The Feis Experience

Irish-Dancer has been talking to parents at various feisanna and finding their views on how the events are run. We have tried to balance the opinions and complaints with possible explanations of the problems but invariably our comments could be misinformed or misinterpreted. We therefore emphasise that this article is not meant to be an indictment of Feis organisers in any way. If anyone has any comments to make or disagrees with any of the reasoning please feel free to contact us. We will gladly incorporate any relevant information into this discussion.

A great day out at the feis

After a 25 minute journey we arrived at the Feis. The venue was very easy to find and we were guided to one of the empty parking spaces by the man on the gate.
It was 2.45 p.m. and our daughters competition was due to start at 3.00 p.m. so we made our way to the hall to check on the progress of the previous competition. They were just about to start their final dance.
We took our seats whilst our daughter got ready to dance.
The new adjudicator and the musician arrived and the competitions commenced. All the dancers made full use of the large stage area as they tried to impress the judge. After every second competition the results were announced. Each dancer was called onto the stage to collect their medal and they all bowed together, before leaving sidestage.
As soon as the Solo rounds were completed we moved across to the Championship hall. We had about 10 minutes before it was time for our Championship to begin, and the time was used to take dancers details etc
The soft shoe round was first. The competitors came on stage two by two with big smiles on their faces. The crowd cheered heartily after each dance, and the competition seemed to fly by.
After the heavy round the dancers were given a five minute wait before the recall result was to be announced over the microphone. They made use of the break to check their make-up etc. and get a quick drink.
Everyone stayed to watch the recall competition, each dancer giving their all. At the end of the competition the announcer thanked the adjudicators and musician and praised the efforts of all the dancers. She suggested we take five minutes to stretch our legs and they would then announce the results. About five minutes later we were called into the hall and the results were given. As soon as the presentations were over the actual scores were available for purchase, and everybody grabbed a copy, keen to see exactly how they had performed.
We left the venue at 5.00 p.m. and made our way home, our daughter tired but happy in the back seat clutching her medals.

A typical day at the feis?

Unless you have been very, very lucky, then probably not!  

The Reality

All too often the reality can be somewhat different. The true course of events is such that it makes the whole idea of attending feisanna, one that fills parents and dancers with a feeling of impending doom! In order to understand why that's the case, we need to look into the background to an Open Feis.

Why hold a feis?

We first have to consider why anyone would want to hold a feis. There are many reasons, all of them valid to varying degrees.

Status

The most important factor is the undoubted status that comes from being a leading light in the feis circuit. A school that holds an Open Feis is effectively making a statement that they are both a well established and a well run school. This undoubtedly will have the knock on effect of giving the school, and the teacher of course, an enhanced status level within the Irish Dancing World.
This is particularly true if the feis is well run and successful.
Indeed a well established school, perhaps with some World Championship level dancers, is almost duty bound to be part of the Feis circuit.
Other major schools will also tend to offer their assistance with organising and helping on the day. This helps a school to forge important relationships with other prominent teachers

Geography

There are also geographical considerations to be taken account of. A school that is in an area a little out of the main concentration of schools may feel that their dancers always get the raw deal, having to travel great distances for any feisanna.
This could deter dancers and their parents in the early days of their dancing, and ultimately lead to potential future championship dancers dropping out before they ever achieve anything. By organising their own feis a school offers its less experienced dancers the opportunity to experience the sheer magnitude of the event, whilst being on familiar ground.

Money

The final consideration is quite simple! A large established school would normally try to financially support its top dancers when attending major championships around the world, in order to aid their success. Schools utilise many fundraising techniques and feisanna are a major part of the process.

Consider, if you will, the level of income generated by an average feisanna with 800 dancers attending. (Bear in mind that this would not be a particularly large feis.)
Each dancer takes part in 6 separate Solo competitions (ave £1.50 each) plus two trophy competitions, or a Championship.
The trophy or Championships would probably cost around £3.00 so the total entry fees are around £12.00 per dancer. We will ignore dancers doing extra competitions in different grades, or figure dancing etc.

