Big Apple Feis recap
Oh Big Apple Feis, where do I begin with you?
I was really excited to have a feis practically in my backyard, since dealing with travel for feiseanna is both time-consuming and expensive. One where I can just take the subway is amazing, as I'm pretty sure I've mentioned many times before.
The venue: the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square, which was very nice if not a bit confusing on the ground level (so many elevators, none of which seemed to go to the floor I needed to be on). It was stretched over three floors, which was fine for me since I checked the stage schedule before arriving, but if you hadn't, it would be very difficult to tell where you were supposed to be.
The one really good thing about hotel feiseanna is that there's always plenty of seating. The last feis I went to with no seating (what up, Young School Feis) was close to giving me and my mom feis-induced PTSD. Being able to park your stuff/butt on a chair really makes a difference in freeing up floor space to warm up!
Hotel feiseanna, by benefit of generally being in large ballrooms, usually have huge stages, and Big Apple Feis did not disappoint. Due to a combination of long legs and marching band training where I would have to cover 10 yards in about 8 counts, I tend to extend and cover huge distances in a very short amount of time. Needless to say, I loved the huge stages and took full advantage of the space.
The vendors: not many, despite the list on the feis website. I don't know if there were more on another floor, if they left before I got there (which would be weird as I arrived at noon), or if they just didn't bother showing up. I was a little disappointed, as I was really hoping to get new ghillies, but my friend was quite disappointed as this was her first feis ever and was looking forward to all the vendors. Obviously this didn't have an impact on the actual competitions, but as an environmental factor it was a let-down.
I was really excited to have a feis practically in my backyard, since dealing with travel for feiseanna is both time-consuming and expensive. One where I can just take the subway is amazing, as I'm pretty sure I've mentioned many times before.
The venue: the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square, which was very nice if not a bit confusing on the ground level (so many elevators, none of which seemed to go to the floor I needed to be on). It was stretched over three floors, which was fine for me since I checked the stage schedule before arriving, but if you hadn't, it would be very difficult to tell where you were supposed to be.
The one really good thing about hotel feiseanna is that there's always plenty of seating. The last feis I went to with no seating (what up, Young School Feis) was close to giving me and my mom feis-induced PTSD. Being able to park your stuff/butt on a chair really makes a difference in freeing up floor space to warm up!
Hotel feiseanna, by benefit of generally being in large ballrooms, usually have huge stages, and Big Apple Feis did not disappoint. Due to a combination of long legs and marching band training where I would have to cover 10 yards in about 8 counts, I tend to extend and cover huge distances in a very short amount of time. Needless to say, I loved the huge stages and took full advantage of the space.
The vendors: not many, despite the list on the feis website. I don't know if there were more on another floor, if they left before I got there (which would be weird as I arrived at noon), or if they just didn't bother showing up. I was a little disappointed, as I was really hoping to get new ghillies, but my friend was quite disappointed as this was her first feis ever and was looking forward to all the vendors. Obviously this didn't have an impact on the actual competitions, but as an environmental factor it was a let-down.
The competitions: as many people have complained about before me, holy hell were the stages a mess. I've heard a lot of complaints even worse than mine, but I'll stick to my own experiences. First, there was no stage monitor; one of the adjudicators had to fill in. Actually, there were hardly any volunteers at all throughout, which must definitely played a role in stages running hours behind.
I heard about music issues on other stages (musicians missing and having to solicit for iPods), and while we were lucky in that we had a musician, it would have been great for them to get someone who could play all the music. We were fine for the standard dances, but the musician on our stage didn't know how to play half the trad sets, leaving us to dance to an iPad.
I will say, the adjudicator filling in as stage monitor for our stage was great. What was also great was how they ran the competitions for adults. Since we were in the championship room with three adjudicators, and didn't need three for the grade competitions, they were able to run multiple competitions simultaneously.
What they did was have beginner and advanced beginner, followed by novice and prizewinner, on stage together. The competitions would run one after the other so there was no break in the music. One adjudicator would watch the beginner dancers, and another the advanced beginner (likewise with novice and prizewinner), cutting some time. So, instead of having 4 separate bows for reel competitions, for example, there would be only two. I thought it was highly efficient, and especially great for times where there aren't a lot of competitors in each grade.
There was a bit of a mix-up when another dancer and I were judged in both novice *and* prizewinner slip jig, but thankfully the reverse never happened. Also, now I can say I've placed third in prizewinner!
Returning to the volunteer issue, I had offered a couple of months ago to volunteer at this through my teacher, pending my competition schedule. Unfortunately, I heard nothing from the feis committee except a brief note via my teacher to just show up if you want to volunteer. As someone who has a lot of experience coordinating events and managing schedules (and also working such events), the utter lack of volunteers was a completely preventable problem.
Here's what to do in the future: when you get people willing to volunteer, ask them for an availability timeframe. If you have dancers willing to volunteer, try to set a tentative schedule for the day so they and you can start planning. (On that note, I'm sure plenty of adult dancers would be willing to volunteer; put their competition first so they can be available the rest of the day.)
Once you get enough people to cover the full time of the event, send out a schedule! People like knowing where and what they're doing, and it will make them more likely to show up if they feel like they're being held accountable by something such as a schedule. When you get more volunteers, just add them to the schedule to fill out the rest of the volunteer staff.
I just wrote this organizational plan while sitting on a bus. If I can do it that quickly in such an environment, why is it so hard for the feis committee to work something out? I hope they can fix this for next year, because it could be a really great feis; I plan on reaching out to them in the future.
The awards: I was warned by more than a few of my fellow dancers about the awards, and how they now have more apples than they know what to do with. I didn't really get it until I went to collect my awards (1st in treble reel, 2nd in slip jig and hornpipe, 3rd in reel, treble jig, and trad set).
I now understand the comments about apples, seeing as I collected 3 crystal apples, plus 3 apple trophies! They are definitely very unique and just plain cool awards, but I can see how one could run out of storage room doing this feis year after year. All that said, they should definitely keep doing these awards!
All in all, despite the beyond-usual feis craziness, I did really enjoy it and look forward to doing it again next year. And hopefully, they can get things together to make it more smoothly run and a great time for everyone.
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