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Courage Conny Janssen Danst

COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst shows a delicious new world

You don't have to go to Terschelling at all for an atmospheric location performance. COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst is an exciting experience on a totally, totally neglected place.

In the 1980s she started choreographing with Djazzex, years later she performed for Obama. Now Conny Janssen (interview here) with her ensemble at the Ferro Dome. A dilapidated venue you wouldn't expect much from the outside. Plans to turn it into a Rotterdam Heineken Music Hall are according to the AD cancelled. It's as if the city of Rotterdam said to Conny: here's a place we can't do anything with, you do something with it. Dut succeeded her wonderfully: thanks to a creative approach, the entire industrial entourage has a underground-appearance.

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The Dark Ages: beautiful investigative theatre by Milo Rau. #HF16

When we think of 'The Dark Ages', we think of the rough raw dark Middle Ages, with church and king and no hygiene. However, Swiss director Milo Rau's performance, now at the Holland Festival, refers to a much more recent piece of European history. In a recent interview With the Culture Press, he said:

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Though dated, Pina Bausch' Nelken still impresses #HF16

This way from row nine, it is like being knee-deep in carnations yourself. The heads of the audience in front of me merge silently into a forest of stems crowned with pink, through which dancers carefully step back and forth like leggy chickens.

The find is great: Nelken by Pina Bausch depicts paradise as a place where you have to be careful or things will go wrong. The carnations force the dancers to be careful. As a spectator, you go along with them, without all the underlying thoughts immediately coming through to you.

Read More "Though dated, Pina Bausch' Nelken still impresses #HF16
Gardens Speak ©-Tania-El-Khoury-1-

Digging in the earth stays on the surface in Gardens Speak #HF16

There I am. Next to Holland Festival director Ruth Mackenzie, on a grave, as part of the installation Gardens Speak on the stage of the main hall of Theatre Bellevue in Amsterdam. There is nothing to see, little to hear. Tone lights suggest a rising sun after a few minutes. I get up together with the ten other visitors. Quite a shame, because I was actually quite comfortable lying there.

The programme booklet sounded promising:

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Make money with Culture Press? You don't even have to become a member!

You can of course member be, or donor, from Culture Press. This has huge advantages: you have access to our premium-stories and may also publish[hints]Anyone who is a member, benefactor or bearer can access the CMS and submit stories for review by the final editors[/hints] on the site. But of course, you don't necessarily have to become a member to support the good cause. Indeed, you can support the charity and just make net money. How can you do that? By recruiting members: if partner of the cooperative. When you recruit members for us through the partner programme, we give you a piece of the proceeds.

How does that work?

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Choir and orchestra are the true stars in Pique Dame #HF16

The biggest applause at the end of Tchaikovsky's opera Pique Dame went to the choir of the National Opera and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Wednesday 15 June. And rightly so: choristers and orchestral musicians brought the highly varied score to sound flawlessly, without once getting out of sync with each other. Dynamics, rhythm, phrasing, empathy, everything was solid. A performance of stature rarely seen in the Stopera. The vocal soloists were somewhat pale in comparison.

Read More "Choir and orchestra are the true stars in Pique Dame #HF16

Olga Neuwirth: Weltkatzenmusik or acoustic preservation? #HF16

Austrian politician Jörg Haider labelled its work Weltkatzenmusik. When his far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs joined the government in 2000, it led to mass protests. At one such rally, Olga Neuwirth (Graz, 1968), under the title 'Ich lass mich nicht wegjodeln', denounced his anti-intellectual and anti-cultural agenda. The rest is history: Haider drove himself to pieces in 2008, Neuwirth... 

Read More "Olga Neuwirth: Weltkatzenmusik or acoustic preservation? #HF16
Melancholia-Bryony-Dwyer-junges-theatre-basel-©-Sandra-Then

All 18 gloomy: Melancholia is concert for sour old men #HF16

We are all going to die! We already have that certainty in. And since the dawn of mankind, every new generation invariably knows that it is going to happen to them now. After all: their successors have never prospered anywhere like today's youth. Nice premise for a concert, thought German director Sebastian Nübling[hints]Nuling was a guest at the Holland Festival last year with an adaptation of Hebbel's play Nibelungen, read the review and a interview.[/hints], good idea to programme, thought the Holland Festival. I seriously wonder why.

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Film fails to lift Die Schöpfung to higher plane at Holland Festival #HF16

Full of religious inspiration, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote the oratorio Die Schöpfung, his famous musical ode to the Biblical creation story. Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b 1965) reflects on Haydn's masterpiece with an aesthetic film that shows how humans bend the world to their will. During the Holland Festival this film was screened at a live performance of the music by Collegium Vocale Gent and baroque orchestra B'Rock led by conductor René Jacobs. Got Die Schöpfung an extra charge by this film, which largely consists of people in white suits walking around sandy landscapes?

Read More "Film fails to lift Die Schöpfung to higher plane at Holland Festival #HF16

We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16

There are countries in the world, where the boundaries between art disciplines are not as sharply drawn as they are here. The Holland Festival, under the new leadership of Ruth MacKenzie, is catching us up. She is bringing events here where the boundaries between visual art, performance, video, film and performing arts can no longer be drawn. Events that generate meaning in ways that are quite new to us, such as The Encounter, last week, and Gardens Speak, later this week.

