Performing

Irish dance performances. Lots and lots of Irish dance performances. I stole these pictures from a friend's mobile uploads, by the way, because I've reached the point of Irish-dance-performance-photo overload, and rarely bother.



(The following is the photo we used to figure out that she took off her missing headband BEFORE we left ST. Clare's, by the way, so it's sort of like forensic evidence.)


And then 2 performances of Mary Poppins, with Annabeth in the role of Mary Poppins. Here she is telling Mr. Banks what's what.


And now we're mostly tired, and trying to catch up on the laundry.

Feis Doubleheader -- St. Louis Irish Arts and Winterfeis

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I was sick earlier in the week. On the bright side, the worst of it was on Tuesday, which is the day SyFy network runs a lot of Star Trek reruns, so that worked out well for languishing on the couch.

February always brings the St. Louis Irish Arts Feis to the Ballpark Hilton. And sometime in the past year or so it occurred to someone at Graham that the SLIA Feis was on President's Day weekend, President's Day is a day off for a lot of people, and wouldn't it be clever to run a feis on Sunday at the same hotel so that people could compete in 2 feiseanna for their travel time/dollar. Thus was born the St. Louis Winterfeis. (Full disclosure: Graham then merged with Clarkson, so to a certain extent this became our school's feis, but it was mostly the former Graham people running it, so I'm calling it a Graham feis.)

Things that were the same about both feiseanna:

Same hotel with same setup as to location of concessions and vendors.

Same stages, with our kids in Novice and Open assigned to the same stages both days.

Many of the same judges and musicians.

Cool feis tshirt available both days:



SLIA feis started at 8:30am on Saturday. SLIA has a history of interesting feiseanna (ahem), so we were interested to see how this would work out for us given that 3 days after I submitted our payment for competition we found out that Annabeth had a Mary Poppins rehearsal from 12:30 to 3pm that same day. It was entirely possible that she could make it through all of her soft shoe competition before leaving for the rehearsal, but, this being SLIA, we figured it would be improbable. And, indeed, she danced reel, lined up to dance slip jig (after several other slip jigs had danced), waited around, then was told she was dismissed for lunch at about 11:20, meaning that by the time the lunch break was over and they got reorganized for her competition she'd have to leave for rehearsal. So very annoying. So very typical of this feis.

The main problem was that we were on the stage with ALL of the First Feis and Beginner 1 competitions. Of course, this had some entertainment value (the little kids in First Feis are amazingly cute, wandering off stage to talk to friends right in the middle of the competition), but also took FOREVER.

After Annabeth left with Rick, I headed over to Thalia's stage, which had completed all soft shoe before lunch, and had been working their way through Treble Jig. Thalia's stages were in the Archview Ballroom. The last time we were in this ballroom the picture windows had been behind us and the stages against the opposite wall. This time the stages were against the windows, which yielded an amazing view


but was fairly glare-ish for viewing dancing.


I have no idea if the judges had problems with seeing what the heck was going on. The judges were rotated fairly often, so perhaps that helped. Oddly, Thalia was also rotated between group A and group B with every dance (I had assumed these things were decided by birthdate, but maybe they draw numbers out of a hat to decide who's in which group for which dance). That was sort of fiddly to keep track of. Overall, though, things in this ballroom proceeded smoothly (not to mention the higher quality of gossip obtainable from the other spectators); Thalia was done dancing by about 2:20pm and we headed down to results, not knowing what to expect after last year's result's room mayhem. But, WOW, they were using the feisworx computerized system, so it was just a matter of presenting the dancer's competition number and quickly, easily picking up the appropriate award. We were out of the building by 2:50pm. We figured Annabeth's stage was still on Hornpipe at that point.

Overall I'd have to say that SLIA feis has gotten better through the years, although they still have some areas for improvement. I think they had higher numbers of competitors this year than usual due to the double feis lineup, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Even though Annabeth only managed to dance one dance, she did get a 3rd in it; as her teacher pointed out, that was 100% of her dances.

