/// Freelance cultural journalist, critic, writer and dramatist. Omnivore with a love of art, culture & media in all unfathomable gradations between obscure underground and wildly commercial mainstream. Also works for Het Parool and VPRO. And trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
"What the fuck should I do with this?" was choreographer and performance artist Ivo Dimchev's (1976) first thought when confronted with the artworks of Austrian artist Franz West. After Dimchev's solo performance Some Faves (2010) in Vienna, West, a multi-awarded creator of bizarre sculptures and objects, sought contact with the choreographer. He asked him to make an improvised video based on his...
Ze heeft het druk gehad. Hoogzwanger werkte Yasmeen Godder (Jeruzalem, 1973) aan haar eerste choreografie voor Batsheva Dance Company. In een maand tijd stampte ze onder de vleugels van Batsheva haar nieuwe voorstelling The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act uit te grond, en beviel tussendoor van een gezonde dochter. Voor de derde keer presenteert de Israëlische choreografe Yasmeen Godder haar werk…
It is incredible what an energy the men of Manar can generate. These six - dressed in djellabas - percussionists play Dekka al Marrakchia: an insanely rousing form of traditional Moroccan drum 'n bass party music and religious Gnawa. After a solemn, almost ritualistic beginning - in which the band comes jogging onto the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in a goose-step, accompanied by the menacing sounds of two huge horns - the drums erupt and the dance floor is full of swinging visitors.
In het debat Burger King & Burgerschap geven Patrick van der Hijden, David van Reybrouck, Chris Keulemans and Samuel Vriezen hun visie op de staat van de burger. Publiek mag, maar hoeft niet, meedoen. Hieronder de column Staat van Verwenning, voorgedragen door Patrick van der Hijden – als aftrap voor het debat.
“Ons leven is in de achttiende eeuw uitgevonden.
De leden van de hogere klassen – de elite – hadden een eigen huis, vaak met tuin. Ze stuurden hun kinderen naar school en die begonnen daarna een vervolgopleiding. Ze hadden vrije tijd en kwamen over het algemeen op tijd op hun afspraken, door de horloges die ze droegen en de trekschuiten die op tijd vertrokken (ze klaagden bij vertraging). Burgers die buiten de stad woonden, forensden – met de koets, dat wel. Ze dronken koffie om wakker te blijven. Ze bezochten restaurants met menukaarten. Ze werden ingeënt tegen de pokken en hadden huisdieren. Een geweldige bron over dat leven vormt het dagboek van Otto van Eck, die daar op tienjarige leeftijd onder druk van zijn door de Verlichting bezielde ouders aan begon, in 1791. Daar ontleen ik bovenstaande voorbeelden aan.
Dit leven wordt aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw niet door een kleine minderheid geleefd, maar door een groot deel van de Nederlanders. Die moeten het wel zonder personeel doen. Dat is namelijk vervangen door technologie.
In the late 1980s, John N. Gray (South Shields, 1948) adviser to Margaret Thatcher - Gray: "I was just a small mote of dust in her administration" - now he is a fierce critic of all things neoconservative. On Writers Unlimited, publicist Bas Heijne felt him out.
Dinaw Mengestu deelt zijn achternaam met de voornaam van één van Ethiopië gewezen dictators. “Vooralsnog ben ik schrijver, maar aspireer een carrière als dictator.” Dictators ontstaan niet in een vacuüm, stelt Mengestu. “Wij als burgers scheppen onze leiders.” In zijn voorgedragen verhaal geven de burgers al hun dromen uit handen. Ze schuiven al hun verantwoordelijkheid af richting de machthebbers. En…
"I love westerns," says one of the African players. "Because you always know how they end. Clearly. With only one winner." On the stage floor are four smoothly twirling, stomping dancing, trained performers from the Ivory Coast. They are a stark contrast to their co-stars: two lumbering, yoghurt-pale and uncoordinated German actors. The Africans speak French, the Germans mostly English. The...
