2006Little Rock Feis

When:	April 22nd, 2006
Where:	Statehouse Convention Center Little Rock, AR
Competitors:	Ges (dancing/vocal/piano) Devonna (dancing) Rebekah (dancing) Rachel (dancing/vocal) Luke (dancing)
Why We Went:	Rebekah wanted her first post-injury feis not to be Queen City, and this was the only feis left on the schedule within our range when she asked.
Previously Reviewed:

ORGANIZATION

Feisworx handled registration.
We usually hold our collective breath when we see fiddlers for musicians. This feis, we didn't need to. We heard no problems with the fiddle/bouzouki duo on Luke's stage. The fiddler on the parent/child stage even guessed the tempo we required (115) from watching our pre-feis practice -- and kept it rock-solid when we actually competed.
An extra fiddler was available to take over for someone if they needed a potty break. I usually saw him pairing with either Tony Nother on the championship stage or Michael Fitzpatrick on Rebekah's stage to "keep warm."
Decent turnaround time in emails with the committee, especially because we wanted to know whether a piano-dulcimer duet would be permitted in the Miscalleneous Instruments category.
I was not aware Michael Fitzpatrick was a Fleadh judge until he mentioned it at the end of adjudicating the Music competitions.

A map showing available parking lots was available -- if you followed the link to the convention center website and did some digging. It should be much more readily available from the feis website.

Same stage scheduling for solo competitions.
Music competitions were run Friday night during Preregistration at the Feis hotel.

Adult competitions are run not by providing dedicated adult levels, but by providing both U30 and 30&Over age groups in the syllabus. I have read online where there has been a special dispensation from IDTANA that adults who dance in these competitions will not compromise their eligibility as adults, but with everything adult dancers have suffered over the past several years I want to see an ADCRG actually say that in writing and associate their name with their words.
Age groups were split every two years, which made for some big competitions for both Rebekah and Rachel.
Their policy for splitting large competitions was inconsistent. Rebekah's Open/Prizewinner hard shoe competitions, which ran close to 30 dancers, should have been split but weren't. Luke's Advanced Beginner hard shoe competitions, which ran under 20 dancers, were.
There were a lot of parent/child teams. This could have been made more manageable by an age split either at child U12, child U14, or parent U40.

B-. In a perfect world, how they run the Adult competitions would never have been a problem.

The actual feis site was laid out intelligently. Once you entered, the Awards Table and Results Wall were off to your right. Four doubled stages were set up along the left wall and two single stages were on the right. The vendors area was set up between them. The site did not seem crowded at any time -- which was really good for me since a church choir injury (yes, you read that correctly) the previous weekend forced me to use a cane most of the day.
You HAD to go through the vendor's area to get from one side of the site to the other. A Bad Thing for parents, but a Very Good Thing for vendors.
The stages were elevated approximately three feet off the ground. Sometimes this can be bad if the platform sections are uneven or not anchored firmly enough. Neither of these concerns was a problem here.
The connected hotel to the feis site (not identical to the feis hotel) catered breakfast and lunch. While lunch was your typical feis fare, there was a good selection of food for breakfast.
The Feis hotel provided an upright piano for use during the Music competitions (!!). I'm so happy about that I won't complain about the sustainer pedal that needed some serious WD-40 or about the mechanical action so stiff it required Schwarzeneggeresque strength to play...

The restrooms were by the feis entrance, which could be quite a ways to walk if you were in the back of the feis site
The Irish Music session location at start of day was between the Tabulation Room and the Committee Members Only entrance they were using to access the Result Wall. It was also considerably out of the way of the feis entrance. After lunch, it was moved much closer to the main entrance, but as the session seemed sparsely attended all day I suspect the damage had been done by then.

A-.

Results posting was rapid all day.
All feis people we talked to were very friendly. Southern Hospitality rides again...
Just before the Music competitions started Friday night, the committee made an explicit point of posting a stage monitor just outside the ballroom door. Do you think someone on the committee read this?
Music awards were handed out at the end of the music competitions. It made for a slightly longer night, but you didn't have to wait for them to be posted at the feis the next day.
Michael Fitzpatrick told the entire music competition field exactly what he had been looking for before he announced his results. If you're not a regular music competitor, you have no idea how refreshing this is.

There was a little glitch in the vocal competitions in that the first few people assumed that the instrumental requirement for two songs of contrasting tempo also applied to singing. The committee did finally realize what was happening, and pointed out the relevant portion of the syllabus before more competitors could panic. An explanation before the start of the evening would be a good preventitive measure in the future.
While some monitors were aware that their was an extra flight of stairs on the other side of the stage to help dancers exit, others weren't. This needs to be briefed to all monitors before the start of the feis.
Monitors on Rebekah's paired stage need to be a little more creative in ordering hard shoe competitions. Often times, only one stage at a time would run because while one stage's competition was Traditional speed the other stage would be ready to run a slow speed at the same time. It's OK to reorder competitions to lessen dead time...

A. So much seemed to have been thought through beforehand that it was difficult to assign a grade here.