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‘We zijn gewend om in uitersten te denken. Het is nog de enige manier om gehoord te worden. Luide actie is het enige wat nog telt, lijkt het. We moeten er daarom op blijven letten dat we nieuwsgierig blijven naar waar die actie vandaan komt, welke wens er leeft. Die persoonlijke aandacht is nodig, om onder dat actievoeren te kruipen…
Let's start yesterday with a fundamental dialogue with the entire arts sector, using the vitality and creativity of the arts as inspiration, both for the sector itself and for society as a whole. Our sector talking, thinking, participating, deciding! in good times and in bad times. Never be silent again ...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: providence for artists. The office at Noordeinde in The Hague. At the meeting table, all board members had a fixed place. At that spot was a packet of cigarettes of the right brand ready for everyone. The meetings started at the stroke of two o'clock. Around half past...
A dance concert with a standing audience promises to be something new. Because how often does it happen that in the audience, whipped up by music and dance, you have to sit on your hands. This sounds like the outcome! We get to watch and move ourselves to Krautrock, mixed with trance-like repetitive parts. Lisbeth Gruwez and Maarten van Cauwenberghe invite us...
Amare hosted for the first time the final performances of one of the new residents of The Hague's cultural colossus: the dance department of the Royal Conservatoire. What stands out. The pandemic over Last year, in the old conservatory, a maximum of 50 visitors could attend the final performance, with mouth caps on and with two chairs away from each other. The new dance theatre in Amare...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: media art. Aan het Haagse Spui It were tough negotiations. The battle for the meter cupboard symbolised that. The chairman of the Hague Filmhuis, a former alderman, went hard at it. And the board of the World Wide Video Centre & Festival...
Expectations are high for Stations, the latest work by dancer and choreographer Louise Lecavalier. She has been a household name in the dance world for decades, first as dancer and muse of Edouard Lockes La La La Human Steps, and since 2006 with her own Fou Glorieux. Her intensity and athletic abilities are impressive, she terrifies the limits of her body. Also.
Nice scoop from the Noord Hollands Dagblad today. Rick Engelkes, the perpetually wobbly soap opera actor who learnt the trade as a successful producer at Joop van den Ende, devised a musical that was never performed because of coronasteun. It earned him millions. Read the story here. Tl;dr: Engelkes announced in 2020 that he was working on a musical to...
There has been quite a lot going on around Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council recently. For instance, based on a ramshackle investigation, to say the least, the alderman had rather bluntly decided to abolish the independent advisory body. It is too self-serving for his officials. His decision was debated at length at a City Council meeting in late June. Redundant debate...
Voguing and religion in Yishun is Burning at Julidans Joke: A policeman from the US says he once got three armed drug dealers in handcuffs at the same time. A firefighter from England brags that he rescued 10 people from a burning flat. A Singaporean says he lives in Yishun. Everyone claps for the Singaporean. Yishun is the dystopian suburb...
Seven new, very different animated films coming to cinemas this summer showcase the richness and power of this genre.
It was announced today that the great theatre innovator Peter Brook has died. He was 97 years old. In those years, he became one of the world's most influential directors and theatre innovators. He sought world-wide stories and told them through actors who were as diverse as the stories he told. I visited his theatre a few times,...
"Miss, please give me the minister!". Henk Vonhoff's voice sounded as commanding as it was eloquent as he addressed his secretary over the intercom. Vonhoff was commissioner of the Queen in Groningen, but also chairman of the supervisory committee of the Groningen State University of Applied Sciences, the only college still directly under the minister. We, faculty directors, were at... for the umpteenth time.
Actually, it was too bad to persevere. Perhaps I should indeed have followed my impulse to walk away hard, but I stayed with Kein Licht. Indeed, this play, written by Elfriede Jelinek, composed by Philippe Manoury and directed by Nicolas Stemann, was technically quite good. Only that little dog, I so did not like that. Animals and...
4 million Dutch people have a brain disorder. The Brain Foundation comes up with that figure in a campaign to make people more aware of the consequences of brain injury. Often that injury leads to extreme sensitivity to stimuli. Then loud noise, bright light or sharp smell is suddenly a big problem. People affected by these can find it difficult to go outside. That is why ...
When he was appointed chairman of Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council in December 2021, nothing seemed wrong. But less than six months later, he is virtually on the street now that Arts alderman Said Kasmi (D66) has decided to disband the Rotterdam advisory council. After 17 years. Gonçalves is baffled, certainly...
There is at least one reason to go see Porca Miseria, Trajal Harrell's latest work. The Holland Festival hosts the American choreographer best known for his Vogueing work this weekend, and the soundtrack to his trilogy is nothing short of stunning. Starting with Willie Nelson and ending with the Lamento della Nimfa with which Claudio Monteverdi...
Moby Dick; or, The Whale is the latest gesammtkunstwerk by artist collective Moved By The Motion, Schauspielhaus Zürig and Wu Tsang. Her adaptation of the great American classic as layered as the book. Where Herman Melville uses accounts, scholarly sources and monologues, Tsang deploys film and music. In a collage of theatrical performance, dance, found footage, animation and documentation nature footage,...
On the day a group of Dutch climate scientists announce that we are not going to make 'Paris', A Play for the living in a time of extinction premieres. How do you make a play about the biggest crisis threatening us? How do you make sure you keep making theatre and not agitprop? Or maybe it's not so bad at all....
Als de mensheid uitsterft is er ergens een vrouw geweest die als laatste geen kind meer heeft gekregen. Aan wie die eer? In het Holland Festival brengt een ensemble van twaalf performers nu een requiem voor die laatste niet-moeder. Actrice en zangeres Joy Wielkens is de buitengewoon ontwapenende hogepriesteres in deze bij tijden best zware avond, waarin het einde der…
Het getuigt of van enorm lef, of van grenzeloze naïviteit, om een musical te maken waarin een slavenhandelaar in Afrika door een liedje bekeerd wordt tot een leven in liefde en respect voor de medemens. Toch is Yemandja, het stuk dat in een decorloze uitvoering werd gebracht in het Holland Festival, eigenlijk precies dat. Ik zou het ook kunnen uitleggen…
In de serie In Perspectief kijkt Erik Akkermans terug en vooruit naar ontwikkelingen in cultuurbeleid en -praktijk. Vandaag: internationale solidariteit. Als Hans van Manen wél Russen wil ontvangen Scène 1. Gazon van het Witte Huis Op het gazon voor het Witte Huis loopt presidentsvrouw Pat Nixon1 langs de opgestelde zangkoren die haar toezingen. Plotseling, tijdens een stil moment, verheft zich…
Met een fijne, precieze pen schrijft de Israëlische Zeruya Shalev (63) over menselijke relaties. Haar nieuwe roman Lot gaat over wat dierbaren bindt en uit elkaar drijft, en over de verschillende gezichten van rouw. Zinnen die geschreven willen worden Voor sommige schrijvers begint een boek met een beeld, een prangende vraag of een personage dat zich aandient. Voor Zeruya Shalev, een…
"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...
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