Oireachtas AZ

Hello all
Congratulations to all the dancers who attended the Oireachtas in AZ last week! I was very impressed by all the great dancing by our teams and solo dancers. We were very lucky to have 5 teams entered and all look so good. The u10 team recalled and received awards, and the u12 team recalled and placed 13th. (One judge had them 5th another had them 8th!!) Congratulations to Sophie Hurst, Sarah Silverman, and Margery Pulkkinen who all recalled and placed well in their competitions. All the solos danced well and were great representatives for our school. We had great success with the traditional set competition too. U9 21 Competitors, 9th place Johanna Flahiff
U10 37 Competitors, 9th Lindsay Showalter, 13th Mackenzie Case
U11 33 Competitors, 5th Rachel Stern, 9th Stevie Morga
U12 33 Competitors, 4th Kaitlin Daniels, 8th Tatiana Galvins
U15 22 Competitors, 3rd place Megan Tuey, 6th place Madison Murphy, 9th Kelsey Johnson
15O 12 Competitors, 2nd Michelle Howell, 3rd Laura Venemon
I hope everyone had a great time and enjoyed the beautiful weekend in Phoenix.
Let's all get some rest, we'll be starting up for next year soon!!hahah
R.

Hello all
Well, we are in the final countdown to the Oireachtas!! I think we had a very successful weekend last weekend. Thanks to Ryan for coming in and giving us a final push and some great corrections. I was very impressed at the dress rehearsal at the Seattle Center also. thanks to the many parents that helped out setting up the room and getting the "theatre" ready for the dancers. I was very impressed with the teams and solos, and I am very excited to see how your hard work pays off for next weekend.
One final Sunday practice and then we are off!!
see you Sunday
r.

Hello all-

It was an exciting and long weekend at Feile Samhain! Congratulations to all the dancers for a job well done. I received many compliments from the judges about many dancers and good feet and rhythm. The champion team look great and we are well under way to the Oireachtas. Congrats to the Tipperary team, they did a great 8 hand and are on the road to a good showing in AZ!!

I should have the medal and trophy counts for you soon.

xo

R.

Portland feis

Hello all
I wanted to congratulate all the dancers who participated in the recent Portland feis! You all did such a great job, I wish I had been there to see it! Luckily this was my last trip to Ireland until January. Here are some results for you. Our solo dancers won 50 first place medals, 31 seconds, 37 thirds, and 35 fourth places!! That is an amazing total for only 42 dancers. You also won 5 first place trophies, 3 seconds, 6 thirds, and 7 fourths. Very impressive. The prelims all danced well, and Emily Hurst came away with a 2nd place overall in her prelim! Well done.

I am excited to go to Feile Samhain with you all and have another successful weekend. I hope you all have your costumes ready, I'm still working on mine.
Talk to you soon.
R.

Start to a New Year

Hello all

Sorry I haven't been posting since the feis. As most of you know I was able to spend a large part of the summer with my family in Connecticut and Rhode Island. It was a month filled with sun, surf, fishing, and baseball games. Dad and I also visited the Norman Rockwell museum and Daniel Chester French (Lincoln Memorial) sculpture studio and gardens. We caught a bunch of fish and ate many of them, some trout from small Connecticut streams and some black bass from a charter fishing trip. (no stripers or bluefish this time)

I've also been to Ireland for another commission trip and Tuscon for a regional meeting!! Lots of travel and fun (I'm now 1K with United!!)

We had a wonderful workshop with Ryan McCaffrey. He taught many new steps that will challenge the dancers and give them an extra boost going into the Oireachtas!! Carin Gayle and I also had a fun time showing Ryan Seattle's nightlife! I am 99% sure that he will be back for a refresher just before the Oireachtas!!

We are back to classes and getting ready for the two Portland feiseanna and the Oireachtas in AZ. I am pleased to see so many dancers back to class this year, and many new faces too! I hope you are all doing your drills with the line on the floor, it will really help. We have 5 teams working hard to get ready to go to the Oireachtas! I am very impressed with the teams this year. They are a bunch of hard working dancers and very focused on doing well at the Oireachtas. We will be meeting six more times at least and will be kicking some bum in November.

That's all for now. I will be off to Ireland again the first weekend of October, and then no travelling until the first of the year.

