Feis Weekend!

Well, It's very late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning, however you like to look at it) and I've been awake since 7 am Saturday morning. Ah, the joys of feising. We can never be too sure how long a feis is going to run so we booked the latest flight back at 10 pm- typically we were done dancing before lunch. Before I go into details, let me give you a little background on my dancing experience.

I started dancing quite old (15) as a junior in high school and I joined an adult beginners class at my school. I danced with the adults for a year and then decided that I wanted to go the competitive route so I joined a kids class. I did my first feis when I was 17 (October 2010) where I won my first novice dance (hornpipe) and qualified for my solo dress. I competed somewhat sporadically for about 6 months, and then starting with the summer began to compete regularly. I realize now that this has a lot to do with the fact that there are very little Southern region feiseanna to compete in in the spring. Anyways as the summer came around I competed in June, traveled around England and Ireland for a month and a bit where I got my solo dress designed, made, and custom fitted by the lovely ladies of Avoca Celtic Designs in Manchester, and then competed again in August, 2 in September and 2 in October. By the end of October I only had one dance preventing me from qualifying to dance solos at Oireachtas in December, but my teacher was wonderful enough to let me dance on a 4-hand anyways!

Well, that was far more than you ever needed to know about my competitive history, but my point is that today, I finally won my light jig and am done with it forever...and I won my last dance- slip jig!! Slip jig has been my nemesis for a while, so it is unbelievably nice to see my work pay off and know for sure that I'm able to dance solos at New Orleans in December!
While all of this is very exciting, I didn't place in any of my other dances, which are all prizewinner, and I wasn't expecting to- but it makes the need for me to stick to my resolution much, much more real. Every level is a step up from the last, and I now need to get my dancing to the level where I can start placing in prizewinner (I'm definitely open for tips and suggestions here!!) but talking to my friend who was in the same position last June, we agreed that stamina is definitely up there on the list. After all, how am I supposed to make my hornpipe on time and turned out if I can barely make it to the end?!

All of that being said, this feis was my last excuse for why I haven't started whipping myself into shape, so NO MORE EXCUSES. I will sleep very well tonight, catch up on the exorbitant amount of homework my professors enjoy giving me and start my work Monday. I'm thinking maybe of exploring the group classes our student recreation center offers- there's one called ballet sculpt where they use ballet exercises to tone and strengthen the legs...sounds perfect for Irish dance. Baby steps, but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!

If you actually read this far, I'm impressed, and thank you! If you skipped to the end, I don't blame you, but thanks for stopping by anyways :-)