The next day's Winterfeis started at 8am -- earlier start because Graham was totally focussed on getting through the day EARLY so people could make it home Sunday night. Our competitions (Novice and Open) were in the same rooms, but the Beginners were spread out more equitably (no clue on First Feis -- I think most of those were on Saturday, because once you dance in your first feis you're a beginner). This time the picture windows in Thalia's room had a scrim over them in the morning, although they raised it in the afternoon. Other than that, we were sitting in the same seats in the same place doing the same thing for the second day in a row.

Annabeth did her own poof, though, and thought it looked better:


I did hear people complain that they wished there was more room to put their stuff (dress bags, wig cases, etc. etc.) in the stage 3/4 ballroom, which was the same one we were in for last fall's Graham feis -- I pointed out to them that there was a large area across the hall that could be used to dump extra stuff and still have room for kids to practice (it's that big hallway with the baby grand piano and the elevators -- I keep thinking there should be restrooms and a drinking fountain back there, but I've yet to find them).

At about 1:15 Rick came over to our stage to watch Annabeth dance, but we were packing up our stuff, totally finished with all dances, they were running Treble Reels and announcing that they were swinging some PC competitions to that stage so they could zip through them more quickly (aren't PC stages usually bigger, though? No clue if that was an issue at all). We all tromped over to Thalia's stage, watched Traditional Sets, went to get tshirts and results while Rick finished watching the Purdue basketball game on his laptop (if you were there, he was the one who yelled during a lull in the dance competitions because someone missed a layup during the game). We were home by 2:30, once again skipping the Treble Reel competition.

Again, the Feisworx computer system was used for results. The feis had run out of the 4th place ribbons, so they started giving out the 3rd place medals in their place. Cool medals -- quarter included in the picture so you can see how big they were:


This turned out to be a good weekend of feissing. I hope they (we?) do this again next year. Our results were mediocre, but both feiseanna had a lot of competitors, and the competition was pretty good because of it.

Ozark Mountain Feis 2011

The Trip There

This part is for Aunt Elaine. Check out what we discovered when we stopped at the rest stop!



The art work below is supposed to be grade school renditions of Matisse. I'm not sure what this had to do with anything, other than adding to the general surrealism of the experience.




Okay, onward. We stayed at the same Holiday Inn Express as last year, but this year there were actually other people staying there because it wasn't snowy. As a matter of fact, the weather was gorgeous. It was sunny and in the 70s on Saturday, in spite of which the hall where the feis was held was still cold. But not as cold as last year.

The Feis

Much better attendance than last year (which featured a blizzard), but still not very crowded.


The kids had enough dancers in each of their competitions for them to "count" (you need at least 5 dancers in a competition for it to count towards advancement). As a matter of fact, Annabeth often had more dancers in her competition than listed in the schedule, which was sort of odd.

The big stage is divided into 3 sections for the grades, then lots and lots of chairs (wow, you usually don't have so many extra chairs at a feis -- it was amazing), then tables in the back. Plenty of room to move around. And the musician showed up -- woot! Overall, a well run feis, with only a couple of minor quibbles (quibble #1: all of Thalia's competitions had the same judge, so if the judge happened to prefer a different style of dance you were out of luck -- would've been nice to rotate the judges; quibble #2 -- the results were posted in a hodge podge on the wall -- couldn't they have color coded them? or posted them in numeric order?). We didn't purchase food this year, taking along our own, so I don't know if it improved since last year.

As for our personal results, Thalia got a 5th. She also got sicker and sicker as the day went along. By the time we left I thought she was maybe crying, but she said her eyes were watering and her nose was running not due to distress over the feis, since she'd long ceased to care about that, but because she needed to be home in bed. On the other hand, Annabeth danced her hornpipe in a lackluster fashion (Rick commented, "Wow, that was awful," when he saw it) and got a first in it.

They broke for lunch around 1pm, after hornpipe, before Traditional Sets. That allowed the people who don't do Trad Sets to pack up and leave without having to wait around. We stayed for Trad Sets, then packed up and left during non-champion Treble Reels. It was around 2:45pm.