I look forward to a year of dance filled with fun, excitement and success!!

xo

Robert

Hello allI wanted to drop a quick line to you all before I leave town for August. I want to congratulate all the dancers on a very successful feis! You all danced well, and many many dancers acheived personal goals, or placed high in dances that we have been working hard to correct. I am also pleased to announce that our school won the figure competition for the school with the most first place wins. I choose not to announce it at the feis, as a matter of good sportsmanship to the other schools. Thank you to all the teams that particpated and helped the school win this award.
Thank you also to the many many parents that volunteered and helped make the feis a great success! So many parents signed up for different jobs, and many parents worked extra to fill in the gaps of the schedule. I am very impressed to see the amount of support so many parents provided this last weekend. I heard from many outside parents, teachers, and our judges that we run one of the best feiseanna of the year. I want you to know that each time I hear that I know our success full lays on the shoulders of our hard working families. You all make it the great feis it is, and I really appreciate it.
I have been reading the survey from feisworx and have talked to a number of parents in regards to making next year even better. If you have a suggestion or noticed something that can be improved for next year, please let me know and I will take this to the committee. I also encourage anyone who would like to see an improvement in the way the feis works to join the feis committee and help us to prepare for next year.
I would like to thank the different members of the feis committe who worked so hard this year to make the feis a success.Mike and Diane worked so hard to make sure that we had a great hotel and that the hotel staff worked on our behalf all weekend. Diane was also great at keeping me on task and focused throughout the year. Thanks to the Garrigans for their help with awards. They store the awards, do and inventory each year, help me with the order, delivery, and presentation of the awards all weekend, then the re-storage of the awards. Margie and Kim did another excellent job with the volunteers this year, especially with the addition of the on line sign up sheet. The feis only runs as well as the volunteer base working the feis. I think Margie and Kim have this down to a science. Special thanks to Laura Tuey, who worked on our ads procurement, put the program together, ran registration the whole weekend, and made sure our website was up to date all year long. Thank you so much for all your hard work and care for the school and the feis Laura, we couldn't do it without you.
I think we have all earned a nice break in August! I will see you all the second week of September. I look forward to another successful year of dance, and another wonderful Dance for Life feis.XORobert

Back in Town

Hello all-

Just back from a very fun trip in Ireland.

First off I would like to congratulate all the dancers who competed at the Oregon State Championships at the beginning of the month! Everyone danced well and looked great, you should all be proud. condolences to Katy O and Robin B who both fell and injured themselves. Both fell in the first dance!! ARGH!! I hope you are both getting on better and will be ready for the Dance for Life feis.

I am back and ready to start working hard with everyone to get ready for Dance for Life!! I am excited to see so many of you signing up for private lessons in the up coming weeks. I hope we are able to get a lot accomplished and really do well at the feis. I appreciate all of your committment to working hard and getting the job done!

I had a great trip to Ireland. Started the week with a meeting in Dublin with the commission. They voted on new proposals and made some new rules. I think the funniest one is that you cannot throw dancers, or do acrobatic movements such as summersaults, during figure dancing. ARGH there goes my new plan out the window! The important thing to remember is SAFETY FIRST CHILDREN!

I took the train to Ennis, which was pretty exciting the first hour and then just tiring after that. Stayed at a nice B&B recommended to me by the Froschauer family. I tried a few times to contact the woman that I usually stay with, but could never get her. Later, my cousin Mary told me she closed up her B&B and now there is a hair salon in the house! Glad I didn't stay there, I may have ended up with highlights and a perm!

I was able to rent a car and tour around Clare. It was really fun to take a few lazy days and see the sights, visit my family, and end the days with a few pints and live Irish music. Overall a great week to gear up for our last push before summer break.

Good luck to all the dancers who are participating in the Emerald Downs show today. Get some fun pictures for the blog.

R.

Juan de Fuca Festival

Happy Memorial Day
What a great weekend. I had a great time with the show team in Port Angeles Sunday at the Juan de Fuca Arts festival. We did two shows at the festival; one on the Main Stage and the other at the local Community Theatre. Quick recovery to Leanne who took a fall in the first show and injured her ankle. Get better soon, you have some medals !
We had two great shows despite some technical difficulties at the community theatre. Who would imagine that no one at the theatre would know how to work the lights, and they would have no monitors for the dancers to hear the music. We did luck out though, as the audience couldn't hear the music either and no one knew that we were off the music. I wish I could sit in a window over the stage at every show, it was great to see the look on the dancers faces when they realized I wass up there.
We were fortunate to have such great weather. It was sunny and warm all day. We were able to have a wonderful lunch of fair food in the sunshine. It was also made for a beautiful ride home through the peninsula and an amazing ferry crossing. I was really lucky to be third from last car on for the 7:15 ferry. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. Also great thanks to the devoted parents who made the trip to Port Angeles for these shows.
That's all for now, keep practicing for the Oregon state championships

