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In my years of involvement with the Irish Dancing world, I have found that one of the most under-appreciated aspects of feis operations happens to be the most glaringly visible one.
I refer, of course, to Customer Relations.
My further observations with regards to how feisanna treat their competitors and families is also going to be a very unpopular one with large segments of the ID world. I have noticed over the years a tendency toward an inverse relationship between the age of a feis and the skill with which its committee practices customer relations. Feisanna such as Indianapolis, Feile Minnesota, or Charlotte Rince na h'Eireann are actually happy to see you at their feis. To committees like these, you're more than just a dancer or a dance parent. They treat you like a human being deserving of some respect. Other feisanna (and I won't name them here; you can read my reviews for yourself and figure out which ones) are, shall we say, less than respectful.
Columbus is one of the older feisanna in the Midwest region. However, it has been a feis that usually succeeds in bucking the trend I mention above. I can't let this year's edition go by, however, without commenting on three incidents which happened during the Adult Feis on Friday night that only serve to confirm my theory regarding customer relations and feis age.
- Devonna and I had arrived at the Ceili Tent a little early so we could get in some shopping at the festival before we had to warm up. When she went to put her dress bag up in the dressing tent, an individual associated with the Feis Committe tried to stop her from doing so. We were told at the time that one of the local schools was using the whole tent and it would be impossible even to duck in for thirty seconds to hang her dress bag up. Devonna went in anyway. Not only did she find more than ample room within the tent to hang her bag, the dancers that were present in the tent had absolutely no problem with her being in there. Not only that, other adult dancers had hung their dress bags in there already.
- The announcer during the warmup session from 7PM to 8PM tried to get adults to dance to a slow hornpipe during their warmup. Devonna went up to the announcer to explain to her that adults aren't allowed to compete at slow speeds in hardshoes and we really needed traditional-speed music at that moment. The announcer was almost apoplectic in response, acting very much like the "gentleman" described at the end of this review. It's even money whether the reaction was because Devonna was correcting her on something she didn't know, or had dared to step up onto the stage she was using.
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The side of the Ceili Tent where we were competing was on the opposite side of where we had set up Base Camp, and of course had nothing in the way of chairs to assist in a shoe change. Adjacent to that end of the Tent was a small information tent with lots of unused chairs. A couple of other dancers were already using those chairs for their shoe change. When Devonna got done with her Slip Jig, I escorted her over to that tent so she wouldn't have to sit on the ground for her shoe change, only to be greeted by an older man (apparently in charge of the information tent at that moment) who told us to get out. He didn't care that other dancers were using "his" tent -- he didn't want Devonna using any of "his" chairs, and could not be reasoned with politely no matter how hard I tried. Frustrated and running out of time, I finally reached into "his" tent, grabbed a chair, and set it up for Devonna. When he protested, I stood between him and my wife, stared him down, and silently dared him to try and step around me to do something about it.
The Feis committee can render this man academic by the simple expedient of setting up some sort of bench by that side of the tent next year so us older dancers can get our shoes changed without getting our outfits dirty. More importantly, the Dublin Irish Festival can render this man academic by asking themselves if someone that rude and spiteful really has any business running a public information tent. We had sort of been thinking about taking the kids to the Festival after they danced on Saturday. We didn't, because of what this individual did to us that Friday night.
- On a related note, when we availed ourselves of the water bottles available in the information tent like other adult dancers had, we were the only dancers whom the "gentleman" allegedly running the tent forced to return the water bottles.