The Trip Home

We stopped at an exit between Springfield and Rolla -- I think it was exit 161 -- to get something to eat and some gas. After we got back on highway 44 I commented to the kids that fiction writers often keep a notebook in which they jot down interesting things so they can use the ideas in stories ... and that exit was FULL of weirdness. The girl in Panera's with the nose stud, multi-colored hair, and fugly high heeled boots who zoomed into the restroom, dug through the (unused) disposable diapers in her purse to pull out a toothbrush, and announced to us that she was "kind of obsessed with tooth brushing." Rick's comment after exiting the men's room that he couldn't imagine how someone would manage to get poop on THAT part of a toilet. The semi driver what was standing outside of the cab of his truck at the gas station with his cat perched on his shoulder (and then got back into the truck cab by the time I got my camera out).

And Annabeth got a cookie to celebrate first place:




I'm not sure how she got the solid black background -- she was taking pictures in the backseat while we were driving home.

Anyway, a thumbs up for this feis again. More people should attend!

River Valley Feis

How can I begin to tell you about this feis? There was the feis itself (a typical McCafferty feis, which is to say it was well-run and fun, although the music could've been better). And there was our experience of the feis.

Our experience started on Tuesday, when Annabeth tried on her school dress (in which she competes) and discovered it was waaaay too small. Small beyond our ability to alter. Which had to happen eventually, since she's been wearing this same dress for nearly 3 years.

So, her teacher said to stop by the studio on Wednesday night to see if there were any viable dresses. Which we did. And most of the ones her size were ... lacking. We finally settled on one that was too big. And I spent Thursday altering it. It's still too big, but she probably won't wear it again for a couple of months, during which time she'll probably grow. Anyway, it took all day Thursday to shorten it (and also take it in a smidge -- it still needs to be taken in lots more). And we planned to leave for the feis on Friday morning -- the plan was for me to drive the kids to Ft. Smith and meet Rick there, since he was already at the feis hotel on business.

Late Thursday night we did the only sensible thing -- stopped getting ready for the feis or doing anything constructive whatsoever, and concentrated on making an acrostic of a friend's name. I think the inspiration was someone realizing that N could stand for Norwegian Christmas Elf and H could stand for Hefty, which was so charming that the kids felt they had to continue. Annabeth insisted that the W should stand for Wafty; I insisted that wasn't a word. I googled it to prove my point. And, guess what -- it IS a word. And instantly became our favorite word, and the theme for the feis and the weekend in general.

All of which is backstory to tell you why the word "wafty" will be appearing several times in this blog entry.

We arrived Friday afternoon (directions from St. Louis to Ft. Smith -- drive west on Interstate 44, and hang a left at Joplin, Missouri). Rick was already checked into the Holiday Inn City Center, which is a very nice Holiday Inn in downtown Ft. Smith, and attached to the Convention Center in which the feis took place. It has pull out beds that actually work, for example. And a giant waterfall in the lobby.




With plenty of room at the bottom to play Monopoly.



The hotel once again offered a free breakfast for feis-goers, which included custom omelettes. Digression: Last year the breakfast was pandemonium because the kitchen and dining room was understaffed and unprepared for the number of people who showed up. This year while Rick as staying at the hotel he mentioned that the same event was coming up on Saturday. The kitchen/dining room staff said they had no notice from management that it was going on -- none at all. But they called in extra help based on Rick's comment. The breakfast flowed much more smoothly because of it -- and the employees commented to Rick that management never did give them an inkling that it was going to be anything but a normal sleepy morning. Wow.

Anyway, after breakfast we headed over to the Convention Center, which looks like this:




Very spacious. We missed most of the 3hands and group dances this year. Last year there were some very cool ones -- family teams, mixed adult ceilis. No clue if that went on this year.

The feis had a single musician, who had problems making his connecting flights from Ohio to Ft. Smith via Dallas, and thus missed the form dances. The Powers That Be used recordings for the ceilis (which works out okay). The musician showed up sometime during the reels.

In the meantime, we shopped for gaudy earrings to match Thalia's dress. Amazing that you can hit every store in a St. Louis mall and not find a single pair of red earrings, but come to a feis and you have multiple choices.


Also, general goofing around, and acting wafty. I think she was trying to look like a traffic cone. Or maybe a feis-style interpretation of The Mad Hatter.


