Last week's column for Westport Patch:
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Some Westport student recitals have become more than just showing parents what the kids have learned. They're productions.
It's June, which means the obvious: graduations, Father's Day and early season beach trips. The warm, humid weather also heralds another annual event: recital season.
Every year at around this time, almost every kid who's enrolled in some sort of class (piano, ballet, gymnastics) puts on a little show for the parents. It's the school's way of saying, "Thank you for making your exorbitant tuition payments. Isn't it great that little Katie can now do a cartwheel?"
Of course most kids love the recital. It's their special day when all eyes are focused on them – a kid's dream come true. And for the girls, special hairdos and make-up is even involved. Lip gloss! What could be better?
I'll tell you what: the costumes.
My daughter recently had a hip-hop recital with her dance school. I'm thinking it'll be like last year's ballet recital through a different dance school. It was perfect: a low-key event in a small auditorium at a club. The kids wore their matching leotards from class, dressed up with scarves and hats and little things like that. Maybe 80 or 100 parents and siblings were there.
The year was a bit different. The $60 fee for the costume should have been my first clue. We've been hearing about the costumes since about March. Notes went home about and how children whose parents were behind in their tuition or payments for the much-anticipated dresses would not get to participate in the recital. The costume itself was, to my eye, a wee overpriced. Pink and black polyester, it looked like a Halloween outfit you'd pick up for 10 bucks at Target. Here's my question: why not just include the costume fee in the tuition? Instead, we're nickel-and-dimed. Kind of like the way airlines started charging us to check bags.
Why not also include the price of two tickets to the recital, too? The show was at the Quick Center at Fairfield University and I discovered that securing admission to my 5-year-old's hip-hop show turned out to be harder than getting a hold of Justin Bieber tickets.
Eventually, I scrounged up three of them which — along with the processing fees — came to $68. On top of the costume charge, the total outlay was up to $128. It's a lot to watch your child on stage for about 30 seconds. Some of the older dancers wore three or four different sparkly costumes throughout the show. Ka-ching.
This might be hard to believe, given the general theme of this article, but the money didn't really matter to me. It was the principle of the thing.
For the littler kids, the recital was really all about the costumes.
Some outfits, like the leopard-print boudoir-style numbers for the tiniest girls were eyebrow-raising and detracted attention from the performance. But even the sweet and age-appropriate costumes took center stage.
A group of 4-year-olds in blue dresses with crinolines and little bows were so excited about how cute they looked that they proceeded to entirely forget their dance. One girl stood off to the side of her group, waved to her parents, and called out, "Hi Mommy!" The audience tittered delightedly while her parents furiously worked their camcorder. Of course this was bound to happen. It was a Jon Benet light: little girls dressed-up, made-up and shoved on stage for us to ooh and aah over. It didn't feel adorable to me. It felt manufactured.
I know I'm a scrooge, a grouch, and an all-around kill-joy. I realize that recitals aren't about pleasing the parents; they're about the kids. And admittedly, all of them seemed to have a ball. Still, if it were up to me, I much prefer the modest auditorium and simple Danskin leotards — the kind of recital where the most important thing is just watching the kids dance.
http://westport.patch.com/articles/its-show-time
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