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Current 93 survives music industry malaise on a diet of lots of love and dog-eared fans

Reports of the collapsing music industry have been rife. Apparently, as a musician, you no longer survive on the basis of record sales (alone). In niche genres, however, it is easy to survive. So proves the band Current 93, which performed in Stadtgarten, Cologne, last week. Playing live a lot and selling merchandise seems to be the golden rule for... 

Death Horse puts on bold shoes and waves goodbye to Shakespeare in 'Bye Bye'

Amsterdam-based company Dood Paard itself translated Shakespeare's 'Othello' and waves goodbye to the bard with 'Bye Bye'. The quirky collective performs a one-and-a-half-hour topical comedy of manners and soul mirror, in which pointing at 'The Other' is central. Shakespeare's plays are quite often performed quite reverently. . Moreover, the adored 'bard' from Stratford-upon-Avon has bestowed on the English language countless expressions that have come to... 

Rutteleaks 4 on orchestras: 'Mergers Brabants Orkest and Limburg Symphony Orchestra, Gelders Orkest and Orkest v.h. Oosten, Residentie Orkest and RphO'

Of course we are being horribly abused. By the coughing chain-smoker with his trench coat in that Hague car park. Is there a bigger plan behind it. Which again we know nothing about, but which will become clear on 23 May. So be it. Until then, we can do nothing but slavishly write down what the coughing oracle coughs at us. Well: We already knew that... 

Taboo perpetuates health problems in music industry

Trouble with your voice? You don't talk about that. Because competition is so high in the music industry, there is a taboo on showing weaknesses. While the consequences would be much smaller if attention was given to it sooner. Time for the Muziek Centrum Nederland to ask the question at its music café on 3 March where... 

Bettina Masuch on 'her' Springdance: 'Sometimes you wonder if you want to watch it, but then you watch it anyway....

Bettina Masuch (1964) has been artistic director of Springdance since 2008 and presents its third festival programme this year. We asked the woman behind this leading festival for innovative dance about this season's highlights. One of the performances she describes already makes us very curious: the Japanese street fighters of Contact Gonzo. Could just happen that somewhere between 14 and... 

Province investigates: 'Utrecht worth 1 billion more thanks to arts sector'

Art costs money. The current Rutte administration has hammered that into it: it's expensive, no one but a small club of insiders goes there, and either way those are leftists or pseudo-leftists who can easily pay for it themselves. So much for the government's opinion. The opinion of the art world can be guessed: it is... 

Superior played-in recordings are no guarantee of delivering a reference CD

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra currently has an unprecedented luxury: it is releasing CDs on two labels at the same time. How is that possible? The orchestra signed under its own name with BIS Records, the label with which the eccentric owner Von Bahr releases one extraordinary recording after another, while chief conductor Yannick Néze-Séguin is old-fashionedly under contract as maestro with EMI.... 

The soup in The Hague is being eaten hotter than it is being served: 'no pass in 2013′

This message has since been confirmed by the Halbe Zijlstra on 14 March. We thank our source for being accurate. We once again visited our trench-coat-clad coughing chain-smoker in his Hague car park. Because there had been no news from The Hague for another week, and with the elections so close to the door, that's always... 

'There are provinces where you can vote VVD or CDA just fine'; new website gives voting tips to art lovers

It looked like a party. Coffee and flan, a Maastricht song, brass band music and a speech by Prince Carnival. Optimism surrounded the launch of the website nadeschreeuwnudestem.nl on 21 February. Surely the cry for culture in November was mainly a voice of dissent. Now there is a chance to take forward-looking action. 'Mobilise everyone you know to join the March 2... 

Rutteleaks 3: we now know how barren it will look in the coming years: decimate culture and libraries, spare regional broadcasters

We had done the necessary research work ourselves, and then it turned out that something had also been sent to the House of Representatives, which contained many more figures. We asked for those figures and were shocked. After 2012, when the current arts plan expires and after a year of inaction and wait and see for the whole sector a... 

Yannick spurs his orchestra to a memorable and historic performance of Prokofiev's fifth symphony

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra is rated differently by conductors. Either you can get along with it and then it's a party, or it never becomes anything and then it stays at the occasional conducting session. Moreover, the musicians' enormous responsiveness is feared.