One of the judges had a wafty pink shirt. I was sorely tempted to sneak up behind him so I could point it out to Annabeth, who was up on stage in front of him. But I didn't, simply taking weird pictures instead (and believe me, you're just getting a teensy peek at the weird pictures taken this feis).


Of course, it wasn't all about waftiness and gaudy jewelry -- the day had a strong KNITTING theme. I was working on a scarf, and wearing a silk Moebius I'd made a few years ago. It turned out many knitters were in attendance, some knitting, some just wearing some of their pieces. I LOVED this sweater -- she got the pattern in Ireland a few years ago:


Around 2pm one of the PTB got up to announce that the feis was running AHEAD OF SCHEDULE, and would be commencing the PC/OC championship dances earlier than the expected 3pm. Can you imagine? Folks, if a feis runs ON TIME you consider it miraculous and are mightily impressed that they made it through the grades and treble reels by 3:30-ish. Running ahead of schedule is unheard of. We were easily home in St. Louis by 9:30pm.

As for actual results (you know, the reason you supposedly show up at these things -- not to be silly or play Monopoly or eat omlettes or discuss knitting, but to compete in dances), our dancers didn't rise above 3rd place. But we still had a great time, and plan to go back. We hope to hit all the McCaffery feisseanna this year -- they tend to have a nice atmosphere. My only quibble is that I wish they had more than one musician, because if something happens to that single musician you're stuck.

Halloween 2010 -- Riverdance!

Last year, after their amazing success as The Bacteria Bunch, the kids immediately started plotting their next costumes. At the time we were living and breathing Irish Dance in preparation for Oireachtas 2009. So it seemed natural to say, "hey, how about being Irish Dancers?"

Of course, Oireachtas came and went, the kids (at least Thalia and Annabeth) discovered that performing musical theatre and Shakespeare was at least as fun, if not more so, than Irish Dance, and generally decided that they never cared to compete at a major Irish Dance competition again in their lives. And started kicking around different ideas for Halloween costumes, many of them based on Monty Python routines.

But when it came down to the wire, the only thing everyone could agree on was that Irish Dance would work. So I bought several yards of dark green gabardine (I'm pretty sure it's the exact same stuff that our school uses for these skirts), downloaded a copy of A Reel Around the Sun from iTunes, and found some cheap iPod speakers at Walmart.

Thalia choreographed the routine, basing it on the Clarkson school version of Riverdance along with some 3-hand ideas. They did it as a soft shoe -- well, actually a sneaker-shoe -- due to considerations such as "don't ruin the uber-expensive hardshoes by schlepping around the neighborhood all night in them", along with the fact that sometimes they were dancing in lawns and/or gravel (the original dance in Riverdance is a hardshoe, but the cool factor of hardshoe is lost if you can't hear the beats the shoes make on the dance surface).

And so, the afternoon of Halloween, they got together to put on feis makeup (but not the M.A.C. foundation, which looks like Oompa Loompa Orange, frankly):



Rehearsed a bit on the front porch:



And did the requisite picture posing:




Then off to start our rounds. Our premiere performance:



Then about 35-50 more houses (sometime we should actually count this out). Things we learned: 1. People remember us from year to year (although the kids weren't actually H1N1 last year, it was close enough, particularly since the lady who said it was waving around a camera and saying, "hold on, I have to film you!"); 2. There are an awful lot of Irish people in our neighborhood, some of whom have seen the kids perform in other venues, it turns out; 3. A lot of people can't clap in time to music (but we already knew that from other shows); 4. Most importantly, you can trick-or-treat waaay past acceptable age limits if you're willing to put a little work into your presentation -- this has sort of become HalloweenCon to us, with our own spin on cosplay.

And, by the time we got home a couple of hours later, the kids felt like they had the choreography down pretty well, having danced it in a wide variety of situations. They wanted another quick video, so here it is:


(Actually, we were all so sick of these 2 bars of A Reel Around the Sun by this time that I didn't think I'd be able to load these videos on YouTube without having my ears bleed; but then I realized that I could load them without actually watching them THANK GOD!)

