment and opinion from someone who has not grown up in that world. Admit it -- haven't you ever felt like venting about something in Irish Dance?
I'm actually rather circumspect with my words online. When you go to the number of competitions per year that Clan Seger does, you discover very quickly how small the ID world actually is. I always dance a tightrope between what I feel needs to be said and who may potentially be reading. The last thing anyone in my family needs is an ADCRG with a fragile ego getting offended by something I wrote just before judging one of us in competition...
Sort of. There are some subjects about which I've written but never published. Here is a representative sample of these, and the reasons why I didn't push them out to the server:
Use your browser's View Source command. You'll figure it out.
It's a Gaelic word for "statistics," roughly pronounced shtay-druhv
I had a lot of things to explain in as dispassionate and factual a manner as possible, and the writing style of my diatribes (part entertainment, part opinion) would have been inappropriate. The writing style I had to develop getting both my physics degrees, however, was perfect.
Computers in general and the Internet in particular are beginning to elicit the same superstitious reaction among people that nuclear power currently does. By being paranoid about dancer privacy now, I'm heading off the most dangerous potential problem with this study before it occurs. Besides, there is no need to know the dancer's name for what I'm doing with the data.
Because the vast majority of people enrolled at your average Irish Dance school tend to be female. I'm interested in gauging the health of the Irish Dance world, and this is best done by looking at the numbers for the most predominant customer of Irish Dance.
Probably not. For every solo dancer represented in the Staidreamh database, there are likely several more at their school who did not go to the Oireachtas for whatever reason (injury, not selected, etc.). This is also a number which is going to vary by school and age group.
Having said this, general trends at specific schools do tend to leap out of their Oireactas participation statistics. For instance, many schools see an immense drop-off in enrollment somewhere around age 18. Others show peaks in enrollment vs. age group consistent with the initial popularity in shows like Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. I'm interested in broad trends rather than specific predictions, and Oireachtas participation is currently the best source of data available in the Midwest region.
It's quicker to type than "the Seger family." It's also a play on my Scottish heritage -- I'm descended from Clan Keith on my mother's side.
No, and here's why:
When we figure it out, we'll let you know.
Seriously though, choosing feisanna with some semblance of a predictable competition schedule goes a long way toward reducing our stress levels. Also helpful are well thought-out family logistics (see our Feis Survival Guide for some of the things we've found useful), preparations, and plans.