All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Failing directors stay put, the Supervisory Board disqualifies itself. No other conclusion is possible after reading the counter-expertise commissioned by the province of Overijssel and carried out by Berenschot. The provincial millions intended to make the orchestra subsidy-independent have not only evaporated, but show a negative balance in every aspect. Every estimate was too optimistic,...
In de Amsterdamse Brakke Grond opende gisteren het Dancing on the Edge festival (DOTE) met een avond die gelijk toonde wat de spanbreedte is. De eerste voorstelling, Blank, ging een directe relatie aan met het publiek. In de tweede, en officiële openingsvoorstelling, Plastic, ging het meer over de dynamiek tussen de performers onderling en met de soundscape. Met haar openingsspeech…
Terezín, 1944. In the most deplorable conditions imaginable, Victor Ullmann completes the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. The camp authorities forbid a first performance after a few rehearsals. The unmistakable allegory on Hitler and his downfall leads to one of the rare forms of censorship in the camp, which the Nazis showed as an example to the Red Cross....
In the wings of Nederlands Dans Theater, the new generation of dance makers is ready. Medhi Walerski and Johan Inger are both former dancers of the company and have previously created pieces there. In NDT2's Shearing the Wolves programme, they each surprise with a world premiere full of intense, pure dance. In comparison, an older work by house choreographers Sol Léon and...
Unemployment is rife in Tunisia. Young men there now clean plastic from the streets and beaches, as a heavily underpaid job. It led theatre-maker Meher Debbich to a surprising insight: 'Old ideas are like plastic. They don't decay. They have to be disposed of, for recycling. Otherwise we will perish in them.' He tells me about this in the interview below
Virtual reality will be the new hype next year, we are promised. A sneak preview could already be enjoyed at an Amsterdam pop-up cinema.
Next week sees the start of festival Dancing on the Edge. Unlike its name suggests, this festival, with performances in The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam, is not only about dance, but also about film, theatre and politics. The 'Edge' it is about, the festival looks for in its theme: an urgent artistic dialogue with the Middle East. More needed now than...
Apetrots they are, the MPs Jacques Monasch, Jasper van Dijk, Mona Keijzer and Alexander Pechtold. After all, they saved a youth theatre company and managed to add a few festivals to the basic cultural infrastructure of the Netherlands. In addition, they have also already earmarked an amount for some other festivals. Yesterday, the motions from the June debate were put to a vote. Almost...
KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival 2015 at EYE aims to introduce a wide audience to the international vanguard of animation film.
Het gebeurt niet vaak dat een film over een gebeurtenis in 1992 zo schrijnend actueel is. Toen stak een groep van zo’n driehonderd rechts-radikalen in Rostock een asielzoekerscentrum in brand. Wonder boven wonder is toen niemand overleden. Maar het tekende wel velen voor het leven. Onder meer de regisseur van Wir Sind Jung, Wir Sind Stark. Filmmaker en zoon van…
10 years ago, it all started. A group of recent graduates of Leiden University found that their dear Alma Mater [hints]Latin for nurturing or caring mother. Alma mater refers to the university or sometimes the school where someone received their education. In ancient Rome, the term Alma Mater was used for the mother goddess; in the Middle Ages, Alma Mater referred to...
Al maanden gaat het nieuws over weinig anders dan vluchtelingen en asielzoekers, en raken voor- en tegenstanders van hun opvang steeds meer gepolariseerd. Een situatie die sterk doet denken aan de thematiek in de roman De ontelbaren van Elvis Peeters uit 2006. De sfeer in de landen waar vluchtelingen – ‘gelukzoekers’ volgens sommigen – hun toevlucht zoeken, wordt steeds grimmiger. Ook in ons…
Het Cinekid kinderfilmfestival maakte donderdag de winnaars bekend. De levensechte Franse tienerfilm Le Nouveau werd dubbel bekroond.
