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.  

Forty days and forty nights, tempted and yet (arguably) undefiled.

Maundy Thursday adventures with bread goods

Easter Sunday was three days ago, so I’m slightly overdue with an update on my Lenten resolution to give up indolence and indulgence of the metaphysical variety, a.k.a. wallowing in self-pity.

It's spring now and that certainly helps. More on the weather in another post and I still stand by my preference for colder climes, but things feel more possible in the spring, especially after more than three months of pretty much subzero temperatures. 

So, in the spirit of getting things done, here are five points from “Erin’s Getting Things Done List” devised and enacted over the last six weeks for the hope of development and redefinition in the months to come.

1) Join a choir.

I am now a part-time member of the professional St James Cathedral Choir in downtown Toronto. Got off my proverbial, auditioned, got in, and have already sung a couple of services.

It’s very hard to explain to non-singers, even singers who don’t really get cathedral singing, but it really is succour for my soul. I’m no longer apologetic about it: I love the music first, the ritual and tradition second, then the specific and often quite scandalous social camaraderie of a cathedral choir, and placed within the urban and theologically liberal context of an inner city cathedral, I admire the social application of intelligent and inclusive Christianity. Even with my very developed and complicated unbelief.

Related to all this, we’re getting a piano in June. SCORE!

2) Bake bread (with an eye on more adventurous pastry)

You may have heard tell of my dislike of cooking dinner. It’s true, dinner can be someone else’s responsibility. But I do enjoy baking, and more specifically, I do enjoy eating bread. Logic would therefore suggest I should bake bread, which I was first taught to do at the kitchen bench of a very dear family friend who looked after me a lot when I was four - the smell of yeast still transports me back to Bristol accents, Portmeirion china, and that wonderful feeling of befriending a grown-up who talks to you like a rational human being, not a small child. 

Anyway, I can bake and Betty Friedan may not have approved, but I shall attempt to make bread more regularly, so long as it’s never a chore and an obligation. I mention Friedan because I do think it absurd that a highly educated woman like myself should be forced by circumstance into predominantly stay-at-home motherhood, and I do agree that slaving over bread-making is ridiculous when you can outsource such an activity. Indeed, Friedan’s 1960s despair over the options facing mothers is very resonant with my own woes this last year, but I like baking and baking bread is a delightful indulgence, so long as it's a choice. It also allows me to punch dough. Additionally, I outsource cooking dinner to my husband. Betty would approve. (If you don’t understand what I’m on about, then read The Feminine Mystique for goodness sake.)   

3)  Get out of the house and do something.

I’ve been volunteering at school since the Autumn, braving the elements come rain, snow and -40 windchill every Monday morning to help with the school drop-off. I’ve also assisted occasionally with my daughter’s class reading programme. Getting outside, no matter the weather has been great; and reading with five and six-year-olds has been fun. 

However, these are not especially fulfilling in the longterm, so I’m getting involved at the Oakville Museum (19th-century colonial stuff, pretty lakeside setting, what’s not to like!). It’ll be on a volunteer basis to start with, but if you want to get into museum services (or literary events, or publishing, or pretty much every field I’m qualified for) you have to volunteer first. We’ll see what happens.

4) Embrace the 17 months I have until my son starts school while thinking creatively about my career prospects.

I thought I’d have a job by now, and even though there is still potential for some teaching in the 2014-2015 academic year and I’m not giving up looking for further opportunities, I’m trying not to worry about it so much. September 2015 will come around soon enough and the endless childcare concerns will reduce significantly. I might as well enjoy this time the best I can.

I’m still doing some research: I have an academic article coming out soon; I’m presenting a paper at a conference next month; I’m involved in some research groups; but I’m trying to remove that sense of pressing and frankly rather depressing obligation in a dismal academic job market. I’m not being single minded about the opportunities I have.  

More specifically, we’ve reduced daycare down to two days a week to save some money, and I’m learning HTML and CSS to be of practical use to the “family business”. I like patterns and it’s quite fun.  

