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In Joy, the sequel to Manuel Vila's bestseller Ordesa, the protagonist is searching for himself and for little sparks of joy. In his rather barren and difficult existence, this is not yet easy. It must have been a double feeling. With his personal novel Ordesa (published in 2018, a story about the death of his parents and the existential emptiness...
Whether I was on champagne. Just a question from an acquaintance in the dance world. The occasion was Nederlands Dans Theater's announcement that it does not want to continue with top choreographer Marco Goecke until he really apologises for his assault on dance critic Wiebke Hüster of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. After all, the company had previously taken up the mantle of...
So it wasn't really that long ago that a world-famous composer could tell his 20-year-old lover to stop composing because he couldn't stand competition. And for her to do just that. It is a detail in the history of Gustav and Alma Mahler, long known to insiders, but which...
Someday, the diversity of theatre and the audiences it attracts will be fine. On Thursday, 16 February, I sat in The Hague's Theater aan het Spui in an auditorium that was on average 50 years younger than the average theatre audience and also had all the colours of the rainbow. You guessed it: youth theatre. The theatre where...
It was announced at a press conference at the Hanover State Opera this afternoon that the contract with choreographer Marco Goecke has been 'permanently terminated'. In addition, he has been denied access to the Opera's premises. This sanction follows a serious incident last Saturday at the premiere of a choreography by Goecke in Hanover, where he is ballet director. Because he behaved ...
The Hannoversche Allgemeine, a local Hanover newspaper, has just announced that Marco Goecke, the dog-eared top choreographer, has probably already been fired by the prestigious Hannover Staatsoper company. An announcement on website T-Online reads: 'The dismissal of Hannover's ballet director Marco Goecke at the Hannover State Theatre may already be a done deal. According to the newspaper "Hannoversche Allgemeine...
'If an NDT dancer had done this, they would have been thrown out on the street immediately.' Much anger and incomprehension on the Instagram account of leading Nederlands Dans Theater, after the company announced it was continuing its collaboration with Marco Goecke. Goecke, an associate choreographer with the The Hague company for many years, was discredited for leaving a reviewer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung...
'We all shouldn't make it too big a deal.' Dixit musical producer Albert Verlinde, this afternoon (14 February) in the Max programme Villa VdB on Radio 1. He is referring to the commotion in Germany - and the Netherlands - over the mistreatment of a dance critic by star choreographer Marco Goecke. Verlinde: 'I actually liked it.' With this...
'In "In the Dutch Mountains", Marco Goecke's new ballet evening with the virtuoso Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, the audience is alternately driven mad and killed by boredom.' Dixit Wiebke Hüster, dance critic of the Frankfürter Algemeine, one of Germany's largest quality newspapers. The critic did not have a good word to say about the premiere, last Thursday, in The Hague. Marco Goecke,...
Last May, I expressed my concerns about the restructuring at IFFR and wondered whether the festival would remain as quirky as it always was. The dismissal of a number of programmers and the departure of other staff members laid a grey veil over the past edition beforehand. Was that justified? Had the festival lost its luster? Or did...
Thanks to Bas Hoeflaak, the recorder is back in the spotlight for a while. The laugh-out-loud scene is now going around the world, partly due to the far from virtuoso flute playing of the steel-faced amateur flautist. Thanks to an at least equally funny twist of fate, on Wednesday afternoon I was at a 'friends' rehearsal' of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, busy with the upcoming tour featuring...
There is quite a stir among mostly people of certain (white) colour and age about a documentary now playing in movie houses. In White Balls on Walls, maker Sarah Vos shows how the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has to get used to a new era in which old self-evidences are shaking to their foundations. The uproar revolves mainly around the artworks created by established...
The original and committed Iranian drama No Bears has its Dutch premiere, while the director has just been released again. Jafar Panahi continues to film against the odds.
At the end of the premiere at Haarlem's Stadsschouwburg, actor Huub Stapel (68) fills up several times as he talks about his parents. Silence falls. The performance Only Family is mainly a tribute to Stapel's parents from memories and reflections, but also personal confessions. The most prominent being his urinary problem due to a too-small bladder; many...
What would the world be like if art had had the power that book burners and iconoclasts have attributed to it over the centuries? In the fascinating documentary series 'Our Man with the Taliban', Thomas Erdbrink takes a rather perilous journey through an Afghanistan abandoned by the 'civilised' West. We see a world where book burners and iconoclasts...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: training as a learning process for a sector. Driving licences and absenteeism policy The youth theatre company was a collective of actors. They were jointly responsible and they kept as much control as possible over everything, including transport to their performances. So an actor with a driving licence was then...
Assault and finally rape of a 14-year-old girl by a bonkers vet. An enjoyable evening at the theatre is different, until the applause of this arguably (once again) best Dutch theatre production of the year relieves you of the harsh struggle. Author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and director Ivo van Hove emphasise that both 49-year-old vet Kurt and his minion, the farmer's daughter, are heavily traumatised...
Of the 1910 self-employed people still working behind the scenes of the performing arts in 2019, only 1090 will be left in 2022. So what we suspected turns out to be true: technicians have gone up onto the roof to install solar panels and heat pumps, audience workers found a destination in healthcare. Although the Culture Monitor does not capture this migration, it is clear
'Dutch-language music has been unabatedly popular for years in a variety of genres; from pop to hip-hop, competing with English-language music. That's where you see what you can achieve with attention. The same can happen with books.' This quote by author Gustaaf Peek, recorded in a press release from the Authors' Union, is quite inspiring. The press release, in which the advocate of 1,750 Dutch writers...
Sometimes you suddenly discover a gem of culture, banished from playlists by the tough theatre market. Like Wil van der Meer with his French chanson programme of translated songs by Annie Schmidt. As an actor, singer, director and teacher, Wil van der Meer is not first rate, but equally indispensable to Dutch culture. The countless, indispensable roles...
IFFR 2023 is not only a platform for filmmakers with their own voice, but also makes cross-connections with other arts. What else can cinema be?
With The river is a wound full of fish, Colombian Lorena Salazar Masso makes a powerful literary debut. What does it mean to be a mother, when do you actually BE a mother? Can you be a mother even if you did not give birth to your child yourself? As a mother without a child, are you still a mother? That is the theme of the...
The Dutch government distrusts citizens. And that stands in the way of a healthy art sector. This emerged on 17 January during a well-attended symposium at Amsterdam's Veem House. The occasion was the essay published in book form by Renée Steenbergen, who also published articles on this site. At the event, co-organised by Veem and Platform Beeldende Kunst, many makers were...
The 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off on 25 January. Four questions to the artistic director on the course set.
Nice message from the Theatre and Concert Visit Promotion Foundation: last year, we went out again quite often after the lockdowns, and also gave each other a unique experience as a gift quite often. 138,000 stage visits were gifted. That earned the SPTC a nice 6.6 million. That means the Pokadoka (Podium Gift Card) included an average gift of 48 euros....
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