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'Writers all have such a pole in their trousers'

 It used to be gays he found scary, but since that was no longer allowed, René van der Gijp started looking for a new target audience for his spot. Book week turned out to provide the perfect opportunity.

We wondered how writers talk about sports. We heard something about javelin throwers who could only score if their wives cheated. And something about cyclists. Footballers were spared.

[iframe width="352" height="198" src="https://nos.nl/embed/?id=a:327138&autoplay=0" fr...

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New choreographer award from BNG Culture Fund

The Netherlands has added a new award for young choreographic talent. The BNG Culture Fund, in collaboration with Korzo in The Hague, has established the BNG Bank Excellent Talent Dance Award, provisionally for a period of three years. Dance in the Netherlands is a thriving sector, in which many beautiful and surprising things happen. Due to budget cuts, much of this is in danger of being lost. One production house after another is dying or its very existence is threatened. The new award, which offers production e...

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Culture Council notes total destruction of amateur art. Minister worries.

Over 60 million has disappeared from the coffers of the Netherlands' amateur artists in recent years. That money from your daughter's dance class, the brass band and your son's hip-hop class has been spent by municipalities, which had to compensate for cuts elsewhere, and provinces that suddenly saw no point in amateurs. That the national government additionally took 200 million from professional arts institutions is added to that.

The Culture Council, in an advice to the minister, is now trying to see if there is movement ...

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6 Reasons why Holland Festival 2014 will be the best ever. And War Horse.

 "The only one who still dares to go for the elite". On the way to the car park under the Passengers Terminal Amsterdam, the retired newspaper reviewer who once had a page on music sighed at the feeling of his part of society. It was after the press conference where the programme of Holland Festival 2014 was presented. He was talking, as we sank deeper and deeper, about Pierre Audi, the artistic director of that Holland Festival, who this year announced his last - and most glorious - programme ever.

The surreal break from Soesterberg is almost over. Now go and enjoy it.

Even if war breaks out today, fighter jets will no longer land there. 200,000 visitors a year is the minimum they need now, at Soesterberg. The former air base in the heart of the Netherlands, where until 2009 a squadron of F15 jet fighters stood ready to teach the then enemy, the communists, a lesson, is coming into the hands of the public. The developer is putting the finishing touches to the Military Aviation Museum there. Small parts of the five-kilometre-long runway are being ploughed over, and a few hangars are being put to use as repositories of art.

'Limited measurement': minister throws Berenschot report in wastebasket

Minister Bussemaker thinks it is far too early to sound the alarm about the cuts municipalities are still going to make on culture. Research firm Berenschot had calculated earlier this year that many per cent would still be cut from the local culture budget. Our own sources told us that Berenschot was still on the sunny side. According to the minister, however, the research is too limited: only 65 municipalities were checked, and besides, it is still far too early.

We then wonder how v...

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Star. Five times. And then Symphony Orchestra.

Five-star Symphony Orchestra. This is how the Dutch Symphony Orchestra will be called next season. The former Orkest van het Oosten tried to become 'Dutch' but faced a lawsuit from the Philharmonic Orchestra, which was already 'Dutch'. 'Politics should get involved in the legal process. Because it can't go on like this. This is costing tons of money.' Says Harm Mannak.

[Tweet "Director throws symphony orchestra name up for grabs"]

The director of the former Orchestra of the Oo...

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Greco and Scholten divide attention between CCN Ballet Nationale de Marseille and ICK Amsterdam

Minister Filipetti has given the green light. Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten will indeed become the new artistic directors of CNN Ballet National de Marseille. A company with 30 dancers, 60 employees in total, in a building with 9 studios and a theatre hall. Who in the Netherlands still gets that done?

ICKamsterdam states in a press release that Greco and Scholten will split their time between CNN Marseille and ICK Amsterdam. The two institutions will work together, but there will be no...

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Emio Greco will 'maybe' lead CCN Ballet de Marseille.

[UPDATE 19-2-2014: meanwhile, the appointment is final]

This week, French media surfaced messages on that Emio Greco is the only candidate left to become Frédéric Flamand's successor at the CCN Ballet National de Marseille. However, the culture minister has yet to confirm the appointment, ICKamsterdam reported.

Nederlandse Reisopera with a musical. With Sanne Wallis de Vries. In Royal Theatre Carré.

No, the company is not afraid of competition. Nor of cooperation, as witness the jubilantly received Fairy queen with Veenfabriek and Combattimento, the orchestra led until recently by Jan Willem de Vriend.

Combattimento? That orchestra was supposed to quit, wasn't it?

Indeed, it looked like that for a while when Jan Willem de Vriend announced his intention to retire from the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, but without its founder, the orchestra made a successful relaunch. Like the Reisope

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Pascal Schut. Photo: Hans Gerritsen

The audience speaks: Pascal Schut and Davide Cocchiara best dancers of 2013

The winners of the Dans Publieksprijs 2013 have been announced. On Friday 14 February, the prizes, divided into seven categories, will be awarded at The Hague's Theater aan het Spui. Besides winners Pascal Schut (Introdans) and Davide Cocchiara (The Red Piece), they are choreographers Conny Jansen Danst for the performance 'How Long is Now' and Isabelle Beernaert for the performance 'Red, Yellow & Blue'.
Conny Janssen is further presented with the Oeuvre Prize for her influence on Dutch dance. The dan...

