The Black Art of Stage Scheduling

Ever wondered why some feisanna seem to run quicker than others?

C'mon, admit it. You know you have.

Well, I can't answer that question for every single feis across North America. For those I've been at, it usually comes down to the stage schedule. More specifically, the speed of a feis depends on the number of dancers on each of its stages.

Over the next few paragraphs, I'm going to give you the math background which will permit you to understand what is (or, in far too many cases, should be) going on behind the scenes at feis committees as they wrestle with scheduling their stages. By the time you're finished, you too will be able to ask embarrassing questions of any feis committee at 6:00 PM while waiting for your child's hornpipe competition -- and have the facts to back up those questions.

Disclaimer

As of this writing (May 2006), I have over six years experience as a competitive dancer and feis parent. Three of those years, I was a worker grunt on a local feis committee. I also have decades of experience and training in music, and I survived graduate-level math courses twice.

In other words, I know what I'm talking about.

Theory

This is how I calculated how long an individual dancer would take to do a step in competition:

• Your dancer will dance for 32 measures.
• Because of the time signatures used in the music for each step, there are going to be a certain number of beats for each measure.
• Tempos (to a first approximation) are standard throughout North America.
• The calculation then becomes a matter of multiplying 32 measures times the beats per measure for that step, then dividing by the tempo.

For purposes of this table, I converted the answer from minutes to seconds so the average reader can better relate to it.

To estimate how long a competition will be, here's what you do:

1. Divide the number of competitors by 2 and round up (3 if the feis dances 3 at a time)
2. Multiply that number by the number in the last column for the step being danced. That will give the time of the competition in seconds
3. Divide that number by 60 to get it in minutes
4. Add a minute to get the dancers on stage, a minute for the adjudicator to record their numbers before starting, and a minute to get the dancers off the stage

Voila! You now know more about the mechanics of feis scheduling than some feis committees.

Application

At the 2006 Queen City Feis, the U13 and U14 age groups were assigned to stage 4. Let's apply the numbers I derived above to determine how long it took to dance the reel from Advanced Beginner through Open/Prizewinner. As a simplifying assumption, I have not calculated the time required for the boy competitions on this stage since they were an order of magnitude smaller than the girl competitions.

Fudge factor is calculated by assuming 3 minutes between competitions as explained in the previous section. Since several level and year groups were split, that would be 3 minutes times the number of splits. Using Rebekah's reel as an example, it was split into 3 competitions. The time required between all those competitions adds up to 9 minutes.

Various parents on message boards timed stage 4 as taking about an hour and a half to finish reels. Devonna and Rebekah also confirm this figure.

You, the reader, are encouraged to extend this calculation through all remaining steps on this stage. I did, and assuming the first Advanced Beginner Reel started at 9:45 AM I calculated 5:30 PM as the time the last Hornpipe ended on stage 4. Rebekah was waiting to do her Traditional Set at about this time, which when you consider that I neglected the lunch break and boys competitions (not to mention I'm guessing when the first Advanced Beginner competition actually started) is pretty good for the theory.

So the next time you're wondering how long your feis day is going to be, do the math. Depending on the feis, you may or may not be glad you did.