In 1985, Unsuk Chin (Seoul 1961) won the Gaudeamus Music Prize with Spektra for three cellos, six years later she made her breakthrough with her Akrostichon-Wortspiel for soprano and ensemble composed for the Nieuw Ensemble. In 2004, she won the Grawemeyer Award, the world's most prestigious music prize; in 2007, she made a deep impression with her opera Alice in Wonderland. Tomorrow, Thursday 22 October.
As I wrote in my earlier article about the Nederlandse Dansdagen, choreographer Loïc Perela won this year's Nederlandse Dansdagen Maastricht Prize. It earned him 12,000 euros to put into his new project HASHTAG. The award has helped some previous winners on their way (Monique Duurvoort, Joost Vrouenraets, Erik Kaiel, Muhanad Rasheed, Joeri Dubbe,...
The India Dance Festival received just a little less attention from the national media this weekend than the Amsterdam Dance Event. Something that theatre director Leo Spreksel of The Hague-based Korzo Theatre was a bit worried about on Sunday. Because for three days now, his halls have been so muddy that he even turned away visitors who came all the way from Switzerland....
Even leek het er vrijdag 16 oktober op dat Leila Josefowicz een toegift zou geven, maar die bleef uit. Het publiek in het uitverkochte Concertgebouw had haar minutenlang toegejuicht voor haar fenomenale vertolking van Scheherazade.2, het tweede vioolconcert (of derde, als je Dharma at Big Sur voor zessnarige elektrische viool en orkest meerekent) van John Adams, die zelf het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest…
29th Cinekid children's film festival opens with new television drama for youngsters. In the Medialab, children can make their own VR glasses and do virtual bungy jumping.
Selfies from the Golden Age. The Mauritshuis gives this subtitle with a wink to its new exhibition Dutch self-portraits. With it, the museum seeks a new connection between 17th-century art and today's world. And that attempt has succeeded, thanks in part to the ingenious exhibition design by Jelena Stefanovic of Studio OTW. Since the 2012-2014 renovation and expansion, the...
At the Gala van het Nederlands Theater, she won the Colombina 2015 for best female contributing role, in Genesis. From this week, Antoinette Jelgersma, actress with the Nationale Toneel, plays in Ronald Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon. From biblical history to life anno now - but there are more similarities than you might think. Jelgersma sits relaxed
From today, the documentary performance Tagfish tours the Netherlands. The Belgian theatre collective Berlin has been making finely crafted theatre installations since 2004, playing on the border of documentary and fiction, television and theatre, current affairs and eternity. Tagfish is ostensibly about the perils surrounding the redevelopment of a piece of wasteland near Essen. Die Zeche Zollverein already had a monumental...
OPERA2DAY presents the world premiere of Mariken in de tuin der lusten at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague on 11 October. An opera with the collaboration of an impressive list of artists, including composer Calliope Tsoupaki, Asko|Schönberg and actress Hannah Hoekstra as Mariken. But will you achieve success with an opera, with modern-classical music moreover and Middle Dutch text? Director and creator Serge van Veggel...
On Thursday 8 October, I saw a live performance of Verdi's opera Il trovatore at Amsterdam's Muziektheater for the first time. It was not an unmixed pleasure. During the first two acts, The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Opera Chorus and the soloists were so out of sync that I considered leaving at the interval. A good friend...
In a few thousand years, archaeologists will find a bizarre concrete sculpture in sediment layers at the bottom of the future European Sea. Round, organic shapes, a square box with ready-made chambers, pipes, and a relief in the soil. Totally different from the concrete boxes they found before. Unknowingly, they will rediscover the mystery of the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie. The...
The first weekend of October saw the Netherlands Dance Days (NDD) take place in Maastricht. As Ruben Brugman reported, important prizes for the dance world are awarded there. But the Dance Days seem mainly meant to promote Dutch dance, more than to be a critical evaluation or artistic boost. At the Dance Days, no pithy speech on the State of Dance as...
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