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World premiere in Berlin of Dutch 3D experiment Above Us All by Eugenie Jansen

Contrary to what some expected a few years ago, 3D in artistic film is still a rarity. So when something pops up in this corner again, it immediately makes one curious. And I don't mean Cathedrals of Culture, the 3D film project by Wim Wenders and five other filmmakers starring buildings. That Wenders is a 3D believer we already knew.

I mean that other 3D premiere at the Berlin festival: Above Us All by Dutch Eugenie Jansen....

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Breaking: Rotterdam art fair changes name for fear of trousers factory

You can still eat a raw egg in English, but you can no longer use the word RAW for almost anything to do with style. Therefore, the RAW Art Fair is to be renamed next year. Sources at the organisers of the Rotterdam Art Week Art Fair confirm that this may have avoided a dragging court case.

Peter Eötvös writes DoReMi for violinist Midori

For years he was a conductor who also composed, but after operas such as Le balcon and Angels in America Hungarian Peter Eötvös (1944) is now a composer who also conducts. On Friday 21 February, he leads the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn in the Dutch premiere of his Violin Concerto No 2, DoReMi, which he composed in 2012 for Japanese violinist Midori. - I spoke to him last week.

Art Rotterdam Van Nellefabriek

The 15 toppers of contemporary art in Rotterdam, for those who missed it

Art Rotterdam is the leading contemporary art fair in the Netherlands. This year, as many as 96 galleries presented artworks by many more artists. Added to this, the same fair featured a video art section under the title Art Rotterdam Projections, a section of affordable art at WeLikeArt! and a section that featured as many as 92 artists featured in 2012 were honoured with a start-up grant from the Mondriaan Fund. The Van Nelle factory was bursting at the seams from it.

Nymphomaniac Vol. I in Berlin: half an hour longer, still the same film, still just as good

Lars von Trier is present at the Berlinale, wearing a T-shirt with the Cannes logo and the text 'persona non grata'. This refers to the riot at Cannes after his failed joke about Hitler. Since then, he has said nothing to the press. So we see on the monitor in the press room on Sunday afternoon

World premiere of deceased Ten Holt

Tonight, Feb 14 honours the North Netherlands Orchestra at the Oosterpoort in Groningen Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012, with the world premiere of his orchestral work Centri-fuga, which he completed in 1979. It has never been performed to this day and will be christened tonight by conductor David Porcelijn. After the interval, Ten Holt's magnum opus will also be heard Canto ostinato for four pianos, performed by Sandra and Jeroen van Veen, Fred Oldenburg and Irene Russo. Earlier this week, other pianists also performed it at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. 

64th Berlin Film Festival opens with Wes Anderson's eccentric tragicomedy Grand Budapest Hotel

Imagine an old-fashioned sophisticated comedy, but filmed with modern speed, in the colourful and baroque style of a richly detailed comic strip full of plots and escapes, rounded off with a perfume of melancholy. That's when you come close to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the new film by Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr Fox, Moonrise Kingdom) The Berlin Film Festival (6 - 16 February) thus secured an opening with a festive yet unconventi...

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4 reasons why the arts are going to lose a lot more. Municipal culture congress wrongly optimistic

It was ball in Rotterdam on Thursday, 30 January. At the Municipal Culture Congress, a few hundred officials, local politicians and arts organisations gathered to talk about where they could help each other. It was supposed to be a positive day. There had been long enough complaining and arguing: look ahead, hopeful into the future. Even if the worst is yet to come.

5 lessons from a Tilburg riot: superficial newspaper determines superficial cultural politics

Regional newspapers hardly do any real cultural journalism anymore. We know this because it was the reason we once founded Culture Press. Just how bad things are now, five years later, with art in the region and the way newspapers deal with it, was evident this month in Tilburg. A local journalist from the Brabants Dagblad had written a piece on questions raised by a PVV MP in the province. In the news story, this former sports journalist qualified...

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Municipalities pass on most cuts to the arts

Culture cuts have now reached 450 million euros. The Lower House earlier decided on cuts of 200 million. The cut in the municipal budget by the same Lower House now leads to a further cut of 250 million euro. This is calculated by research firm Berenschot in a report to be presented in Rotterdam on Thursday 30 January.

There are positive outliers. Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, is not cutting back further on culture. Daarme...

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Reinbert de Leeuw defies limits of orchestra in Saturday Matinee

Reinbert de Leeuw turned seventy-five last September, but already in May the VPRO honoured him with three full-length broadcasts on Radio 4. Together with Aad van Nieuwkerk, I made a selection from his best recordings of Kagel, Ustvolskaya and Louis Andriessen, among others, about which I also let him speak. This was followed in September by a real Reinbert festival and his own magazine. The magazine not only highlighted him... 

'The Dutch themselves do not realise what has been built up in this country.'

The cuts to arts have prompted many people to stress that art should be socially and politically relevant. For Samuel Wuersten, artistic director of the Holland Dance Festival, social and political relevance is a broad concept. It does not have to mean that art takes a stand against current issues. The way dance is rooted in society is much more important to Wuersten. This is reflected in Holland Dance Festival ...

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