2004Louisville Feis

When:	March 6th, 2004
Where:	Clarion Conference Center Hurstbourne, KY
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/vocal) Devonna (dancing/soda bread) Rebekah (dancing/soda bread) Rachel (dancing/vocal)
Why We Went:	We always go here. The change from June to March didn't hurt, either
Previously Reviewed:	2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

ORGANIZATION

Packets containing syllabi and entry forms were mailed to all of last year's competitors at the beginning of the year.
You could review your entry online from their website and check to see if there were any errors before preregistration.
On a related note, the way they had the rosters broken out online meant you could do a little internet reconnaissance on your competition :-)
The feis website also had links to Indiana and Kentucky Department of Transportation websites so people driving to the feis would be aware of any potential problems such as road construction.

Music competitions were run the night before the dancing. I'm glad this is a growing trend, because this makes the dancing day easier for those of us either doing music or chaperoning someone who is.
Advanced Beginner through Open danced on stages 1-7 after Beginners while Prelims and Championship danced on stage 8. Same age groups were kept on the same stage, which meant that (for instance) if some of your dances were in Novice while others were in Open/Prizewinner, you never had to change stages all day for your solo comps.
Steps danced in order (Reel, Jig, etc). Within each step, Advanced Beginners danced first, then Novice, then Open/Prizewinner. Where possible, the competitions were kept in the same order within each step.
Adult Beginners were treated as Advanced Beginners for purposes of scheduling.

Stages 4 and 5 were located close enough together to share a musician. Also, stages 6 and 7 were similarly co-located.
The Results Room did seem to be large enough for its duties.
Being adjacent to a hotel with a pool and lifeguard was convenient for people who had finished for the day or were otherwise stuck waiting for a dancing sibling.
The largish ballroom next to the main hall that sort of went unused last summer was used for Championship dancing this year. This freed up one of the side rooms for additional duties
More coat racks than last year
More seating than last year. This was neccessary in order to realistically have a ban on camping within the main hall

The side room used for the vendor's area was more or less in the vicinity of stage 6, which made it distracting to use the door from the area into the main hall
The side room at the end of the facility (last year's vendor's area) was used as a changing room for the local school. I'm thinking they need to make this a general girl's changing area instead.
It's still a small facility to support the number of people they capped this feis at (800 non-champion dancers). Having said that, I will add in their defense that they used what they had this year much more intelligently than last year. Feis committees willing to learn from their mistakes are not common these days.

C+.

Two major load-balancing decisions were made at the close of the day when only stages 1 and 2 were left dancing. What was good about this was that they stopped the feis to announce the move off of stage 1, waited ten minutes for the crowds to move to their new location, then announced the moves off of stage 2. Other feisanna would have announced both moves at the same time, then wondered why there was a traffic jam of people leaving both stages. Very good move, guys.

A-.