Featured posts
When the Rotterdam Theatre announced the programme for the year (2001) that the city would be European Capital of Culture, director Jan Zoet hosted it at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. In the ongoing 010-020 struggle, quite a statement. Zoet knew that the national press sat in the capital and was rarely willing to look outside the city limits. He also knew that...
Arrive in Groningen like a Van Gogh. Start at the monumental main train station and prepare for what awaits you at the Groninger Museum. A wonderful exhibition that is more than just Van Gogh and his art; it's a story about history, science and Groningen students' fascination with the tragic painter who changed the art culture...
"LKCA only partially meets the first condition: providing insight into the activities to be undertaken for the 2025-2028 grant period. The requested planning and budget are missing. The addendum gives a picture of which activities will be divested, but only partly clarifies how these activities will be secured elsewhere and how the acquired knowledge will be safeguarded." The...
The meeting room in the attic of the building on Brouwersgracht began to fill. Prior to the meeting, Director Geert Dales of the Fonds Beeldende Kunst, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst (BKVB) retreated with the chairman of the Fund Council. He wanted clarity on the role of that Fund Council by now. Where did the representatives of...
In the first version of Explore The North's new website, the builders had forgotten to mention in which city the festival would take place. This has since been remedied with a beautiful 'about us' page, so that even non-Leeuwaars know where to go. The production house cum festival is in the Basic Cultural Infrastructure from the next edition. That means that...
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.'
When I think of new music, I have never thought of fun. Rather, you think of seriousness, subtlety, taste to be acquired and listening experiences that you might later find ordinary. But not yet. So this year during November Music, I did laugh a lot. Not roaring (an occasional one), but simply, with happiness. While in the world...
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,...
"Strengthening earning capacity is a necessary condition to improve the labour market position of workers in the sector. Martin Verboom is happy to share what came out of the evaluation of the Cultural and Creative Sector Labour Market Agenda in this area. Platform ACCT is forging a coalition with partners in the sector to take up the priorities for the coming years." This was why...
After a morning debate in the Lower House, Cabinet Schoof's tactics are clear. At least, when it comes to the controversial plan to selectively increase VAT on culture. In response to all questions from the House about why, Finance Minister Eelco Heinen replied that it should not be about details, but a "total package". Therefore, he wants...
A piece of music in which the vocal soloist is given a tattoo in the last fifteen minutes, live on stage. In Laura Bowler's Advert, performed by Laura herself together with the Hamburg-based Decoder Ensemble, you can experience just that. Not unexpected when you realise that Bowler trained not only as a composer but also as a theatre maker. She studied after the conservatoire at the Royal...
The drum kit is pop music's most important instrument. German composer Enno Poppe, who grew up without pop music, has a fascination for percussion. A new work can be heard during November Music this year: Streik. Composed for 10 drums. I spoke to the 1969-born composer about this work and his inspiration. Listen to the podcast: What immediately...
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.'
Large spinning steel behemoths, mowing blades or relentless hands of a clock, which grind you as a human being if you don't duck, or jump, or roll away in time. There were two of them during Festival Circolo in Tilburg, this year, and it always impresses. It happened at Un Loup pour l'homme in the Spoorpark and at La Chute des Anges in...
"We all want to play, but labels sometimes make that difficult. Then you start doubting your qualities." Instead, Dutch and Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Miotto (45) wants to break down boundaries and make art accessible to everyone. On Thursday 24 October, his double performance 'Unpunished Youth x Poles' can be seen at Festival Circolo in Tilburg. Guilherme Miotto is more interested in what makes us...
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...
I remember it well, it was during a meeting of the magazine industry, sometime in 2012 or 2013. A grave mood hung in the Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, because the circulation and turnover figures of the major magazine publishers (plural at the time) had just been announced. The downward trend that had started years back had nothing to do with the crisis, but...
It is mouse-still in the studio auditorium of Korzo in The Hague. A few dozen spectators in the stands, a tangle of bodies on stage, shuffling, sighing and exerting their utmost strength, sliding, climbing and balancing on, over and under each other. Impressive, sensual too, this continuous movement that does not run from applause moment to applause moment, but rather lets you breathlessly follow how it...
Eye Filmmuseum turns the spotlight on the American avant-garde film of the 1960s this autumn. An explosion of form experiments in a turbulent era. A movement that still inspires.
The less real theatre is, the better it works. That insight dawned on me again this weekend, in Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. Twice, in fact. Friday with the reprise of Aluin's Twelfth Night, Saturday with Koning Krump, the masterpiece by Het Nut. Two Utrecht groups, once sprung from the same theatre school, and drunk in the same theatre cafe, where...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français