| When: | June 24, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Where: |
Garden State Exhibit Center Somerset, NJ |
| Competitors: |
Ges (dancing/instrumental) Devonna (dancing) Rebekah (dancing) Rachel (dancing) Luke (dancing) |
| Why We Went: | Given recent trends in the Midwest region, Devonna and I felt that the Adult Championship offered here was going to be the only meaningful adult competition anywhere in the nation this weekend. Fortunately, it was also a qualifying feis for Rebekah's Oireachtas eligibility. |
| Previously Reviewed: |
ORGANIZATION
WHAT WENT RIGHT
- The computer program used by the entry secretary automatically sent confirmation emails to us once our entries were keyed into their database. This more than made up for the low-tech method of entering which involved filling out a 3x5 index card in a committee-specified format for each dancer.
- The program also could flag common errors (such as Rebekah not including a dance for the Trad Set or Devonna not specifying a soft shoe for her championship competition), email the dancer, and provide a link which allowed you to contact the committee and correct the error.
- In a related point, email was promptly answered.
- I was notified by email several days in advance that the music competitions were going to be cancelled. I'll admit I was annoyed by that, but at least my first notification wasn't the moment I got to the feis site that day.
- The subsection of the school website devoted to their feis contained links to the feis site and a FAQ page that was most useful in determining our equipment load for the trip.
- The school website provided an impressive amount of information not just for this feis but the general feisgoing public. A detailed online list of feisanna close to their school was regularly updated by their webmaster, in combination with a Google Maps mashup that allowed you to see the list graphically.
- The committee retained enough adjudicators to support nine non-championship stages and three championship stages at the start of the day.
WHAT WENT WRONG
- Some pages on the website could use a little bit of work when the information they provide doesn't fit within their background image on Mozilla or Firefox. Then again, this a web design issue instead of a feis organization issue...
- No preregistration the night before.
- This is the second feis this year which has explicitly refused to provide an online list of competitors before the feis (Indianapolis being the first). I think committees are being overly paranoid about privacy concerns.
GRADE
A-.
SCHEDULING
WHAT WENT RIGHT
- This feis offered an Adult Championship competition in lieu of normal adult dances. You danced two rounds (soft shoe round and Traditional Set round) in front of a three-judge panel, with Championship scoring used to determine final placement. Of course, I had to learn a third reel and Devonna had to learn half of a new slip jig, but that's the price for dancing in a meaningful adult competition these days.
- Beginner and Advanced Beginner competitions started the day, followed by Novice level competitions, then Open/Prizewinner. The Adult Championship danced after Open/Prizewinners were done, which meant we got to see our kids compete without all the excitement of coordinating our competition schedules with theirs. We also didn't have to be at the site right at the beginning of the day.
WHAT WENT WRONG
- The one problem with this committee's style of stage scheduling is minor, unavoidable, and only affects split-level people such as Rachel. She had to change out of her hard shoes to do her open/PW reel.
- A bigger problem with the schedule could have been avoided but wasn't. No effort was made to interleave split competitions to allow dancers time to catch their breath. To list just one example, Rebekah danced in the B division of her year group and level, and danced all her competitions one right after the other. She told us afterwards that her legs felt like rubber during the Hornpipe. The A division of her year group and level danced all their competitions one right after the other just before her division. There was no reason they could not have interleaved the B division with the A division and given both groups a breather. I would think it would be more important to give dancers a chance to recover than get their competitions over in 30 minutes.
GRADE
B. That last point was a full letter-grade deduction.
FACILITIES
WHAT WENT RIGHT
- The Garden State Exhibit Center appeared roughly half the size of the Detroit Feis site, from both eyeballing the online floor plan and actually looking at the layout on feis day.
- The feis hotel was next door to the feis site, and connected to it via a covered walkway.
- Non-champion stages were arranged in groups of three, with a pair of musicians for each grouping. This enabled their rapid conversion over to Championship stages at the end of the day
- I've been at feisanna with worse crowding. Given the way they scheduled dances, the facility gradually cleared as the day progressed.
- Two coat racks were provided for solo dresses for sale, which were filled for most of the feis.
WHAT WENT WRONG
- I was distinctly underwhelmed by the lack of facility-provided chairs for the non-championship stages.
- The feis hotel may have been connected to the feis site, but the rather disruptive remodeling project and the lack of service provided by the hotel staff all through our stay left something to be desired. Some warning on the feis website about the remodeling (and how it closed the indoor pool) would have been appreciated. This committee also might want to consider doing business with another hotel in the vicinity for next year.
- Food was limited to the feis facility-provided concessionaire. You were not allowed to bring in food from outside. As there was only one long line most of the day, you could count on losing 20 minutes (or more) of your life in order to provide for your family.
- The food vendor also ran out of most types of salads early in the day.
- There was only one pair of restrooms on the feis floor, with a line for the women's room most of the day. Devonna found it much quicker to go over to the feis hotel and use the facilities there.
- The foyer was set up for presenting Prelim and Championship awards, and got very crowded at the end of the day.
GRADE
C. I might have considered something higher if it weren't for the hotel.
OPERATIONS
WHAT WENT RIGHT
- Results were up very quickly for the non-championship competitions.
- As stages finished their non-champ competitions, they and their adjudicators were converted to Prelim/Championship stages.
- For the number of competitors present (nearly 1500, judging from the competitor numbers), the feis was all but done with dances by 4 PM. This committee did keep things moving along.
WHAT WENT WRONG
- Spotty and inconsistent adjudicator rotation between stages all day.
- The Adult Championship competition was the last one whose awards were announced, in spite of the fact it was nowhere near the last competition to dance. I hope that this was due to a breakdown with runners servicing that stage I observed at the end of the day.
- Most competitions were run three at a time. Even though the stages were 28 feet by 26 feet, it was still wrong.
-
While we had one or two stage monitors who knew what they were doing (The Open Champ gentleman on stage 9 in the morning stands out in my mind as the best monitor we saw), the rest didn't:
- The monitor for Luke's stage tried to run all the Novice Boy's competitions (from roughly ages 8-16) as a single competition, forcing the adjudicator to leave her desk and make her set it up as individual competitions run sequentially. Several times.
- Checking in, for most stage monitors we saw, involved crossing the competition number off each competitor card as the dancers left the stage. It was basically up to the dancer to make sure they were in the correct competition.
- The monitor for the Adult Championship had never done that job for any type of Championship competition. She didn't know how to arrange us for each round, or what questions to ask of the adjudicator panel so we would know what to expect. Fortunately, she didn't mind when I took over, arranged all of us, and told her what to ask the adjudicators.
- The musicians servicing stages 7, 8, and 9 played everything too fast. Even more damning, we found them hard to hear trying to pick up our music. Devonna had to guess when to start her slip jig, and I only heard two measures out of the eight given for the introduction to my reel. Rebekah even complained about their lack of volume when she danced.
GRADE
C-.