And another lesson for you all -- if you put some effort into your trick-or-treat, you will be richly rewarded:

Graham Feis 2010

You know, sometimes when Irish Dance folks are chatting someone will say, "What's the worst feis you've ever been to?", and for the past year I would say without pause or hesitation, "Graham Feis 2009." But get this -- if you asked me today to name a really, really good feis, I'd say "GRAHAM 2010!"

They moved the feis to the Ballpark Hilton, which is the site of the Irish Arts feis every year. It's an okay venue, although Irish Arts seems to suffer from disorganizational weirdness every year. And the organizational masterminds at Graham used the hotel to its best advantage for this feis.

We were on stages 3 and 4, which is an area I've never been in before. It was HUGE, with a large lobby just outside for kids to relax or practice their dances. My one tiny quibble is that the signage to find stages 3 and 4 was lacking -- when we got to the hotel the sign at the bottom of the escalator pointed up to indicate that stages 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 were upstairs, but when we got to the top of the escalators we could only find signs for stages 1,2,5, and 6. The signs for 3 and 4 were waaaay down the hall, which was full of people, and thus we couldn't see the signs.

But, of course, we eventually found where we were supposed to be and spread out our stuff. Did I mention how roomy this place was? I think I was scarred by how cramped the Graham feis was last year; but this was the most spacious layout I've seen in a hotel feis. Check out the leg room between rows of chairs:



You could dump all sorts of crud all over the place, and still have room to move.

The feis itself ran in sort of a typical way. Our stages went at typical feis speed -- not the most amazingly fast ever, but not horribly slow. A friend with 3 children scattered throughout the feis commented that stage 1 and 2 were running quite slowly -- they were still in soft shoe at lunch break. The results seemed to be posted quickly during the day. Frankly, at the end of the day I sent the kids down to collect their results while I collected our flotsam, so I have no idea how they handled the end-of-the-day rush, although our kids seemed to reappear from their adventures in results-getting. Graham typically makes use of all the "best practices" in this area, so I expect it was pretty organized.

As for our personal feis saga, Thalia spent part of the morning looking over the Used Solo Dress rack (digression: it was in an alcove outside of the ladies room, which was the only place she could access the hotel wifi and thus email her friends -- she pent quite a bit of time parked in that area with her iPod). She found one that fit okay -- needs some alterations, but it's in the ballpark of fit. And it needs some crystals re-glued, and general spiffing up, but our teacher gave it an "okay". So Rick bartered with the woman selling it, et voila, Thalia has a new solo dress by the end of lunch break.



And even though it's really too short in the back, and even though it needs some work, I asked Thalia if she wanted to wear it right away. Because, what's the downside -- she's dancing in a school dress, which is fairly dumpy on her, so who cares if the judge is upset that the skirt is an inch or two too short in the back. The biggest problem was a strand of crystals on the front bodice that was falling off, but Annabeth suggested using sock glue, which is about the consistency of Krazy Glue but water soluble. The people sitting behind us while I was using the sock glue on the dress were fascinated by the process, having never seen anyone do something like that.

Anyway, the crystal strand seemed to stick sorta kinda okay after that, so she went up to check into her next dance. The other girls she'd been competing against were suitably impressed that she'd had a major costume change over lunch. And, really, the dress didn't look bad onstage:



We told her so after she danced. She said that was great, and it was too bad she totally messed up the dance (blanked out on a step), but oh well, whatever.

And when I happened to check results a few minutes later I discovered that she had placed first in the dance. The dance that she flubbed. Because, folks, IT REALLY IS ALL ABOUT THE DRESS. I totally believe it now. It's not SUPPOSED to be about the dress -- it's supposed to be about the dancing. And some judges can rise above the sparkles. But, really, it's funny and sad all at the same time that the competition that people sometimes call a "sport" can be so swayed by apparel.

Anyway, kudos to Graham for putting on a fantastic feis. I'd highly recommend it to those thinking of attending next year. Just bring a fancy dress.

Gateway Feis 2010

Once again, the Gateway Feis Committee and Renaissance Hotel did a lot of things right.

The stages for the grades were laid out in a logical order. Plenty of room for people to move around. An extra ballroom was rented for vendors and also for a practice stage -- it also had extra seating for people. Parking validation was offered to defray the pay-for-parking around the hotel (although it turned out to be a moot point since the exit gate was put in the "up" position by the time we left).

