All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Being active on social media like Facebook or Twitter is now a must for any dance company. But broadcasting a dance performance (live) via 600 cinemas worldwide is no mean feat either. NDT (The Hague) has been chosen by Pathé theatres to join the illustrious list of The Metropolitan Opera (New York), The National Theatre (London) and the Bolshoi Ballet (Moscow) as a partner in high-level performing arts.
The music of Eefje de Visser comes in. In the silence of the theatre even more so than in clubs, where enthusiastic fans sing along to her words out loud. One spotlight and her guitar, that's all this 26-year-old singer-songwriter needs to touch the room. I see tears, gazes of love and attempts at seated dancing during the official premiere of her theatre tour in the Melkweg.
They were almost thrown away: George Tsypin's immense sets for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Not because his staging was unsuccessful or would have become obsolete by now, but simply because the storage was too hefty a cost for the Netherlands Opera.
In John Appel's new documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place features survivors of the shooting on the Norwegian island of Utoya and the preceding bombing, which killed 77 people.
If the Netherlands consistently sticks to previously adopted PVV positions, the second chamber will say 'No' to a European investment in culture, innovation and media on 21 November 2012. However, if the current Rutte government sticks to the pro-European stance included in the coalition agreement, the Netherlands will cease its opposition to the 1.8 billion euro contribution to strengthening culture, which has now been approved by all other European member states.
We too retweeted it: "Germany increases culture subsidy by 100 million". And we thus fed a half-truth. That half-truth is, that Germany is a heaven for culture lovers, a haven for people fed up with the chilly austerity of the Rutte governments. Germany may seem nice, but, As Volkskrant correspondent Merlijn Schoonenboom noted in March this year, cuts are being made there at least as hard as here.
The experimental hip-hop / noise band Death Grips plays frothy twang noise. But very exciting, interesting branch noise with paranoid, surreal lyrics. Live, it was a breath of fresh air. In their concert in Bittersweet (presented by Paradiso), vocalist MC Ride (Stefan Burnett) and drummer Zach Hill unleash a 20-minute hurricane of breathtaking fury.
Classical music on television always has something boring about it. Often a short introduction by a neat gentleman or lady, followed by the concert itself. Close-ups of the conductor and soloist, a longshot of the entire orchestra and applause afterwards. As if the medium is trying to emulate concert hall etiquette as scrupulously as possible. Even the webstreams that more and more large orchestras are increasingly turning to barely deviate from this formula.
Dance and music belong together. Yet there is always something new to discover in this combination. The Amsterdam Cello Biennale invited dance group LeineRoebana to create a dance and music performance with cellist Jakob Koranyi and CvA Percussion to music by composer Tan Dun: 'Snow in June'. In recent years, LeineRoebana has shown like no other group how enriching unconventional combinations between dance and music can be.
There it is: the coalition agreement of the new cabinet of the man who previously managed to associate the terms 'subisidy slave' and 'empty halls' with the fine arts. The tone is different now, and we owe that to the input of the PvdA, just as earlier we apparently owed the sneering tone to Martin Bosma's PVV.
It is rare for the same film to receive both jury and (children's) audience awards at the Cinekid festival. But about the subtle and sparkling French animated film Ernest et Célestine everyone agreed this time. This story based on picture books by Belgian illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, who died in 2000, won a double award, making it this year's big winner. Ernest and Célestine are a bear and a mouse who have to find that their friendship is poorly understood in the bear and mouse world.
The Literary Museum, with its 'Double Thinker' exhibition on the life and work of Marten Toonder the essence of Toonder's art.
The Netherlands' most striking company when it comes to handling grant money has been saved. The Theatre newspaper reports that the central government has agreed to the new adjusted budget, which had to be prepared after earlier this year a loss of over 2 million euros had arisen. So the company keeps the one and a half million euros and artistic director Jos Thie and his business partner Jelle Snijder are chased out of the city with pitch and feathers, where they can join the Supervisory Board that had already turned a little too blind eye. After all, putting in an overpriced production to make up for the deficit from an earlier run of that same overpriced production: no entrepreneur would ever allow that.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is investing time and money in improving cultural education in primary schools in the coming years. Through a combination of existing pots and money contributed by the state, municipalities and provinces, 41.5 million euros a year will be freed up for arts education in the coming years. And before every self-employed artist starts making plans now: that money will mainly go towards research and procedures, with the most concrete goal being: 'the development of a curriculum for cultural education'.
The feature-length French animated film is on the rise. To emphasise this, Michel Ocelot, one of the pacesetters, has been invited as guest of honour by the Cinekid children's film festival. Tonight, he was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award, which he accepted with a modest protest. As an animation filmmaker, Michel Ocelot (1943) still considers himself an adolescent with much to discover.
The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.
PUNCH! is a fantastic festival. It shows how much beauty, news and surprise emerge when the line between dance and performance is dissolved. PUNCH! promotes a refreshing view of the world and shakes loose entrenched interpretations. The young dance makers and performers show tremendous originality and creativity that you will not only enjoy watching, you will go...
Theo Wesselo and Maxim Hartman made themselves immortal with their iconic TV show Rembo & Rembo. The two come closer together in their exhibition Sex Sells. Now on show at the Amsterdam gallery Friend of Bavink, until 12 October. Lucas van Eck and Daniel Bertina spoke to them, just before the opening...
Amsterdam, 8 October 2012 During the well-attended Classical Music Day at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ the prize winners of the competition for women composers were announced this afternoon. The day was organised for the 11th time by Music centre Netherlands (MCN), which will cease to exist on 1 January. Thanks to an anonymous bequest, explicitly intended for women composers, three prizes could be awarded.
Minister Bijsterveld of OCW is going to ask the country for advice. A so-called internet consultation was launched this week on her ministry's intention to abolish Cultural and Artistic Education for Havo and VWO pupils. 'The Field' can now respond, so we suggest you make your views, and especially your substantive arguments known to the ministry, via this link:
The big question was how many of those seven Golden Calf nominations Plan C would manage to cash in. To everyone's surprise, this petty crime comedy that attracted less than 7,000 visitors in cinemas had garnered even more nominations than
This week, the curtain officially fell on the Theatre Emabassy, a club of inspired people who had Dutch artists collaborate with artists in developing countries such as Honduras, Bhutan and Congo. The resulting performances were only sporadically seen in the Netherlands, but every now and then a project made a broad impression here too, such as a 'On Hope of Blessing', played by real fishermen, but from Mali.
The final applause after the premiere of Götterdämmerung stormy, is an understatement. It seemed as if the completely sold-out auditorium wanted to surpass the primal forces extracted from the Gelders Orkest by Ed Spanjaard. History was made here: on stage, by the soloists and choir, in the orchestra pit and behind the scenes, for six hours and 20 minutes.
The Film Academy can be satisfied. The two juries that handed out the three student awards at the Netherlands Film Festival on Monday night had also looked at graduation work from other Dutch academies with a film section. But in the end, all the lucky ones were students of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, as the Amsterdam programme is called in full. Magnesium again. The Tuschinski Award for best graduation film, this...
The crop of feature-length documentaries screened at the Netherlands Film Festival is good. They are extraordinary stories, sometimes startling, sometimes penetrating, sometimes fodder for much discussion, and almost all very beautifully filmed. We wish the jury much wisdom. The nominated documentary 'The Rules of Matthijs' is interesting for everyone, but should be compulsory reading for social workers,...
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