An Samhra Feis 2010

Our 4th time to participate in the An Samhra Feis, and it was a fine day.

This feis is held in a hotel. Honestly, I'm not wild about hotel feiseanna because they're so chopped up and hard to keep track of -- it's so much easier when everyone's in one room. But they put these big computer screens around so you can see what's happening in which room and on which stage:



which helps quite a bit. So you can be wandering around upstairs and figure out what's going on downstairs.

This year's excitement included flights gone awry for 2 of the 4 musicians (and also for a judge? I don't recall, but maybe so). The musicians did eventually show up, and in the meantime the Powers That Be made clever use of the 2 available musicians and recorded music on iPod. We had been to a feis last fall that had NO musicians show up, and the recorded music didn't work nearly as well there. Rick theorized that the person in charge of the iPod at this feis did a better job of focussing -- a couple of times kids were left dancing sans music, but not very often. I thought perhaps they also chose music that worked better -- more measures of repeats, for example.

Also, a fire alarm went off, and everyone started filing out of the building:


In spite of all of this, the competitions whipped along. Thalia pointed out that the people in charge of the stages tended to be real no-nonsense types. Later this week the stage managers will be cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf, then straightening out the economy.

In the meantime, I stayed away from anything to do with running a stage (after last year's freezing-temperatures-while-I-had-a-fever fun) and helped with results. The results had been moved to a bigger area, which, ironically, was the coolest room in the place. Oh well. At least I didn't have a fever. And results were fun, especially when I got to be the one to write Thalia's number up as FINALLY GETTING A FIRST IN TRADITIONAL SET! (This means she finally has all of her dances in Open, which is exciting if you're in Irish Dance, and fairly meaningless if you're not.)

Also, by working in the results room I got to see how many people come in and take photos of all the results boards. I am not alone in that quirk, it seems. However, I took none this time since I was busy writing the numbers on the boards and handing out medals and trophies.

In the meantime, small knots of dancers




were exploding:


Every year Clarkson comes up with a clever theme for the feis, and this one was my absolute favorite. I love this graphic -- I think it's a fantastic adaptation, incorporating the St. Louis arch and the swoop of a dancer's cape:


Overall, a great feis. Okay, I'm biased because it's our school's feis ... but several other people NOT from out school complimented the feis as well. Congratulations to those who coordinated this event -- great job!