Culture Press does things differently. We bring you professional journalism, but don't put a pay wall around it. Instead, we ask you, the reader, to decide for yourself what these stories are worth to you. Want to post a general donation? You can: Contribute to Culture Press!
Er is niks mis met gewoon heel erg goed zijn in wat je doet. Niets mooier dan een enkele artiest op een lege vloer met niets anders dan diens muziek, lijf en stem. De top drie van mijn legendarische kunstmomenten: Allemaal dingen uit de oude doos, dat geef ik toe, maar dat is het met topmomenten: eenmaal gevestigd is het…
When your evening starts with a stripping festival director and ends with pole dancing, you know you are not in a regular theatre. True, I was at the opening of the Queering Puppets Festival at Amsterdam's Plein Theater and it was a party. The Plein Theatre largely owes that to that stripping director Berith Danse, who was in...
Er was de laatste maanden nogal wat gedoe over subsidies, vooral voor de podiumkunsten. Een paar geliefde middengroepen met een mooie staat van dienst kregen geen subsidie meer, ten gunste van nieuwkomers. De redenen voor de verschuiving waren legio. De woede erover ging vooral over de nadruk op Diversiteit en Inclusie en regionale spreiding in de beoordeling door Fonds Podiumkunsten…
From 21 to 30 March, the Kaboom Animation Festival takes place in Utrecht, Amsterdam and online. Provocation is the main theme this year, with films about rebellious women and work in free-spirited animation styles. There are competitions for long and short films, Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa is artist in focus, and there is a special focus on Belgian animation.
Het is verrukkeluk wanneer grote kranten kleine media klakkeloos overschrijven, en dat ze dat gratis doen? Ach, ze hebben het ook moeilijk. Zo is het kleine niche-weblog Jazzenzo na ruim een jaar gerehabiliteerd dankzij een artikel dat de chef kunst van de Volkskrant vorig jaar had overgenomen van deze site. Waar het om ging? De recensent en columnist van het…
Het beeld was een beetje Da Vinci. Aan een lange tafel zaten ze in mooi licht en het ging over weemoed en dreiging. Dit was op 1 februari 2025 in het Amsterdamse Debatcentrum De Balie het toneel van Laatste Avondmaal. Ter kruisiging: een aantal theatergroepen waarmee ik ben groot gegroeid. ‘t Barre Land gebroederlijk naast De Warme Winkel, Orkater naast…
The female body has been the subject of scrutiny and imaging for centuries. From art to Hollywood, from myths to modern feminist statements-how is the female body seen, and how does that influence our ideas about sexuality and self-determination? This essay explores how lust, imagination and social expectations come together in films, books and the real world. How much freedom does a woman really have over her own body-and her own story?
The book industry, or should we say the book field, will have shrunk at least 2 per cent by 2024. You just don't read that in the press releases about the industry's annual figures, which the CPNB director ance now tells us to call 'field'. Something about flowers. The ability to present all the news, including the bad, as something beautiful, good and cheerful....
Floris Kortie has come of age. The classical-music industry's merriest curmudgeon has proved in 2024 that he can carry Podium Klassiek on his own. That he managed to get the continuation of Podium Witteman, where he was allowed to freewheel as the insightful nephew, through a deep crisis is to his credit. After the departure of Mike Boddé, who he says is more...
Is a dramaturge more valuable than a public relations officer? Not according to Eline Arbo, since this year artistic director of the badly battered Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. She talks about "the long lines of the company" just as readily with communications staff. After all, people who put their lives at the service of studying the repertoire, the psychology of the director and the zeitgeist know...
At the cinema industry's New Year's reception, the annual figures for 2024 were presented. A slight decline compared to 2023, due in part to the failure of some major US titles due to the strikes there of actors and screenwriters. In contrast, Dutch cinema did well.
Major Eddy Posthuma de Boer exhibition at Berlin's Museum für Kommunikation proves major crowd puller
The art world owes much more to women than museums, galleries, magazines and other institutions portrayed for decades. The Arp Museum in Rolandseck is now making a splash with an exhibition that seeks to equalise the roles of women and men in the Dada movement.
Arriveer als een Van Gogh in Groningen. Start bij het monumentale hoofdstation en bereid je alvast voor op wat je te wachten staat in het Groninger Museum. Een prachtige tentoonstelling die meer is dan alleen Van Gogh en zijn kunst; het is een verhaal over historie, wetenschap en de fascinatie van Groningse studenten voor de tragische schilder die de kunstcultuur…
The Amsterdam Museum is using the 750th anniversary of the capital to tell stories about unknown women. The museum juxtaposes photographs and objects from its collection and asks artists of today to react to them. This provides a picture of the city's past, but especially about the women who live and work there now.
Theatre has everything to do with language. And nothing, of course, but thanks to Aluin's version of Antigone, I want to make a case for the 'everything'. Because language is far more defining for image than the other way around. Confusing? Yep. Thankfully so. Aluin's Antigone, or rather, Erik Snel's adaptation of Gerard Koolschijn's translation of the play that the Greek Sophocles...
Heartbreaking diary entries from the Ukraine war formed the basis for Nora Krug's new book. 'The drawn image has the power to provide a different perspective on reality.'
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is becoming increasingly pervasive. Artists are also making use of it, as seen in this 18th edition of IDFA's DocLab.
The VAT increase on culture and sports is off the table (VAT increase on culture, media and sports off the table: coalition struck deal with opposition). However happy everyone is, and however holy the cabinet's promise sounds: that message is only half true. During the parliamentary debate on the Schoof?Wilders tax plan, the rather intransigent and laconic minister Heinen...
The Berlinische Galerie is hosting a major exhibition by Rineke Dijkstra. It portrays her as a photographer who looks beyond the times. For her personally, it is a return to Berlin, where she lived for two years at the invitation of the DAAD in the late 1990s.
OCW Minister Eppo Bruins hopes citizens will buy more books, read more newspapers and go to the theatre more often thanks to the extra spending power hidden in the tax plans of the Schoof?Wilders Cabinet. This would offset the negative effects of the intensely 'ugly' VAT increase on vulnerable culture. During the Legislative Consultation OCW budget, Culture section, held on Monday,...
With Ben Okri, the Internationales Literatur Festival Berlin (ILB) has brought in the grand master of contemporary literary storytelling. 'See the magic of things around you.'
Biogas. It works. In Tilburg, they have taken a big step in making circus romance more sustainable. The campfires, from the first edition the anchor of Circus Festival Circolo, have been modified. No longer fuelled by increasingly soggy firewood, beautiful yellow flames now play around glowing chunks. The wood fire became a gas fire, but designed by a pyrotechnician with circus experience. The flames...
Quantum entanglement, supersymmetry. The nerd in me could not get around the mystery of cosmic twins, which hundreds of billions of light years apart yet simultaneously take over each other's state when one of them is seen. Or something like that. In Blood Sister, Matzer's latest play, it's not billions of parsecs, it's an Atlantic Ocean and 17 years of life that those two identical sisters...
She sometimes sees people drop out when she tells them that her performance is inspired by burlesque. "They often have certain preconceptions about this and think it's 'something only dirty men want to see'." It remains difficult to convince people to take the first step and attend a burlesque show, says Baines. The twenty-two-year-old South African loves...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français