That gives a total entry fee of £10,000 approximately!

In addition all those dancers bring parents etc. who pay £2.00 or more entry fee as well. If we assume that each dancer is only accompanied by one adult this adds another £1600 to the total, so you can see already that a feis generates a great deal of cash, and that's before sale of refreshments etc.

Obviously this is not all profit, as there are the costs of the feis to be accounted for. Musicians that play non-stop for 12 hours at a time are definitely going to expect to be well paid! Adjudicators travel from all around the World and also spend long hours sat watching competitions, so they are also not going to be cheap!
A feis organiser could hardly expect either to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses either.
Then of course the halls themselves, and the sound systems have to be hired and cleaned afterwards etc. However, even taking all of these factors into account the net proceeds of a feis are probably still worth receiving!

The People attending

That explains the basic reasons behind organising a feis, but what about the people who attend, how do they feel about them?
Over the years I have attended many feisanna and have talked to lots of parents from many other schools and the same topics of conversation keep arising. Invariably the same complaints raise their head over and over again.
At this point I must explain that not all feisanna are guilty in all of these areas, and some of them are only so in varying degrees. It would also be unfair to name any individual organiser, as matters may have been outwith their control at the time, and they may already have made provision to correct the problems for their next feisanna.

Venue

The first complaint is usually aimed at the venue itself. A lot of the halls that are commonly used are too small and cramped to take the number of people attending. The dancing stages are sometimes smaller than would be chosen by the dancers themselves, meaning that they don't really dance to their full potential for fear of colliding with other dancers. There are insufficient chairs, nowhere for dancers to get changed or practice, and the lighting is unsuitable for competition. This situation is made worse by virtue of the next competitors arrival before their allotted competition times.
In defence of the organisers it must be said that there are few venues designed to cater for that many people at once. In addition many venues would not be happy to have heavy shoe dancers damaging their floors etc. There is also an element of community support as many of the venues are local community schools and welcome the cash injection into their coffers, a fact that feis organisers are very aware of. Indeed knowing this may well be a factor that would deter a school from moving to a more suited venue.

Cleanliness

I've often heard complaints regarding cleanliness and hygiene, particularly in the toilet areas. It is often the case that there is no toilet paper, or toilets are blocked, and no-one seems responsible for providing a solution. This is in part again due to lack of facilities in the first place. After all school toilets only have to cater for children in break periods and any problems are rectified by the janitor during the lesson times. At a feis the toilets are in constant use by a lot more people, but it would seem that some provision could be made for regular cleaning, and provision of extra toilet tissue. It is one of the basic requirements of any organised event to provide a level of hygiene standards sufficient to cater for the expected demand, but is all too frequently overlooked by feis organisers.
Waste bins are noticeable by their absence too, and invariably halls become littered with crisp packets, sweet wrappers and spilt drinks. To a degree that must be a complaint levelled at the attendees themselves, as they make the mess! It could certainly be argued that there is little point in putting bins in halls when people wouldn't use them anyway. After all, if there isn't a bin why not put the rubbish in your own bags rather than throw it on the floors.
This problem is made even worse by the fact that despite requests not to eat and drink in the halls, people insist on bringing food purchased in the canteen area into the dancing hall.

Canteen

The canteen itself can also be an area of concern as it invariably closes several hours before the competitions are over, leaving people no provision for even simple drinks etc. As some people have been at the venue for most of the day, and have travelled many miles to get there they do have a valid point.To have set closing times for the canteen, when competition timetables are over running does seem to be a bit inflexible.

Timetable

Which brings me to what many would say is the main problem at feisanna, the timetable! All too often it bears no relation to actual events at the feisanna. Experienced parents take a look at the timetable and can tell at a glance that it is going to over run, so the argument goes "if we can see that, then why can't the organisers?". It shouldn't be too hard to arrange a timetable allowing some free time for delays, indeed one or two feisanna have managed to do so.

