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Ostriches, as droll as they are graceful, disappearing into man-sized reeds at dusk. I saw the sculpture yesterday in Tilburg's Spoorpark, where Circus Festival Circolo has settled again this year. As simple as poignancy can be, you can make your own story out of what good performers present to you. The nine handstand specialists of Collectif d'équilibristes showed me in Le Complexe de...
"I actually want to shout, 'Waaaa! That I'm standing here!" It is nearing noon when Babette Foncie Fotchind shares this with the TivioliVredenburg, still filled to the brim. It is met with loud, assenting cheers. It is one of the many highlights and highlights at this 40th edition of the Night of Poetry, the rather unique party that Utrecht...
Living and working in a metropolis as a digital nomad or creative professional, on a terrace with your laptop and a latte macchiato. A dream for many people, doing well on social media. Around that fact revolves The Perfections, the short novel with which Vincenzo Latronico made the longlist of the Premio Strega, the most important Italian literary prize. The...
Filter is pulling out all the stops: the two 2023 Filter Translation Prizes, including the brand new one for children's and youth books, have been awarded to no fewer than four translators! The regular prize goes to Yond Boeke & Patty Krone for Luigi Pirandello's Lucky Birds (Van Oorschot). The prize for the most extraordinary translation of a children's and children's book was awarded to Lies Lavrijsen and Els Dumez-Blocken....
It is sometimes said of reviewers that they actually wish they were writers themselves. A cliché, of course, but perhaps also somewhat true. Dieuwertje Mertens (1983), literary critic for Het Parool, laughs affirmatively. "Yes, look, I have written a book, so it is clear that I also want to be an author. But not instead of. I like very much...
The overhead projector. What a beautiful tool in the hands of an artist. There will probably also be someone who does something unexpected with a digital whiteboard, but it cannot be as inventive as what Jilles Flinterman does in ´Boudica'. The play, created under the wings of Utrecht-based theatre group Aluin, tells of a woman who has a statue in England,...
Labour disputes in the Netherlands are on the rise. In 2021, the number of labour disputes increased by 17% overall. This increase will continue in 2022 and 2023, writes nu.nl, among others, based partly on the increased demand for legal aid in labour disputes. The arts and culture sector is certainly no exception. The media regularly show conflicts and abuses within the cultural sector. Add to this...
In False Bitches, Camila Sosa Villada grants the reader an intimate and moving glimpse into the colourful, but also harsh and lonely existence of (Argentine) transsexuals. And thus holds a merciless mirror up to the intolerant, judgmental society. A 'party' 'Being a transvesti is a party' was the motto of Angie, one of Camila Sosa Villada's transgender friends. An incantation...
113 decibels. That's what the elated audience managed to pull off with Nicole Kaandorp (no relation to Brigitte, but at least as talented) at the Pandora. It happened in the first round of the semi-finals in the NK Poetry Slam 2023, the unofficial opening of the International Literature Festival Utrecht, which we call ILFU in English....
The work of Colombian writer Laura Restrepo (73) has long been forgotten in the Netherlands. With her new, impressive novel Song of old lovers, she makes a well-deserved comeback. She already has 13 novels to her name. Yet Colombian writer Laura Restrepo, who lives mostly in Spain, is a rather unknown to most Dutch...
This week, photographer Erwin Olaf died, aged 64. Just before his 60th birthday, we interviewed him about his work, life and love. Olaf also spoke candidly about his illness, how it forced him to make choices ánd made him milder. 'I am in renewal,' he said. And: 'In my life, I have done everything I wanted to do.'
Raw and moving is Catelan-Moroccan writer Najat el Hachmi's new novel, Monday We Will Be Loved. An impressive story about the meaning of true freedom, and the price you have to pay for it. 'Monday, Monday, Monday... Monday we will be different. Monday we will be loved.' Every week, young woman Naïma tries to...