Reviewers on the fortieth Rotterdam International Film Festival: lots of Chinese loneliness and that Russian needs to hit the cinemas

OK. A pilot. When Jeroen Stout lost his Wednesday film fork in Radio Kunststof on Radio 1 in December 2010, we made him an offer he could easily refuse: to do something like that with us. But that we would then look for a way that suits The Dodo. After all, audio online may be the... 

The deeper caverns of an adult film festival. Sven Schlijper on safari during IFFR 2011

The International Film Festival Rotterdam celebrates its fortieth edition with a fitting XL programme. That Roman numeral XL not only indicates respectable age. It also says something about size: this fortieth also bursts with the intiguing programme, with screenings at no less than forty locations throughout the inner city of Rotterdam. Inside the festival walls is... 

US grantmaker wants an art world with more creativity and less money

Now in terms of tax money, they already spend hardly anything on the arts, in America. But many think even that is too much. Earlier, we reported on Facebook and Twitter about Republican America's call to abolish subsidies altogether. Meanwhile, the president of the National American Arts Fund NAE (National Endowment of the Arts) has taken a bat... 

Call: It's not that bad everywhere, is it? We want hard figures culture budgets municipalities and provinces plz RT

If you work at a municipality or province and/or know the exact measures your government organisation will take in the coming years in the field of culture, we would like to have those figures. It may be anonymous, of course, if you don't want your exact cuts or investments to be out on the street, and it saves us a lot of wob... 

Liszt's music is too important to ignore

Fransz Litszt, born in 1811, explored every nook and cranny of the piano in his work, trying to incorporate every conceivable technique. As this contemporary of Carl Czerny, Niccolo Paganini and Richard Wagner was born 200 years ago this year, so there is a Liszt year. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra bit the bullet of that on Friday 28 January,... 

Eternal chairman Hans Onno van den Berg leaves Association of Theatre and Concert Hall managements

He was pretty much fused with it. Hans Onno van den Berg was the VSCD. And that ís so until 1 September, when he leaves as chairman of the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors. So we heard from a very reliable grapevine. And we have since received confirmation, albeit a week later. Far too late according to some, far too... 

"Characteristic of the book trade remains the endless chatter, but this evening I wouldn't have wanted to miss." All tweets from #evdu, with video.

Interesting things are happening these days. The digital revolution is beginning to have traces of a real revolution. No one has yet set themselves on fire, as in Tunisia, but more and more people are taking to the virtual streets to overthrow the old powers: after the record companies, which let themselves be overwhelmed by people downloading, and the newspapers, which let themselves be overwhelmed by people searching freely for information, it now seems to be the turn of book publishers.

Diego del Morao does himself a great disservice at Flamenco Biennale with unprofessional stage presentation

Between 21 and 30 January 2011, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam will host the Flamenco Biennial, a music and dance fest around that mythical Spanish primal music that leaves no one untouched. A style of music, moreover, that developed in parallel with the history of the Iberian peninsula, where the culture of the Indian Roma gypsies came together with that of the... 

"RutteLeaks": Prime minister and state secretary don't know their own figures: income requirements for arts institutions already met in 2007 and most subsidy already going to successful institutions

We already thought something was wrong when Mark Rutte, in his much applauded show of strength in Buitenhof, spoke of 'all those empty halls with 10 people in the front row'. Ok, he hadn't been there himself for years, but according to his State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra, at least in The Hague, the emptiness was glaring, Rutte knew.... 

Springdance 2011 presents programme. The Dodo is there.

On Thursday 14 April, the Springdance festival 2011 opens with the opening performance Sideways Rain by choreographer Guilherme Botelho and his company Alias in the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht. Springdance 2011 presents innovative and high-profile contemporary dance from around the world. Besides many premieres, the festival has an extensive fringe programme including street performances, lectures, an introduction to contemporary dance for those starting... 

What exactly does Mark Rutte say about the arts? It fits in 1 minute and it's not quite right.

We are politically neutral and even in the subsidy debate we try to maintain that. After all, every coin has a flip side and it is not the media's job to always and forever take sides. But now this. Mark Rutte was interviewed by Clairy Polak in Buitenhof on Sunday, 16 January 2011, and they talked for a minute about... 

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