All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
The Netherlands-Russia year is kicking off and what better way to start than with an exhibition dedicated to the most famous Russian of all time? At
Fransien van der Putt, dance expert from Culture Press, and Helen Westerik, film expert, attended the opening of Film Festival Cinedans and were amused, but not always by the programme.
The big story of the 2013 Oscars, of course, is how underdog Argo eventually surpassed initially-dead favourite Lincoln. When Sunday night Ben Affleck picked up the statuette for best film, he did so not as director but as producer. He wasn't even nominated for the Oscar for best director, and that comes with a film that...
It started with an email out of the blue. Artist Joncquil had Googled my website and was struck by the name. I myself had almost forgotten how I had ever come up with the name, Joy of Irony: a song by the legendary, highly underrated English noise/metal band Fudge Tunnel. Joncquil came to my site because of his expo at the time, Himmel und Joy. He had read some of my pieces and introduced himself. Maybe one day we could have coffee to talk a bit about art.
Thus it happened.
The Dutch Dance Audience Award 2012 was awarded on Saturday 9 February 2013 to the Belgian performance Et Après By Isabelle Beernaert. During the festive ceremony on the closing night of The Hague CaDance Festival, awards were also presented to
''You would think: women are emancipated. But people long for the clichés and prejudices about women from the 1950s again. If you dress super-feminine, you get whistled at like a dog. But how should
After more than four hours, it happens: emotion. Free Switzerland is bathed in golden sunlight and the choir swells over the most beautiful orchestral sounds Rossini composed. Unworldly sounds, which have little to do with the best-known sounds from Guillaume Tell - The canter from the overture.
200 military personnel and JunkieXL are expected to cause a spectacle on the A2 motorway near Utrecht on 13 April. The roof of the new tunnel trench will be the stage for a battle of medieval proportions, in which peace will be conquered by our army over something with a wall and 'war' on it.
Once upon a time, subsidised theatre was a left-wing hobby. Now, two years on, subsidised theatre has effortlessly conformed to the prevailing, much more right-wing trend.
UPDATE 17:45 Thanks to Dimitri van der Werf (in the comments) The composer in question does have to leave the country, but not because of this stunt, but because he did not fulfil his reporting obligation, which he
At 1 strip or 1,000 words blogger and columnist Peter Breedveld spoke to three influential illustrators, Barbara Stok, Peter van Dongen and Thé Tjong-Khing using projected images from their beautiful work. The relaxed conversation was a breath of fresh air among the other ferocious debating violence at the festival.
"We don't use social media because it's cool," says Tunisian internet activist Sami Ben Gharbia. "But in a dictatorship, it is the only way to inform people about what is really going on. To fight the demons in society. I am not a techny Became because it's fun. I just needed useful knowledge about internet codes, to improve my civic activism possible."
John de Mol is doing good business in the Arab world. He acts rather dismissively about this, according to Hassnae Bouazza. According to her, the television producer talks publicly mainly about the many restrictions on his formats because of Islam and the sentimentalism of TV in the Middle East in general. That De Mol's success number The Voice of Arabia during the final in
With a jam-packed programme like Writers Unlimited 2013, it sometimes happens that, even as a professional journalist, despite everything, you end up dropping in somewhere too late, and then just catching a glimpse of something really great. In this case, after the tour de force of Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis, was that Kenyan Ngwatilo Mawiyoo's spoken word performance. Mea culpa for that.
How many male genitals Yasmine Allas had weighed in her hand. For a while, that was the question during Writers Unlimited's most shameless programme to date. This latenight talk show addressed the question of how shameless writers actually dare to be these days. Kristien Hemmerechts, always good for a few firm statements, met her peers in
During the kick-off of Winternacht 1, publicist Bas Heijne brought the two literary giants Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis closer together. What remains of their former idealism? Oz's barrage of wonderful one-liners proved difficult to tame and made for a hilarious but somewhat unbalanced conversation.
Lebanese writer Hanaan al-Shaykh (Beirut, Lebanon, 1945) opened Wrtiters Unlimited on Thursday 17 January with a blazing argument against Arab culture of shame. This, according to the writer whose books The story of Zahra, Women between sky and sand, Beirut blues and Only in London have been translated into Dutch, so deep in
Writers Unlimited Special - One of the important guests at Writers Unlimited is Roland Colastica. This Curaçao author made his debut in 2012 with the children's book 'Fireworks in my head'. The book was enthusiastically received, and has since grown into a modest bestseller. Great strength of the story is its colourful and rhythmic style, but just as important is
As the government has killed the entire circuit of production houses and further education, seven theatres have jumped into the gap. They are joining forces to enable a number of 'young' makers to develop their work after all. By offering a number of performances in advance
No offensive prominent, well-known world citizen or tricky topic, but ordinary people play the leading role in the print that was awarded this year's Inkstspot Prize. The prize for the best political cartoon published in the national and regional press in the past year goes to
'Everseller' author Arthur Japin is to make a stage adaptation of his novel Vaslav, about the legendary Russian dancer Nijinksi. He is making the adaptation at the request of theatre patron Joop van den Ende, who is a big fan of the book. The theatre production goes into
We received this via Facebook: "During the night of Friday 11 to Saturday 12 January at 1.30am, a group of about seven young men destroyed a large canvas hanging on the facade of Theatre Kikker on the Ganzenmarkt in Utrecht. The canvas, which
Some artists age beautifully. Johnny Cash aged beautifully, Bruce Springsteen remains young in an absurd way and all members of the Rolling Stones turned into convincing zombies after their unnoticed deaths in the seventies
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