Read More "We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16

'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16

Swiss playwright Milo Rau created a theatrical trilogy about the demise of the European ideal. The second part The Dark Ages is now at the Holland Festival. Rau combined his actors' painful, personal life stories with themes from the works of Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies. With a Freudian sauce: 'Countless people who are The Dark Ages have seen ask me: 'Milo, is something wrong with your father?'

Read More "'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16

Ça Ira: political theatre with the allure of House of Cards #HF16

Over four hours long Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis, a performance by French director Joël Pommerat, to be seen this weekend at the Holland Festival. He reconstructed events in France between 1789 and 1794, better known as The French Revolution. What begins as a sometimes hard-to-follow, animated history lesson culminates in an impressive 'whodunnit', balancing between re-enactment and live television.

Read More "Ça Ira: political theatre with the allure of House of Cards #HF16

'Theatre of the World' (2): an island that remains distant. #hf16

Maarten Baanders saw an opera that remained an island. An omnivore was Athanasius Kircher (1602 - 1680). No phenomenon in the universe could escape his urge to investigate. A universal scholar he was, but also a fantasist. Hence, he did not count in science. But for a grotesque opera, you can hardly imagine a more attractive protagonist. Louis... 

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Theatre of The World (1): Design by Quay Brothers tastes like more #hf16

Carré's history and programming make it an odd duck in the Holland Festival pie. Programmed for next year are a boxing memorial, Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Ali B. The sawdust for dressage horses never seems very far away. It doesn't seem the most obvious place for a postmodern opera, or rather a grotesque in nine scenes. But now it is here: Theatre of the World. An event so big that we have two reviews and an interview to it.

Helen Westerik discusses the design of this opera.

Read More "Theatre of The World (1): Design by Quay Brothers tastes like more #hf16

As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.

Read More "As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Tantalising intimacy porn in 'Privacy' raises relevant questions #HF16

Wine Dierickx ( Wunderbaum) and Ward Weemhoff (The Hot Shop) are an artist couple and we will know it. Engaging and with humour, they take us into their private lives or that which we think that is their private life. Know after all, we don't do it.

Read More "Tantalising intimacy porn in 'Privacy' raises relevant questions #HF16

McBurney's The Encounter points visitor #HF16 to a different way of life

The Encounter, a large-scale solo performance by British multi-talent Simon McBurney, had its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on Thursday. The Encounter combines the dramatic power of a Hollywood blockbuster with the polished simplicity of 20th-century, stripped-down, edited - call it Brechtian - theatre.

Read More "McBurney's The Encounter points visitor #HF16 to a different way of life

Thoughts as fuel for space travel

No actor to be seen in the auditorium of Theatre de Veste in Delft. Just a house with walls and roof of transparent cloth. It holds thirty people. On the walls of the hall around it, projected images pass by at whirling speed. This is fascinating: usually, when you are in a house, the walls close you off from the surroundings, but this time they actually give a view of a world as big and beautiful as you never experience in ordinary life.

Read More "Thoughts as fuel for space travel

Now Live: Aase Berg, Luis Chaves, Sinéad Morrissey at Poetry International

Aase Berg from Sweden, Luis Chaves from Costa Rica and Sinéad Morrissey from Northern Ireland read their full selection of festival poems. Translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected directly along. The readings will be preceded by an introduction to the poets' work. Presentation: Feline Streekstra. Ever since her first collection Hos Rådjur (1997), Aase Berg has been writing direct, hard and compressed poetry full of... 

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Is stage poetry inferior, or do we then exclude large groups? #pifr

Report on a hidden battlefield. Poetry International in Rotterdam has moved into a new, informal venue. The home of the Ro theatre in William Boothlaan, just over basic than the Theatre on that strange square. And the terrace between roaring motorbikes is lively, full of old and young lovers of poetry. Or of spoken word, or from slam. Anyone who might think Poetry International is an elitist poetry festival will be deceived on this sunny Thursday afternoon. A stenographic report.

Read More "Is stage poetry inferior, or do we then exclude large groups? #pifr

Education, education, education. But with an ideological basis.

No, the culture debate on 8 June in the province of Overijssel was not uplifting. The Cultuurnota 2017-2020 was adopted unanimously, except for two votes from the SGP. No fireworks about, for instance, the forced cooperation between the Orkest van het Oosten and Het Gelders Orkest. No hefty investments to fix national and provincial cuts. All spokespersons came up with predictable monologues, comparisons were made with other regions and, above all, they looked enviously at the Randstad, but there was no debate. The Christian parties are worried about empty churches, and the PVV, which is of course actually against subsidies, made some obligatory remarks about safeguarding the Overijsselian identity.

Which identity?

Read More "Education, education, education. But with an ideological basis.

Secrets of Karbala: The Crusades in oriental light and glass marionettes #hf16

How can you rewrite an intensely complicated history from a different perspective? By using grotesque glass puppets and not actors. This revolutionary invention was shown at the Holland Festival on 8 June, and can still be experienced there 9 June. In that film, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky takes us back to bygone centuries and shows us... 

Read More "Secrets of Karbala: The Crusades in oriental light and glass marionettes #hf16

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