The thorny issue of flowers in the performing arts.

Flowers arranged at home. (Photo: ©Sonja Nikkila 2008)

The other week my five-year-old daughter had her first ballet recital. It was a lovely if slightly drawn-out affair, with well-executed dances from the older students punctuated by delightfully cute potterings around the stage from the tiny girls, and everything in between. Even my three-year-old son put aside his vehement protests at being there in admiration for the senior modern ballet girls’ performance. “It had cool music,” was his assessment, but also, it was an impressive performance of compelling choreography. 

And how did my daughter do? Great. Actually, she and her class proved themselves as performers not only when the music cut out and they continued with their dancing, but when the music came back on again and they almost seamlessly returned to the correct spot in their routine. That, my friends, is why you put your children into dance and music.

The recital was coloured however by the expense of it all. From a professionally-made costume costing over $100 and worn on stage for all of five minutes, to the tickets at $28 a head for a concert in a proper performing arts venue. This was a professional performance in all facets bar the performers themselves. Suffice to say, my eyebrows raised a little on seeing all the parents carrying flowers for their darling children, and then a florists’ stand in the auditorium, presumably there to fleece any parents who were as yet unaware that small girls are supposed to receive flowers after ballet recitals. 

My mother sarcastically asked me if I was going to buy some flowers, to which I curtly replied, “she’s not a soloist; she doesn’t get flowers.” Then my rant began to formulate.

Was I perhaps bitter about my own chorus status? I have very rarely received the soloists’ flowers, but once when a friend gave me flowers after a performance, I was actually embarrassed. After all, I was just a chorus member in a concert performance of Acis and Galatea; you could’ve just bought me a drink. No, hang on, I actually would have preferred a drink. Or several, because a bunch of flowers could buy several drinks. 

I really like flowers. I love front gardens stuffed to the brim with cottage blooms. I’d love to have the money to full my house with deliciously fragrant bouquets or the means to regularly pick bunches of wild flowers. I do love flowers, but aside from the delight of receiving a completely unwarranted and unexpected bunch of flowers, I’ve never really had much time for the floral industry. Or at least in its relationship to the performing industry.

I’ve seen my sister - a professional singer of high regard - receive more flowers than she has the space for in her flat, and on a couple of occasions I’ve quickly calculated that all those bunches could have paid for a week’s rent. I’ve also seen her receive flowers after scandalously underpaid performances when the male soloists have received bottles of wine. That wine may not cover the costs of rehearsal and concert, and actually could be much less expensive than the flowers, but at least it’s arguably more useful and more enjoyable.

I’ve seen performers given flowers from audience members who have tried to get themselves reduced-priced tickets or comps because they’re family members. People who won’t pay more than $10 for the performance - money that should go towards paying the performers themselves - but will fork out over $30 for flowers as an act of congratulations. An act that pays the florist appropriately.

Let me repeat that: we will pay the florist but not the performer.

Returning to my daughter’s amateur ballet recital, the florists’ stand further reinforced for me the cultural practice of disregarding the worth of a performer. Even for a child’s performance, we will pay the auditorium staff according to the letter of employment law, we will pay the costume makers professional rates, we will pay the technical staff, and we will probably pay the teachers (though we might try and skimp on that if at all possible). Furthermore, we will pay the florists for materials and labour.

But we will tell our small children that if you perform all you will get are flowers that will die in a few days and are probably meaningless to you at this point in your life.

And get used to it kid, because chances are if you manage to get into a ballet company in your late teens or early 20s, you will struggle to pay the rent, but your art will be rewarded in more flowers than you know what to do with. The florist, however, will still be appropriately compensated.

So, I apologise to the florists of this world; I love the product of your art and will buy flowers when I can for their own sake, but I will not buy flowers for my daughter’s or my son’s performances. I’d rather they get a certificate, a ribbon or a cheap medal to acknowledge their year’s work. You can’t keep flowers, but twenty years after I stopped dancing, I still have all my certificates, ribbons and medals as mementos of a childhood full of love and labour in the performing arts.

If your child really deserves a reward after an excellent performance, how about putting the $20 or $30 you would otherwise spend on flowers into their bank account? It may be less ostentatious, and perhaps even a little mercenary, but it will quietly suggest the notion that performers should be paid too. 

I’m not saying I’d build a summer home here...

Maple trees and sloping eaves

It’s been a year. Exactly a year since we moved to Canada. Twelve months to the day since we embarked as a family on another great adventure. 

This week we moved into a nice little house that’s more to our tastes in a slightly different part of town that suits us better. An older neighbourhood, bit more urban, bit more socio-economically and culturally mixed, closer to the train station, walking distance to our town centre, the lake, all that. It feels more us. The bedrooms are up in the eaves and sloping roofs are friendly roofs.    

That’s not to say our old place wasn’t nice too. Well, the house itself was a bit crap, but I stand by my blog post last summer about our extraordinarily lovely neighbours. However, the official line, the line I cheerily tell people when they ask is that we’ve found moving to Canada far more expensive and far more difficult than we ever expected. The job hunt for me has been abysmal, and it’s just that much harder emigrating with children, and basically, we moved to Chris’s home neighbourhood and we just can’t afford to stay there.  

But the trees are really quite lovely.

I’ve been thinking that a lot of late - the trees are really quite lovely. They are, but it does rather imply that I’m in the Fire Swamp.

Little and middle-sized mammalian garden critters who try to eat our garbage aside, it’s less fire swamp and more slow death by suburbia. Most of the time I can be very objective and positive about the good things we’ve found here, but the truth is I’m miserable. Some days when I can’t maintain the philosophical façade, I wonder if it’s chemical rather than circumstantial. But if it is just circumstantial, is it the whole emotional whirlwind that is immigration and settling your family and job hunting and job rejection, or is it that I’m more suited to city life than the suburbs? Or is it Canada? Could it be that I’m not suited to Canada? 

I never expected to be singing this immigrants’ song. It’s positively ungrateful - I’m educated, English-speaking, white. I’m the demographic that’s supposed to have it easy. I’ve met people, I’ve made some friends (expats mostly, because I’m an immigrant), I’ve tried to get involved, I’ve slowly made some work contacts, I’ve joined a choir and get to sing regularly in the lovely old centre of downtown Toronto. I didn’t even mind that terrible winter we just had.

But I just don’t feel like I belong here. Or it doesn’t belong to me.

Tomorrow might bring a different response and unhappiness has precious little perspective, so I’m not going to link this post to my numerous wry observations about Southern Ontarian life. This will not be an immigrant’s complaint. After all, it’s only been a year and on paper the months ahead have promise: I like our new little house, I like the neighbourhood. It’s compact, but there’s more room for me to breathe. I have work prospects, but my optimism is extremely cautious. We’ve signed a two-year lease and I’m not making any longterm promises beyond that. 

And here’s the rub, I don’t want to go “home” either. What has become very apparent these last twelve months is how much I miss Britain. On my most dark, lonely days, I can’t help but think that I made such a huge mistake moving back to New Zealand in 2008. At the time, it seemed the very best decision for me and for my family, but that wonderful thing hindsight suggests it was the wrong move for my career and for me. Right now it feels like I’ve made yet another bad decision. Or when I’m feeling a little too fatalistic, like I’m paying for that first incorrect choice. 

But it doesn’t help anyone being fatalistic, and we’re here. Things have been topsy-turvy like your standard immigrants’ experience, and, on paper at least, things are looking up for our sophomore year.

And the trees are really quite lovely.