"A good example of how the government wants to encourage that power from the bottom up is through culture. Culture confronts, inspires and bridges contradictions. From festival grounds to concert halls, and from museums to music schools. That is why the cabinet continues to promote the enjoyment of culture, for instance with the Culture Card for young people. The cabinet also wants the public library in as many...
15 minutes of television. Theatre Maas, who used to be called Cornald, has managed to get Dutch theatre's biggest party back on kind of prime time television. On Monday 18 September, we saw his recap of this gala of Dutch theatre, which included awards, snippets of speeches and elated actors. I wondered if we could...
On 11 September 1883, Vincent van Gogh disembarked at Hoogeveen train station. Away from The Hague's urbanisation and back to nature. The painter spends months in the area around Hoogeveen, Nieuw-Amsterdam/Veenoord and goes to Zweeloo for a day. He uses his period in Drenthe to unwind and experiment with themes, colours and...
On Sunday 10 September, Podium Klassiek opened the season in a very stripped-down version. Floris Kortie was all alone. In the world of public broadcasting and classical music, where things are usually fixed three years in advance, something was up. I felt an end approaching. Podium Witteman had become a fixture here at home....
Of course, we can continue to complain about the poor treatment of our artists, we can also approach it with a positive slant. That must have been the consideration of composers' interest group Nieuw Geneco when establishing the 'Fair Practice Awards'. On Friday 8 September, they were presented for the fourth time at Utrecht's TivoliVredenburg: prizes for commissioners who for once...
The hardest part of going back to work after the summer holidays are the holiday stories from colleagues. Or from yourself. That fantastic view, that unique campsite, that beautiful beach, that restaurant where you got the best food in the world for no money, that indigenous people you visited first with your tour bus. That moment of climate embarrassment that you had a few more...
'While many regional museums are struggling, commercial museums are popping up like mushrooms.' Omroep Wakker Nederland, since we associate 'awake' with 'woke', preferring to be known as broadcaster 'we' the Netherlands, had to do something with 'art'. The opening lines of the first broadcast of 'de Stand van Nederland', their 'research programme', were an instant hit, so were the images: the museum association in the ball pit of a...
A major musical theatre performance, an adapted classical play, an opera and a painting festival. The small municipality of Noordwijk - like that other coastal municipality of Bergen - offers an abundance of culture. All four events rely heavily on talent, subsidies and donations, volunteers, pragmatic thrift. And good weather. Noordwijk aan Zee has been a more than average municipality for centuries. Famous Dutchmen...
The counter stood at 8 minutes and 45 seconds when it went wrong. Pretty fast for a three-hour interview programme like Zomergasten, but Theo Maassen grabbed the record with verve. His guest Alida Dors, the woman who, as a self-taught dancer, grew into a forewoman of Dutch hip-hop culture, and who is now tasked with managing the mismanaged...
Water is very good at covering things up. Sixty kilometres south of Weimar is a huge reservoir, about which the locals know little more than that the hydroelectric plant supplies power to houses and the steelworks, a few kilometres away. At least one village has also disappeared, and artist cum experimental radio maker Sandra Rücker found out that her...
I had - in a previous house - a neighbour who gave a young tree in front of our apartment complex a bucket of water every day. He had a thing for trees, as he had brought back some Sequoia seeds from a trip to the US, back in the day. He had put these in the ground in various places. One near the house, and that one, because of possible...
A lone madman? An unsuspecting visitor would think so, and when I arrived at the Theaterplatz in Weimar yesterday afternoon, I was that unsuspecting visitor. During the opening speeches of Kunstfest Weimar, a man shouted insulting texts at Bodo Ramelow, the prime minister of 'Free State of Thuringia'. The man dressed in a yellow vest was taken away by the police. Later, during a very oppressive...
Nice how things coincide, on 'Summer Chairs'. Last week, I reported on the BBC breakfast show's Red Bench, and what a torture device it is. On Sunday 20 August, an almost exact equivalent of that semi-circular Red Bank came along in Summer Guests with Kamagurka. This Red Bench was in a Flemish theatre with Johan Anthierens, who in his show 'At...
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