2005 Louisville Feis

When:	June 18th, 2005
Where:	Kentucky Convention and Exposition Center Louisville, KY
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/music) Devonna (dancing) Rebekah (dancing) Rachel (dancing/music) Luke (dancing)
Why We Went:	A yearly tradition. With a non-trivial chunk of Midwestern dancers tied up by the Chicago Gaelic Park and Maryville feisanna the same weekend, this was also an excellent opportunity for Rebekah to qualify for the Oireachtas.
Previously Reviewed:	2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

ORGANIZATION

The committee did their usual good job with the feis website, all of which is much better detailed in previous reviews of this feis.

The committee could have been a little more proactive with announcing the new URL to the feis website
A map showing parking around the Convention Center in relation to where the feis was being held inside would have been useful.
On a related note, they could have used a better map of the inside of the Convention Center.
They could have advertised in advance that camping was allowed in their new facility. Our equipment load would have been radically different had we known.

A-

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.
Music competitions were held the night before the feis, during pre-registration
Large age groups were aggressively split into multiple sections (such as 71RA, 71RB, etc.) for regular solo competitions.

What happened to the Parent/Child competition that they used to hold?
On a related note, the chefs of Clan Seger also wonder what happened to the Soda Bread competitions.
The first clue that you need to split your Treble Reel competition by year and level instead of just by every other year is when over 50 dancers take the stage for it.

B+

This year, the committee got the downtown Convention Center (site of the 2000 and 2001 editions of this feis). Instead of the basement area which was used those two years, one of the main expo areas on the first floor was the specific feis site. The expo hall was large enough to be split down the middle by two partial partitions, with one side holding the non-championship stages and the other the Prelim/Champion stage and vendor area.
Bathrooms were close and (most importantly for Luke and myself) not relabeled from Mens to Womens in mid-feis.
Lots of coat racks, including one dedicated to nothing but Solo Dresses for sale.
Janitorial staff was on top of things throughout the day.
Music competitions were held in a meeting room in the feis hotel, across the street from the Convention Center

The way they had non-champ stages laid out, things got rather congested around stage 5 (Rachel's stage).
At my age, concrete floors without carpeting over them gets painful toward the end of the day.
The curtains between adjacent stages weren't very good sound absorbers. An adult dancer from our school complained about locking onto music from the stage next to hers. The committee should either move the stages farther apart (which shouldn't be too hard at this feis site) or have one musician play for two stages at the same time.
Feis fare. 'Nuff said.
Why were the tables in the non-championship half of the expo hall posted "No Camping" when no visible effort was made to enforce that restriction?

B+

I really enjoyed the a capella adult ensemble which performed the National Anthems.

An unfortunate tradition with this feis is that load balancing between stages toward the end of the day is usually a matter of "too little, too late." It continued again this year.