All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
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 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...
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...
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, led 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....
With the 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 who make 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...
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 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...
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
Hoe speel je een regenwoud? Ik heb me ooit laten vertellen dat het regenwoud vooral snachts oorverdovend lawaai maakt. Op 7 juni kreeg ik dat ook te horen in de installatie Altamira 2042, dankzij het Holland Festival. De Braziliaanse kunstenaar, annex documentairemaakster Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha wist in die voorstelling het geluid van de tropen voelbaar te maken. In een…
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 esteemed 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...
‘Wij hebben uitsluitend aangename, betrokken mensen ontmoet met het hart op de goede plek voor de Rotterdamse cultuur.’ Zo luidt de laatste zin van een rapport van het Utrechtse adviesbureau Rijnconsult over de toekomst van de Rotterdamse Raad voor Kunst en Cultuur (RRKC). Op basis van dat onderzoek heeft wethouder Said Kasmi (D66) deze week besloten de RRKC per 1…
Today in Trouw a few useful tips to culture bringers. They are responses to the reader question 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 het Franse taalgebied heeft iedereen l’Étranger (De Vreemdeling) van Albert Camus gelezen. Het boek uit 1942, dat veel Nederlanders ook hebben gelezen, al was het maar omdat het lekker dun is voor de leeslijst Frans, verhaalt over een witte Franse inwoner van Algerije, een zogenaamde pied-noir, die zo overtuigd is van de absurditeit van het leven dat hij een…
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...
For its 75th edition, the Holland Festival is teaming up with the Melkweg and club Lofi for some exciting evening and night programmes. On 3 and 24 June, the unpolished atmosphere of Lofi in the Westelijk Havengebied will allow for late-night partying, while on 20 June the Melkweg will be the place to be. During these three nights, co...
Is there a lost generation of young artists because of the corona crisis? That question crept up on the Culture Council early this year during interviews with nearly 40 starting artists and creatives about their experiences in corona time. It is well known that starting out as an artist was already no easy task even without lockdowns. But: "The picture from the interviews is more intense and worrisome
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...
It is obviously good news: the German federal culture minister is increasing the budget for culture by 148 million euros to 2.3 billion. At a time when cultural funding, especially in the 'developed West', has been steadily declining (since 2010), such an increase is of course wonderful. For the Dutch, who point out with some regularity how well the arts are doing in Germany: per head of...
KAZAL - Narrating Haitian Memories is a photo project that traces the memories of François Duvalier's dictatorship in Haiti by looking at the history of Kazal. This village north of Port-au-Prince, is the site of a traumatic event in the country's contemporary history that has been erased from official history: the Kazal massacre....
Asko|Schönberg premieres Mary Finsterer's new opera at the Holland Festival. Antarctica takes us into the mysterious world of the southern continent. A multidisciplinary performance in which the Australian composer links historical, mythical and scientific images and stories about Antarctica. In doing so, she uses an enchanting combination of musical elements from old and new styles....
Een harde, maar ook gevoelige roman is Als een steen in de stroom van Mauro Corona (72), en een weerspiegeling van hemzelf. De Italiaanse schrijver en beeldend kunstenaar wordt in het dagelijks steeds meer als de egel uit zijn boek, die uiteindelijk al zijn stekels laat vallen. ‘Ik probeer de zachtheid die ergens vanbinnen verstopt zit, meer naar buiten te…
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