I’m also going to do more weekday activities with the kids.

Ironically, my son is watching TV while I write this.

5) Go on more daytrips.

We’re moving house soon, so our access to shops, cafes, and the train station (i.e. easy access to downtown Toronto) will be vastly improved, which is great, but the shocking thing about a major international move has been all the unexpected costs. Holidays just seem out of the question right now, but we have a car and great provincial parks nearby. There is also an impressively regular train into Toronto with all that city has to offer. No excuses, we shall do things.

Unless we feel like being lazy, and then we shan’t.

Bring me to the test.

Peer Gynt. Zenda Smith School of Dancing (Howick, November 1985)

My daughter had her first dancing exam last week. Primary Modern Ballet. Three little girls, hair uncharacteristically neat, go into the studio with their teacher as support, and for 15 or so minutes run through the exercises and steps they’ve been learning since September in front of a kindly examiner. The parents have of course paid for the privilege of this, but money aside, it’s not an especially taxing experience. Actually, it’s quite fun, because the midday time-slot meant my daughter got the day off school, and she was very excited about having her hair done up like a proper dancer. 

Of course, the standard response from people is, “An exam for a five-year-old? Activities have got ridiculous! Kids should just be having fun.”

Yes, it does seem like a fairly redundant exercise, but there’s nothing new about dancing exams. I sat my first ballet exam at six years old and it was far more rigorous than the one my daughter just did. Or at least, that's what I remember. Also, as I point out to people, if there’s something my daughter needs in life, it’s the occasional moment when she’s told that for x amount of time she has to be quiet, do as she’s told, and fulfil some set requirements. When this happens, she most certainly rises to the occasion. But give the girl the opportunity to choose what she does, more often than not, she’ll rationalise her way out of doing anything, and talk your ear off in the process.  

I should know, because I’m exactly the same. 

I was the type of kid who had activities on every afternoon. Not because my parents were keen on ferrying me about, or because they had grand ideas about my immense talent, but because my mother in particular recognised that I needed to be kept busy for everyone’s sake. Most of all, my own. So I did ballet and choir and Brownies, then picked up Highland Dancing, piano, viola the same year I started Guides, and by the time I began High School I was playing in the school orchestras, competing most Saturdays in Highland competitions, still going to Guides, learning pointe at ballet, attending Youth Group, and was involved with school shows, choirs, oh, and doing pretty well in my school work despite not really having the time to do any homework.

Sounds exhausting, but I never noticed. In fact, what I recall from that period of my life, like my very busy undergraduate years of study, part-time jobs, and more choir than you can shake a stick at, is how much time I had to go out with friends. What’s more, right now, in a period of my life where for a number of reasons I don’t have much going on outside of the home (no job, new country, money’s tight, a little adrift), I’m nothing but exhausted. There are things I can always be doing - writing, research, finding fun stuff to do with the kids (mmm?) - but like the little girl given all the options and free play in the world, I rationalise myself out of doing anything. I only need a little space to see the futility in it all, and stay-at-home motherhood is exactly the sort of space to illuminate the insignificance of my little lot. I am no self-motivated entrepreneur and I freely accept that fault. Like Jane Eyre, perhaps, I am impassioned, but not necessarily ambitious; I need something to do. Someone give me a mission.

“But you have a PhD!” someone yells from the gods, “There’s proof you’re self-motivated.” Yes, but I had the incomparable Professor Susan Manning who made me work, often by inspiration alone; I had teaching at the university, I had a very handsome scholarship to live up to. I had choirs to keep me sane and responsibilities to fulfil. That seems rather lacking now.

So on Shrove Tuesday, which is as good a day as any to use up all the indulgence left over from the old year, I plan to start tomorrow in a penitential mindset of good works.

Who knows if they’ll be good for anyone else, but I need to give up indolence for myself. I need to stop waiting for someone to give me something to do, to set an exam for me. Galling as it is, I need to write the exam for myself.