Feis Story

I had a chance to visit with my old pal Gordie Grohmann the other day about the second annual Kansas City Feis, which will dance into the Westin Crown Center over Irish Fest weekend. Gordie, a long time "dance dad", is one of the event organizers. I asked Gordie for an update on the 2006 dance-o-rama, which he has kindly provided:

The Feis is held on Saturday, September 2nd in the second floor ballrooms of the Westin Crown Center hotel, just an escalator up from the lobby. Competition starts at 8:30am and will end in the late afternoon (last year it ended around 5:30pm). More info can be found on the site: www.kcfeis.com or contact us via email at kcfeis@aol.com . We don't have an "office" for a phone number unfortunately. Tickets are $8.00. We had close to 600 dancers compete in 2005. We anticipate the same if not more dancers this year. We cap the participants at 650, but that is just a line in the sand. We'll take more certainly; however, gas prices may be a deterrent. We'll just have to see. An interesting note: I believe we had over 100 champion competitors last year (think Joseph Manning or Hailey Beebe status). Several of the O'Riada dancers just returned from the world competitions in Ireland. Joseph is now ranked 7th in the world! There will be several internationally ranked dancers at our Feis.

The list below is the cities where dancers traveled from last year.

Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Minneapolis, MN
Milwaukee, WI
Chicago, IL
Seattle, WA
Omaha, Neb.
Des Moines, IA
Dubuque, IA
Indianapolis, IN
Detroit, MI
New York (state)
Dayton, OH
Cincinnati, OH
Atlanta, GA
Nashville, TN
St. Louis, MO
Little Rock, AR
Tulsa, OK
Denver, CO

I've mentioned this event here before, and I really want to encourage you to check it out, especially if like me last year, you've never experienced a feis before. It's well worth the eight bucks, I promise. Just don't stay away from Irish Fest too long. We'll miss you.