And, as a bonus, they whipped through the competitions like nobody's business. When we stopped by Friday night to pick up our competition numbers we overheard someone say something to the effect that a wedding was taking place at the hotel on Saturday, so they'd need to zip the feis along to get everyone out of there so the hotel could set up for the next event.

Also, some kids from another school thought Annabeth had a nice poof:



By lunch time most of the hornpipes were done. After the break the kids finished up hornpipe, then did their Traditional Sets. We were packed up, checked out results (all of our results had been posted quickly all day long) and were out of there in time to enjoy the rest of the day. Woot.

We decided the theme for the feis was from Wicked:

One short feis at the Renaissance Hotel,
One short feis to move your dances up!

Too bad we didn't move any dances up. Our family seemed to be under some sort of dreamlike spell, much akin to Dorothy wandering around Oz -- "This is a feis? We do Irish Dance? Really?" -- so we came home with a couple of ribbons a each rather than medals. Such is life when you start to focus on other things.

Overall, a thumbs up for this feis. We recommend it.

Random Stuff

Hey, long time no blog. I was going to post yesterday with a Work-in-Progress Wednesday, but our internet service went kaput. (OMG! HOW CAN WE GET IN TOUCH WITH FRIENDS ABOUT SATURDAY NIGHT? Because we're apparently incapable of picking up a phone and calling, or functioning AT ALL without internet. Sheesh.)

Many local schools started this week. While the kids were loading onto the bus, we were making pancakes:



Really, that's a lie. The school kids were on the bus before the household kids were even awake. So the pancakes were made mid-morning.


We've been getting back into the swing of school, particularly math, for a couple of weeks now. We're at the fun point in RightStart E -- things like isometric drawings:


I'll be teaching a co-op class in knitting and crocheting this year. I'm making some sample dishcloths for the class. This one is a simple design of a lighthouse, chosen because it's Lighthouse Co-op:


I've also been messing around with sewing a skirt for a solo dress, using cheap drapery fabric and Peltex. You know what? I hate working with Peltex. I love bodices. I love the fabric we found for the skirt (a silk-metallic blend that has the same irregularly pleated texture as the cheap drapery fabric). But I hate the heavy stiffening. Working with it felt like a prison sentence. So I ended up emailing a woman in Australia about a used dress for sale.


Not sure what the final outcome of the Australian emails will be, or if I'll go back to wrestling the Peltex. Thalia doesn't seem to care one way or another, and is content to compete in her school dress. She has developed new interests this summer, it seems (yes, I know some of you are dying from laughter at what a massive understatement that is -- I can hear you all the way over here at our house). So Irish Dance is no longer the BIg Deal is was before.

More later ... posting quickly before the internet goes out again ....

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!

Indy Feis

Once again putting this in sections so you can read the bits you want and ignore the rest.

THE TRIP THERE

Indianapolis is a straight shot from St. Louis on Interstate 70. We left in the early afternoon on Friday, and arrived during rush hour (the time zone changes once you enter Indiana). I crocheted collars, the kids worked on their Twelfth Night scripts.

THE HOTEL

The BEST HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS EVER! Check it out!. Really, click on the bit that says "select photo category" and choose features, and take a look at that pool ... it's a salt water pool with a waterfall/fountain. Nice size, hardly anyone using it. Wow, it was SO NICE that we're considering going back and just hanging out there. Plus, our room had 2 king size beds (which meant it was impossible to practice dance, but, hey, everyone got a great night's sleep). Plus, of course, the free breakfast in the morning.

We ate at the Ruby Tuesday's south on 31, which I'm noting here since Rick has no memory that that's where we ate in 2009. So, you know, when the discussion comes up again in 2011 we can just look up this entry

THE FEIS

This is our 3rd time at the Indianapolis Feis, and, you what? It's a nice feis, pleasant, etc. etc., and just sort of ... boring. No one threw up, had costume malfunctions, threw a tantrum, lost a shoe, or otherwise livened up the day. It was just ... pleasant. And therefor dull. I didn't even bother taking photos of wigs for Ami.