After all, if it is known that there are usually 30 in a group it is simple maths to determine a timetable. If dancers dance in threes and each dance takes an estimated 1½ minutes then each solo round would last for approximately 15 minutes (30 divided by 3 =  10 x 1½ = 15)
As each dancer takes part in 8 (6 solo and 2 trophy) competitions the grade would take 2 hours to complete, without allowing for time to award medals, adding up marks or changing shoes. Add that on as well and you probably need to allow 2½ hours for the grade. Frequently you will see only one hour allowed on the timetable, which means an expected turnout of less than 15 dancers!

It is due to these vastly underestimated timetables that huge delays build up. It is not unheard of to experience delays of 6 or 7 hours, meaning competitions finishing close to midnight. The dancers by this time are too tired to give their best and adjudicators could be forgiven if their interest began to diminish. It also gives rise to parents becoming irritated, which in turn creates tension for the organisers. It's during these periods that people begin to notice that the toilets are dirty, the canteen is closed etc. which makes everything seem even worse. It also exacerbates the problem of overcrowding  and lack of seating.
Eventually you have dancers and parents from perhaps as many as four or five competitions all vying for space in the same cramped hall.

This complaint applies particularly to feisanna that accept entries on the day. In their defence it is hard to plan exactly, when they do not know how many people will turn up. However, as most of the organisers attend nearly all of the other feisanna they must have a good idea of the size of each age group and grade. In addition they can call on the experience of the previous year to highlight the areas that caused delays.
Feisanna that are pre-booked should escape this criticism, as they make their timetable based upon known entrants. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in some cases. The severity of delay may not be as high but it still occurs. I have personally attended a pre-booked feis that was running five hours behind schedule!

Three or four years ago the over running could be attributed to what is often referred to as the Riverdance Factor. The sudden influx of new dancers brought about by the Riverdance and Lord of the Dance phenomena meant that feis organisers were caught on the hop by the dramatically increased numbers of Beginner and Primary dancers. This has now had time to stabilise and many of those new dancers have actually dropped out again, so although there are more dancing than there used to be numbers are still below the peak levels.
All feisanna timetables have to be approved by the Commission and yet these problems are not highlighted, although it is possible that they are only approving that all of the required age groups and grades are being catered for, and not the actual schedule of events.

Championships

Because of the delays medal presentations are often rushed through, which is a shame. Dancers deserve their moments of glory for all the work and time they dedicate to their craft. It also helps to make the long hours waiting to dance more bearable, both for them, and their parents.
Ultimately every dancer aims to dance in Championships, and these are frequently the biggest casualties of the delays. Adjudicators are often still judging competitions that should already be finished, when they should be in the Championship hall.
The Championship marking process itself also causes lengthy delays.
The scoring system is complex and has to be re-checked carefully. (for a full description see Marking) At many feisanna this is still a manual process although many are now moving to computerised systems. However, unless these are specifically designed for feis marking (such as Computex or FeisMark) they still take some time to set up and use.
To avoid further delays the next Championship usually commences so dancers have to sit through it before finding out if they made the recall or not. If they have, they will then dance and have to sit through the second competitions recall as well before finally getting their own results. This sometimes results in a dancer waiting for 2 or even 3 hours after dancing their first championship dance! Worst still is sitting through the other groups Championship only to find they haven't made the recall and could have already gone home!

Summary

In conclusion it seems that people do have some justification for complaint, but that some of the problems are not of the organisers making.
Unsuitable venues are realistically just a fact of life, but they could be made more comfortable with a little more consideration from the organisers. Better timetabling would also make the experience a little easier to take for parents, and ultimately for the organisers themselves. Spreading feisanna over two days, and arranging to have spare adjudicators would ensure smooth flowing competitions, as would better, and more sophisticated marking systems.

Feis organisers should be aware that people sometimes feel like they are being treated badly, and paying out a lot of money for the privilege!

Parents also need to realise that they also have a part in trying to keep things running smoothly. Dancers should be ready to dance, and not encouraged to stay back so that they can dance last, or on their own.
By collecting up their own rubbish, not allowing their children to run riot, and not taking up extra seating space unnecessarily the venues would also seem cleaner and less cramped. The organisers could then concentrate on everything else.