back from Ireland/ Comerford feis

Hello everyone

Just back from a quick trip to Dublin. It was a very interesting trip this time. I spent the day Friday with my friend Liam who teaches in Boston. He had to renew his Irish passport, and we spent the day doing that, had lunch and lots of shopping on Grafton and O'Connell streets!! The commission meeting was good. We elected new officials for the coimisiun, and alas I was not elected the new President, oh well next year perhaps. We also voted on some issues. Two good things we did were 1. get rid of the black tights for senior dancers and 2. stopped them from trying to put a qualification on teams for worlds this year in Phili. It was a quick trip, but I still got to have three full Irish breakfasts!! (that's kinda the point of going isn't it?)

Congratulations to all the dancers who competed this weekend in the Comerford feis. I looked over the results and was happy to receive so many emails and texts with results. It looks like we won many medals and trophies. I hope you are all pleased. Let's keep working hard, the Yeates feis is just around the corner!

xo

R.

Happy Mother's Day

Hello all
I just wanted to wish all the SRS Moms a Happy Mother's Day!!!
I hope you all get a little rest and some good treats from your kids this weekend.
Some of the SRS moms will be spending part of their day at the studio. Please remember we are having a special class combining the pre champs and the prelim kids at 12noon to 1:30. Then the u10 and u12 teams will be meeting for our first 8 hand practice. I am very excited to get this started.

There is also a show in Olympia on Sunday. Patti will be heading up the Wooden Boat show performance!! This show will have local Oly dancers and the show team will also be involved. Have a great show, and enjoy your time in Oly.

We also have two dancers attending the feis in Canada this weekend. Best of luck to Katie Maureen and Kassi. I hope you both get a first or two in you pocket. Remember to have fun and do your best.
That's it for now, talk to you soon
Robert

Traveling Blues

Hello all
I am sitting in San Francisco airport on my way to Reno. I have a two hour lay over. I can't believe I will be spending 10 hours traveling before tomorrow night for a three hour meeting. We better decide some important things. I think I will raise a motion that all dancers will need to wear dyed poodle socks to match their dresses, and now that I think of it wigs too!!! Ah wouldn't Kassi look great with orange socks and wig, or Kayleigh McGuigan in light blue socks and wig. For our school costume we will pick colors by teams. some green, some purple etc. I'm so glad I thought of this. I'm sure that i can get this passed as long as the board understands that it will be very expensive for families to do, they should go for it.
Now back to reality. I saw the design for our t-shirt the other day, and it is pretty kool. It will need a little tweaking, but I think we will have another winner this year. I hope you are all planning your ad for this years program, we will be running another contest. Please remember that Patti and Carin teach for our school too, and they can be the object of your affection in your ad too!!
Oh well, I should be in Reno and at the hotel a little after 1am, do you think I can still win a bit of money and get enough sleep before my meeting? Yeah, I guess you are right, who needs to sleep.
I look forward to working with many of you on Sunday bright and early at the crack of 11am.
xo
R

Oireachtas Teams!!

Hello all-
Below are the names of our 5 teams going to the Oireachtas this November and the dancers who will be on the teams. Carin Patti and I were very impressed with the dancers who tried out. Everyone did a good job, unfortunately we did not have spots for all the dancers that auditioned this year. I hope all the dancers and families will respect the difficult decisions that we had to make to fill these teams. I look forward to working with these teams, and to a successful Oireachtas in Arizona!! Thanks
Robert

CLONMEL TEAM
APRIL OPSVIG
BROOKE WILKES
JOHANNAH FLAHIFF
LINDSEY SHOWALTER
MACKENZIE CASE
McKENNA THOMPSON
RILEY THOMPSON
SOPHIE HURST

TIPPERARY TEAM
CAITLIN DANIELS
EMILY HURST
KATRINA WEBER
KAYLEIGH MCGUIGAN
RACHEL STERN
STEVIE MORGA
SYDNEY DORE
TATIANA GALVINS

