An animation summer with unexpectedly rich harvest - what makes this genre so versatile?
Seven new, very different animated films coming to cinemas this summer showcase the richness and power of this genre.
ACTUAL
All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Peter Brook died. He gave theatre the ability to be universal
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,...
IN PERSPECTIVE 5 - From order and power to student and power - On mergers and discomfort in arts education
"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.
Perhaps we are all ready for low-incentive art
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 ...
Carlos Gonçalves (Rotterdam Arts and Culture Council): 'According to the alderman, we have committed mortal sins.'
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...
Incidents of cross-border behaviour just tip of the iceberg
Cross-border behaviour in the culture and media sector is a persistent and urgent problem that cannot be solved easily. The rising number of reports in recent times shows only the tip of the iceberg. So says the advisory report 'Across the border, towards a shared culture', which the Council for Culture today presented to state secretary Gunay...
Turning against the dying of the light at the direction of Katie Mitchell #HF22
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...
Yemandja, in setless version, is very much neatly American though.
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 PERSPECTIVE #4: International solidarity.
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...
Filter Translation Prize 2022, the nominations: A wide & utterly surprising choice
Various continents, at least three world languages and some seven centuries cover the unexpected nominations for the Filter Translation Prize 2022, which will be awarded on 28 September during the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU). They are all striking and exceptional achievements, according to the jury, which also scoured the world for scents and forgotten languages. And it hangs...
Official Jury selection 2022 has been announced!
From Thursday 1 to Sunday 11 September 2022, the Nederlands Theater Festival will show the finest productions of the past theatre season. The Netherlands Theatre Jury, headed by jury president Hadassah de Boer, selected the 12 most impressive theatre productions of the moment. Today, the jury announced its selection. Ten of the twelve productions from the selection can be seen during the upcoming edition of the festival....
THEATRE AND DANCE COLLECTIVE LABOUR AGREEMENT DECLARED UNIVERSALLY BINDING
With its publication in the Government Gazette of 8 June 2022, the collective labour agreement for theatre and dance 2022-2023 has been declared universally binding (AVV). This means that all professional Dutch producers producing theatre and/or dance performances must apply this collective labour agreement for their staff. CLA parties Nederlandse Associatie voor Podiumkunsten (NAPK) and Kunstenbond applied for the AVV to regulate working conditions for the entire theatre and...
Amsterdam Museum seeks makers for second edition of Refresh Amsterdam
The Amsterdam Museum is calling on makers and artists to submit a proposal on the theme of War & Conflict. The selected proposals will be presented, among others, in the second edition of the exhibition Refresh Amsterdam, from May to October 2023 at the Amsterdam Museum on the Amstel. The second edition of Refresh Amsterdam is about the impact...
Holland Festival cancels opera production The Murder of Halit Yozgat
Holland Festival has been forced to cancel the opera production The Murder of Halit Yozgat, which was to be played on 15 and 16 June at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The cancellation is caused by an outbreak of Covid in the Holland Festival's technical team preparing and creating the production. Audiences will receive from the Holland...
Moving during Bolojo star Zeynab Abib's performance at Holland Festival
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
Altamira 2042 makes you realise how powerless we are against the madness of progress. #whereisdomphillips #whereisbrunopereira #hf22
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...
Sami Yusuf overwhelms packed Concertgebouw with cinematic music spectacle
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...
In Perspective - A good council for Rotterdam?
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...
What reviewer comes to see a wildly unknown 58-year-old debutant?
'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...
Holland Festival opens with Queen Angelique Kidjo's African dance party #HF22
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...
Rotterdam culture alderman tells independent advisory body off. Based on biased investigation.
'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...
The cultural sector would do well to listen a little better to the audiences that are now staying away.
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...
A new look at Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece may not use a word from that masterpiece.
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...
Emotions at the launch of the new United Ukrainian Ballet in The Hague
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...
SPECIAL! Holland Festival 2022 shows us how indifferent we are about the past #hf22
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...
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