The one teeny bit of excitement is that they decided to run the Treble Reels in the middle of the day this year, so they announced that everyone should go to the appropriate stages; except really, they shouldn't have, and a couple of our school's dancers ending up missing Slip Jig. The volunteers figured out how to have those kids dance their Slip Jigs after lunch, then. That was a hassle for the people involved. Our family wasn't involved in Treble Reel, which I was glad of, under the circumstances. So we had a really blase day of hanging around the appropriate stage waiting for our dances. Aunt Elaine came by after lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon with us.

The feis provides plenty of room for camping, so we took a blanket and soccer chairs. Oh, and it finally struck me why this is one feis they aren't constantly telling people to back away from the judges table -- they cordon off the judges table so no one gets near it. Clever idea. Side view:




(Action shot of Judy McCafferty preparing to judge some beginners. I've decided that when you know the judges by name when you see them you've probably been doing this too long; except everyone remembers Ms McCafferty because they like her, so maybe it's okay.)

Another post about the general set up of the feis here. We bought lunch from the same concession stand as last year -- $7 for a large sandwich plus chip, big enough for 2 people to split.

I took photos of the results boards for Novice/Open, since the feis hasn't posted these results anywhere I could find in the past couple of years. These are of limited use if you don't have the competitor numbers, of course. The competitor list is currently available(June 2010) as a pdf file here. Click on the pictures to make them bigger and more legible. These aren't in order, and sorry about the ladder in one of them, but people kept wandering in front of me, so I was happy to just get photos at all.









THE TRIP HOME

Actually, we didn't come home until Sunday. We spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa, watching Hairspray on DVD (we saw it live at the Fox a couple of years ago, but never saw the movie). It looked like some absolutely wicked weather was coming along Interstate 70 from St. Louis straight to Indianapolis on Saturday night -- it will be interesting to hear how the trip went for those who came straight home. Our trip was more of the same crocheting and line memorization, with pleasant weather.

Memphis Feis

Here's my new brainstorm: You know Cake Wrecks? We're going to band together and make a website we'll call Feis Wrecks in which we dish about feisseana that go horribly wrong.

In the meantime, I'm going to start divvying these posts into sections so that people who are looking for information about a particular feis can find it without having to wade through quite so much commentary on other stuff our family did over the feis weekend.

The Trip There

Memphis is about 4.5 hours from St. Louis -- just head south on Interstate 55 and you'll eventually get there. We left around noon on Saturday. Thalia had purchased the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise cheaply from iTunes, and watched episodes on her iPod; eventually she plugged the iPod into Rick's laptop, and she and AnnaBeth both watched it while using their earbuds for the sound. Which left Rick and I to listen to several hours of Classic Vinyl and Classic Rewind on XM, trying to remember who the heck sang a song before checking it on the dial. They even played Us and Them from Dark Side of the Moon (which I named and gave the album name first), which I haven't heard for years and years. Also, we were passing and being passed by a huge pickup truck -- the kind with the extra bench seat in the back and double tires under the bed -- it was full of people and the back was full of luggage tied down. The pile of luggage included a black boot that wasn't in any sort of suitcase or bag, and didn't appear to be tied down. We were fascinated by the boot -- would it fall out? After several hours of contemplating the boot, we lost track of them as we entered Memphis. This remains one of the great mysteries of the weekend -- what happened to the boot?

Also, I completed one lace collar I'd already started, and made another one, too. So that was nice.

The Hotel

We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express near the airport (I think). Hotels in the area were pretty full -- lots of kids there for some sporting event. Last year we stayed in South Haven, and there were boatloads of kids THERE for the same event.

The pool was sort of skanky, like it was overloaded beyod capacity for cleaning. They gave us a king-size room with a pull-out sofa bed that they said would sleep 2, except it was actually twin size (the same thing happened in Nashville last year). Additionally, the pull-out was ripped to the point that it would no longer hold the mattress. Sigh.

UPDATE: The hotel refunded the rewarded points we used on this stay. They were really gracious about it. So a thumbs up for that.



So we put the mattress on the floor, and used a twin-sized Aerobed we'd brought along "just in case". Overall, not very impressed, won't be back.