LISSEY CASEY TEAM
EVE GARRIGAN
KELLY SERKA
KELSIE JOHNSON
KYRA SPRAGUE
MADDY MURPHY
MEGAN TUEY
SARAH SILVERMAN
SHANNON RILEY

KILMALEY & INCH TEAMS
ANNA HALLEEN
BEKKA SHATTUCK
HANNAH TANKERSLEY
HILARIE KUZMA
JOY OPSIG
KELSEY GUSTAFSON
LAURA VENEMON
LEANNE COBB
MARGERY PULKKINEN
MAUREEN NASH
MEGAN TUEY
MICHELE HOWELL
NATALIE OPSVIG
ROBIN BARSON
SARA FOGARD
SHANNON RILEY
* The sixteen girls on these teams will work together and be divided into two teams by the end of the summer

Hello all

We sure had a fun time doing a show for the Rainb0w Girls last Saturday! Thanks to Shannon, Kassi, Anna, Renee, Maureen and Taryn. I really appreciate you taking the time on a Saturday to do this show. I had a great time hanging out with you and getting a blizzard from Dairy Queen. I think all the pagentry and costumes were very interesting. I think I have some good ideas for new solo costumes. I wish I knew more about what the Rainbow Girls are, I would have had a better appreciation of what was going on. I know that the Grand Worthy Advisor was very please with your dancing. I think she may have shed a tear or two! Thanks Bonnie Maureen and Kassi for your help with the marley floor. Showteam please remember we have shows on May 11th in OLY and May 25th in Port Angeles!! I am really looking forward to the Juan de Fuca festival, hope you are too.

I hope everyone is practicing hard this week and getting ready for the upcoming Comerford feis! We only have a few weeks left until the feis. I know many of you are working hard to move up to the next level. Keep up the good work, and PLEASE practice your left foot. I know there are only a few days left for LFAM, but you can still give some attention to your left foot in May too!

Patti Carin and I are almost done putting the teams together for the Oireachtas in AZ! It has been a bit of a challenge this year, but I think we almost have it done. Everyone did a great job at the tryout and the make up tryout today.

Hello Dancers

Well we had our tryouts for Oireachtas 8hand teams today!! I was very impressed at the quality of dancing. Patti Carin and I will be working hard this week to try and make as many good teams as possible. I look forward to working with the teams on a new 8hand the "Cross Reel". this dance is a bit more difficult than the " High Cauled Cap", but I know the dancers are up to it. Let's make sure to keep focused and work hard on our figures and we'll be on the podium come November!! Not to mention a fun weekend at the resort in AZ!!

While we are talking about figures, I would really like to make sure that we have lots of teams ready to compete figures at Dance for Life. We will be presenting an award to the school who wins the most figure competitions during the feis. This should prove to be an exciting challenge, and hopefully we will see an increase in the entries for figures at our feis!!

I think that's all for today! Keep practicing and remember it's still LFAM!!

Robert

First blog

Hello all
I thought it would be fun to start a blog for the school! I will try to keep up with what is currently happening at our school; feis results, show photos, fun news, that sort of thing. I think this will also be a place mostly for photos to be shared. I hope you will all enjoy this. I think there is a comment section, so please share with the group. Also if you have photos that you want to see on the blog, send them my way!
Recent News
Thank you to all the dancers who participated in a successful show season!! We had a good number of shows for each area that we teach. I was very excited to see the Tacoma, Oly, and Kent dancers helping eachother out and traveling to different shows. I know this made a difference in each studio and helped SRS put on the best shows possible!! I will try to download some photos from the Center House show. I am proud to say, I think this has been the best show we have done at the Center House over the years. Great work Patti and Carin. Special thanks to Erica, Lauren, and Taryn who each took the time to come in and help us organize and run such a great show! I look foward to further shows this year and more fun. Remember we have shows booked for the Juan de Fuca festival, The Scottish Rite Rainbow group, and the Olympia Boat show!!

Penk O'Donnell Feis
Congratulations to the dancers who competed at the Penk O'Donnell feis. we had a good sized group travel to Canada and compete. I am pleased to see how well all our dancers did at the feis. Special congratulations to Margery, who won her prelim and qualified to move up to Open Championships and to compete at the North American Championships. I hope no one had trouble getting all those medals and trophies across the boarder, we did take a lot away from Canada.
Good luck to all the dancers who plan to participate in the upcoming Comerford feis.

Well that's all for now.