2001Louisville Feis

When:	June 16th
Where:	Commonwealth Convention Center Louisville KY
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/vocal) Devonna (dancing/soda bread) Rebekah (dancing/soda bread) Rachel (dancing/vocal)
Why We Went:	It was our best-rated feis last year.
Previously Reviewed:	2000

ORGANIZATION

WHAT WENT RIGHT

They mailed this year's syllabus to us in February
The website was updated regularly in the months prior to the feis
The Kentucky Speedway just off I-71 northeast of Louisville was holding a big NASCAR race that weekend. This threatened to disrupt feis day travel for anyone travelling to/from Cincinnati. Warnings and suggested detours were posted weeks in advance on their website
When I had discovered at preregistration that they had not entered Rachel in her vocal competition (a lot more on this below), the committee pulled out a notebook containing all the entry forms that they had received. It clearly showed -- in my handwriting -- that I had entered her in child vocals. They penned her into that competition on the spot and apologized for the clerical error.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Usually, any two feisanna in the same region are discouraged from running on the exact same day. Louisville decided to slide its feis back one week, which unfortunately put them on the same weekend as the Chicago Feis. By the time anyone noticed this, it must have been too late to change back. Not that we'd ever go to Chicago (no adult competitions, and much farther away), but it might matter to someone
Maybe I'm jaded by the availability of information these days, but it would have been nice to have the stage schedule available on their website a week or so before the feis
They should have provided duplicate numbers for soda bread competitors that were also dancing. I had to rip up the stage schedule for the London Feis to make duplicate number cards for Devonna's and Rebekah's entries.

GRADE

SCHEDULING

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The feis started with figures. It was nice to get them out of the way immediately
In a change from last year, Beginners danced next on all stages
Same year group danced on the same stage all day. If you were under 8, for instance, you were on stage 2 all day regardless of what skill level you danced at. This was especially helpful for dancers who changed skill levels from dance to dance.
There was a dedicated lunch break on all stages between 12 and 1 PM
As stages completed for the day, competitions on other stages that were running slower were moved to them. The whole feis ended sooner than it otherwise would have
It would have been very easy to merge competitions with less than five dancers into the next age group to get a NAFC-legal competition. Louisville chose not to. Since there weren't enough Adult beginners in hardshoes -- even with us added -- to make a legal competition, it felt good not to have to compete in Novice. Yet.

WHAT WENT WRONG

The adult beginners danced their reel, jig, and slip jig with all the other beginners. Their hardshoe dances were danced with everyone else -- six hours later.
Rebekah spent the day in the ballroom with stage 2, while Devonna and I spent the day in the ballroom containing stages 4 and 5. As a parent, I was naturally nervous about this, but she needs to learn how to manage her own schedule someday and this was a good feis to start that training. There were also people from Celtic Academy in the stage 2 room who knew what we were doing in case there was an emergency.
While it was nice that the competitions on each stage were arranged predictably and chronologically, it meant that Adults danced last on each step. Devonna didn't like this -- especially since it meant our hornpipe was one of the last competitions in the feis
There was a train wreck at the beginning of the feis between several of the figures dances. This was not due to how the feis schedule was put together, but was due to circumstances outside the committee's control

GRADE

FACILITIES

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The Feis was held in the same facility as last year's feis
There was plenty of parking within a few minutes enclosed walk of the feis site.
LOTS of bathrooms -- and they were well-stocked and maintained throughout the day.
Janitorial staff was very active throughout the day in the ballrooms as well, keeping things picked up and swept up
The awards were set up in a very intelligent manner. There was a separate line to pick up awards for each type of dance
I felt the music room had nice acoustics. It resonated well with my voice

WHAT WENT WRONG

The food selection at the cafeteria was more limited than last year's feis
Because our family spent all last year's feis in the same room, I never appreciated how crowded it was. I do now. Putting the vendors area in the main hall between all the stages seemed to be the prime cause of the congestion at peak hours.
The ballrooms were more crowded than I remember them last year. It was difficult to find warm-up space before your dance
The air conditioning was uneven. The environment was a bit on the chilly side for the room containing stages 4 and 5. On the other extreme, the room containing stage 2 was a bit on the warm side.

GRADE

A-.

OPERATIONS

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Adjudicators were rotated on a regular basis throughout the day. In the program, they even listed specific feis-wide 10-minute breaks to accomplish this
The musician for stage 2 couldn't make it to the beginning of the feis due to a weather-related delay in his flight. The feis thus started with an immediate schedule conflict between the three-hand figures on stage 2, both Parent/Child competitions on stage 1, and various ceili competitions on other stages. The committee solved the problem by releasing the three-hand competitors to their other stages, which also bought them the time to think of setting up a CD player to provide dancing music until the musician finally arrived at lunch time.
Each room had a PA system to announce schedule changes, breaks, or calling for missing competitors
Results posting for most competitions was unbelivably quick. One time, I danced at stage 3, walked across to stage 2 to drop my hardshoes off, and by the time I had gotten to the results area they were posting the winners for the dance I had just completed.
With one exception, the people working the feis were very friendly and helpful. The stage monitors in partucular deserve some sort of award for the hours they put in and the situations they sometimes had to control.
The awards person -- and committeeperson -- who helped with solving the problem with Rachel's vocal competition did so very quickly and graciously.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Still no first-aid organization. We didn't need it this year, but this was the feis last year that first clued us in on how neccessary it was.
There weren't enough musicians to rotate them into break periods -- or compensate for one not showing up
You would think the stage 2 musician would have been given a contact number to the committee to use in the event there was a problem in getting to Louisville on time. The committee's behavior that morning strongly suggests they had no clue as to his whereabouts.
Since no one else had entered Rachel's vocal competition before Friday night, a folder for it had not been generated. After I checked her entry at preregistration, the preregistration people never got the word to the rest of the committee that a folder for the child vocal competition now needed to be generated.
Since there was no folder for Rachel's music competition, the music adjudicator scored her as if she were competing in my year group, apparently not thinking it strange that a six-year old girl was competing against several adults. In the words of the committeperson who eventually solved the problem, it was inexcusable for the adjudicator not to question the age discrepancy between Rachel and the other competitors.
When I first tried to solve the mistake in Rachel's vocal competition, I was pointed to a person who turned out to be the feis chairperson. She was too busy wanting to see a baby that a friend of hers was bringing over to want to deal with my problem or even point me to a person who would. She did not want to understand that a six-year old girl had been judged in the wrong competition, and instead told me that even though it was the adjudicator's fault, it was too late to do anything about it.