She bends over. A huge wooden shot thunders over film scientist Hilde D'haeyere around and smashes against the playing floor. She stays alive through a recess in the wood. Unperturbed, she springs up and continues reading from her essay: a scholarly treatise on function of slapstick in the silent films of Charlie Chapin and Buster Keaton, as well as in the work of visual artist cum theatre maker Miet Warlop.
Amsterdam, 1999. Studying Theatre Science, first-year theatre analysis class. I sit with notepad and pen clutched in fingers, making indecipherable notes. Halfway through the lecture, Sjaron Minailo (Tel Aviv, 1979) saunters in, dressed in a huge fur coat, with big Gucci sunglasses and dreadlocks. With a sigh, he plops into the back lecture bench, hears three sentences of the disrupted lecturer's speech
That was a bit of a grind for British theatre critics. The celebrated director Deborah Warner (1959) recently pulled Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal out of the closet. A play from 1777, and an untouchable part of the British theatre canon. Building on the style of her earlier production Mother Courage(2009) Warner also indicated The School for Scandal - goddamn - a quirky, contemporary twist.
"With many video, light, music and noise - like a rock concert, " grins Warner in the office of the Barbican TheatreIn London. "Mother Courage had an incredibly populist, exciting atmosphere. I love that arrogant theatricality immensely, and I wanted to continue that style in The School for Scandal. For me, the big challenge was to explore the Brechtian theatre style of Weimar - which I got through Mother Courage had discovered again - to collide with an eighteenth-century theatre text."
The lung cancer survivor who died last year KünstlerChristoph Schlingensief - all-rounder, provocateur, director, life artist - gets on the Holland Festival an extended tribute: the opening performance Mea Culpa, a programme of seven feature films, and Schlingensief's swan song Via Intolleranza II.
Deathly ill caught Christoph Schlingensief up the wild plan to move into Burkina Faso an opera village from the ground up, Remdoogo. A self-sufficient sanctuary where people from different cultures could meet, and to make art together there for an extended period of time. This follows similar initiatives such as the Avenida Theatre in Mozambique, set up by author Henning Mankell. Schlingensief sought to merge art and life. Driven by a long-standing fascination with the rich African culture, and inspired by the ideals of his great hero Joseph Beuys.
Via Intolleranza II is Schlingensief's attempt to capture, in a maelstrom of documentary, music, visual art, film, performance art, lecture, opera and theatre, the early process of becoming Remdoogo. A performance about a process. At the same time, Schlingensief also seems to question his own motives. Via Intolleranza II was his swan song - he died three months after the premiere. The show will have its Dutch premiere on Saturday 4 June.
Eugénie Rebetez in 'Gina'. Foto: Augustin Rebetez.
Haar volle dijen kletsen tegen elkaar. Ze schudt met haar ontblote armen en kijkt grijnzend naar de trillende huid op haar bovenarmen. Ze stampt woest over de speelvloer van Theater Kikker, terwijl haar forse lijf – gekleed in een klein nietsverhullend zwart jurkje – nadrukkelijk aan alle kanten vrolijk meestuitert. Je moet maar durven. In haar one woman show ‘Gina’ gaat de Zwitserse theatermakerEugénie Rebetezaan alle gêne voorbij. In de huid van Gina toont Rebetez haar eigen hunkering naar het sterrendom, met veel zelfspot en absurdistische humor. Een eigenzinnige mengelmoes van mime, stand up comedy, kleinkunst en hedendaagse dans.
She is on her knees. Shaking and trembling, she jerks backwards. With clawed fingers that seem to grasp at the void. Like a frightened cat. Shuffling, the dancer moves backwards in a semicircle on the white stage floor of Theatre Frog. One by one, the five others step onto the empty open stage, while the first dancer keeps looking anxiously at the audience. Thus begins 'Storm end come'. With this performance, Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder shows the overwhelming effects of fear on the bodies of her dancers. But it doesn't really get scary.
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