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If humanity goes extinct, there has been a woman somewhere who was the last not to have a child. To whom does that honour belong? At the Holland Festival, an ensemble of 12 performers now perform a requiem for that last non-mother. Actress and singer Joy Wielkens is the extraordinarily disarming high priestess in this at times quite heavy evening, in which the end of...
It shows either enormous guts, or boundless naivety, to make a musical in which a slave trader in Africa is converted by a song to a life of love and respect for fellow human beings. Yet Yemandja, the play that was performed in a setless performance at the Holland Festival, is actually just that. I could also explain...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: international solidarity. When Hans van Manen does want to receive Russians Scene 1. White House lawn On the lawn in front of the White House, first lady Pat Nixon1 walks past the assembled choirs singing to her. Suddenly, during a silent moment, the...
With a fine, precise pen, Israeli Zeruya Shalev (63) writes about human relationships. Her new novel Lot is about what binds and drives loved ones apart, and about the different faces of grief. Sentences that want to be written For some writers, a book begins with an image, a pressing question or a character that presents itself. For Zeruya Shalev, a...
"You know, I am just a little man, I want to introduce you my wife," France's Abd al Malik told the Holland Festival audience. Right he was, as his Moroccan wife Wallen was undoubtedly one of the queens of the French R&B world from 2001 to 2008. This set the tone, as the acclaimed singer shone 18...
What does trauma do to people? A lot, I can say now, after hearing and especially seeing Le Moindre Geste at the Holland Festival. The performance is very special in its conception, and for that reason alone beautiful to experience, and confronting, for both the amateurs who performed it, and the fans who watched it. Le Moindre Geste can be...
(What preceded. In the previous chapter, I thought back to my father. Who sought support from a predecessor of today's Cultuurconnectie to set up a creativity centre. And how he himself later downsized an arts centre precisely. Most municipalities now focus on cultural education in education, not on individual amateurs. What is the best model? And can you...
My father had received a visit from Amsterdam. It was a gentleman from the Association for Creativity Development VCO. He came to advise on how to set up a creativity centre and how to apply for a subsidy from the municipality. Goldsmithing was my father's hobby - secretly the profession he had hoped for as a boy - and in our...
Benin singer Zeynab Abib had some making up to do. And she did. As a guest artist in the opening performance of the Holland Festival last week, she performed in the limelight with Holland Festival associate artist Angélique Kidjo, but didn't quite pan out. This time, not in the big Carré but in the more intimate Great Hall
How do you play a rainforest? I was once told that the rainforest makes deafening noise especially at night. On 7 June, I got to hear the same thing in the installation Altamira 2042, thanks to the Holland Festival. In that performance, Brazilian artist cum documentary filmmaker Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha managed to make the sound of the tropics tangible. In a...
It's quite something, what Sami Yusuf brings to the stage: his own accompanying group of seasoned pros, the heavenly voices of Cappella Amsterdam and the traditionally Mediterranean sounds of the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra. Together, this results in a sound experience that moves from calm ponds with a gurgling fountain, to dry steppes winds, raging seas and overwhelming mountains. There could effortlessly be a...
The Turfsteker rejected The mayor was angry. The councillor was angry. Everyone was angry because the A municipality wanted to put up a work of art by a locally highly regarded sculptor as a tribute to the peat cutter, but was denied a grant by the province. The Cultural Council had advised negatively. The relevant advisory committee lamented the artist's figurative work; it left nothing to...
'My show touches, incites self-reflection and is already getting quite a lot of press attention; a substantive review was unfortunately not among them until now. After all, what reviewer comes to see a wildly unknown 58-year-old debutant?' Rata Kloppenburg- theatre maker, cabaret artist & cellist- immediately bursts out at her table in Zwolle. While I have yet to ask a question...
Yemi Alade. What a woman. Never heard of her until 3 June, the opening of the Holland Festival's anniversary edition. She was one of the guests of Angelique Kidjo, the Benin-born African singer who is one of the two associate artists of the country's most prestigious festival this year. And Yemi Alade, star from Nigeria, threw her full...
'We met only pleasant, committed people with their hearts in the right place for Rotterdam culture.' So reads the last sentence of a report by Utrecht-based consultancy Rijnconsult on the future of Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council (RRKC). Based on that study, alderman Said Kasmi (D66) decided this week to replace the RRKC from 1...
In the beautiful but overcrowded office of the director of Kunstuitleen SBK Amsterdam, on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, paintings, etchings, gouaches, photographs were everywhere against the wall. And ceramics too. At the meeting table, the entire board of the Federatie Kunst Uitleen (FKU) with whom I had come to meet as intended external chairman. I walked, enthusiastically shaking everyone's hand, around the...
Today in Trouw a few useful tips to culture bringers. They are responses to the reader question from a few days back, about why the halls remain empty in our museums, concert halls and theatres. Five responses are included, and each one is excellent. They also show something, and that is that the eagerness, with which the halls are vacated by the directors...
In the French-speaking world, everyone has read l'Étranger (The Foreigner) by Albert Camus. The 1942 book, which many Dutch people have also read, if only because it is nice and thin for the French reading list, tells the story of a white French resident of Algeria, a so-called pied-noir, who is so convinced of the absurdity of life that he becomes a...
On Tuesday 31 May, the new ballet company The United Ukrainian Ballet was presented to the public at the old Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Ukrainian dancers who fled to the Netherlands have found a new home in this company under the direction of ballerina Igone de Jongh. When I walked into the conservatory before the presentation, I could immediately make out a crying Ukrainian girl...
Just for fun, name one literary or cultural classic Dutch work that you are sure people around you know about. And I mean a work, like a book or a play, that pops up every few years in the lists, on our stages, in our cinemas. Something that everyone, even now, is on...
Culture and Media State Secretary Gunay Uslu today presented her recovery plan for the cultural sector. Recovery, renewal and growth are central. This year, it involves €135 million structurally and then rises to an extra €170 million a year for culture. The future of the cultural and creative field has been under great pressure due to the corona crisis and is...
A hard but also sensitive novel is Like a stone in the stream by Mauro Corona (72), and a reflection of himself. On a daily basis, the Italian writer and visual artist becomes more and more like the hedgehog in his book, which eventually drops all its spines. 'I try to bring out more of the softness that is hidden somewhere inside,...
The Volkskrant on 18 May this year carried a scoop about strikes and drop-outs among technical staff at the country's largest company: ITA. In Trouw on the same day, the united theatre directors (VSCD) sounded the alarm about the lack of technicians. It is even so bad "that performances have to be cancelled". Two reasons in particular are cited: technicians have...
From now on, can we agree to replace all DJs with real drummers? I mean, what I witnessed at the premiere of Eros, Schweigman&'s latest project, was so overwhelming, I can't imagine I've ever gone out of my mind on a drum machine. Two living drummers, splashing and at the same time individually starring at the...
In Flanders, or rather in its cultural capital, Antwerp, the theatre sector is faltering. The Toneelhuis, founded in the late 1990s as a merger between the legendary Blauwe Maandag Compagnie and city company KNS, is in crisis after the departure of Guy Cassiers. It is now losing more than half of its grant after a scathing opinion. The Flemish government is stopping...
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