The Feis

The feis was at a different hotel than last year, which was good because Rick had said he refused to go back to last year's location (people who had attended last year were still discussing the insects). It was at the Holiday Inn Select on Poplar. At first glance this seemed like a nice venue. We arrived about mid-morning, since PC/OC competitions were in the morning, followed by figures (same as last year). We expected to start dancing at about noon.

Some people from our school had snagged a lounge area downstairs complete with couches, tables and chairs. We used this as our school camping area. This was really, really, REALLY good, since the competitions were being held in a ballroom that wasn't big enough. Here's the view from the stage:



Same as last year, the entire stage was used for PC/OC, then it was divided into 3 parts for the grades. Note the lack of seating, not to mention the lack of standing room for competitors and their families. It was insane. The hallway outside of the ballroom had signs posted all over stating "No Camping in the Hall". I was standing around talking to some moms from another school when a lady passed by and said, "The signs say 'no camping'," which struck me as rather passive-aggressive -- where the heck were people SUPPOSED to hang out while waiting to compete? Really, I saw people eating lunch in the telephone cubicle (the phone was out of order) because it was the only free space they could find.

Anyway, our kids generally hung around and talked to friends



(always interesting to travel several hours, spend the night, etc., etc., to stand around talking to people who live close by), waiting for their competitions to begin. Which was at 2 O'CLOCK! Egads, when you start at 2pm you know you're in trouble!

Anyway, we started competing, and things were going relatively smoothly. Only one musician (Pat King wasn't there -- no clue what happened -- but that had to have slowed things down since the musician needed a break from playing fiddle for 12 hours straight). I thought the stages could've been organized a bit better -- there seemed to be too much "blank" time during which a stage (or stages) were empty. But then the announcement came at about 4 or 5 o'clock that a judge needed to leave to catch a flight, which put us down to 2 judges. Eek! I love the comment by one of the dads, He of the Acerbic Wit: "Had to leave to catch a flight? Really? Give me a break. There are other flights! It's not the space shuttle!" Also, there was a problem with one of the stages -- a board loose (quickly fixed by a guy with a screw gun -- had we known this was going to happen Rick could've brought his, since he'd just spent about a week crawling around screwing down floorboards at our house). The local teacher filled in to judge when possible, which means only on competitions that didn't include any students that she taught or had any association with.

We discussed with other parents that by hornpipe competition the feis seemed to have entered the phase wherein whatever dancers were standing upright and could finish their dance without dropping from exhaustion were declared the winners.


By this time I'd finished another lace collar and the dads were forming a pool as to when the feis would actually end ("what do we actually mean by 'the feis is over'?" "I've got 7:30 in the pool!" "Okay, I'm taking the over on that."). We were done and out the door of the hotel at 7:19pm.



Free at last! It was cooler outside, and possibly less humid.

We left before Treble Reel. Our kids weren't signed up, and had reached the point that they would've bailed out even if they HAD been signed up.

One nice thing -- when we got home we discovered that our results were available for free on Feisworx. They usually cost $5 per dancer. I don't recall if they did this last year, but it was a nice touch, particularly after such a crappy day.

The Trip Home

More XM Classical Rewind and Classic Vinyl, including a reprise of Us and Them, meaning I heard it more in that 36 hour span than in the previous 15 years (same with American Woman). After all of these years of marriage I discovered that Rick knows ALL the words to Smoke on the Water, which boggles my mind ... apparently he and his friend Harold were going to form a band back in 6th grade and sing this song; and it was going to be very, very cool. Thalia watched more Star Trek: Enterprise, making it through 7 episodes total for the trip. AnnaBeth fell asleep. We got home about midnight.

The Dancing Itself

Each of our dancers got a 2nd and a 4th. We discussed some things we can do to make things better next time. I'm still on my kick about analyzing failure to help do better next time.

I wonder if the Powers That Be at the feis are doing the same thing. I'd say their smartest move would be to hold the feis someplace bigger -- I think we all would've felt better if we'd had room to move. Also, could we all stop being so delusional about how long a feis lasts? I've decided that however long someone tells you a competition will take, add in at least 50% more -- so if they say the beginners (or PC/OC) will be over by noon, figure they'll be there until about 2pm or so.