ACTUAL
All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
'I have all of Shakespeare's records in my cupboard'
The press presentation of the open-air opera Orfeo ed Eurydice at Soestdijk at the time attracted just under a hundred people press and sponsors. At the presentation of the performance 'Much ado about nothing', The Utrecht Games attracted only a handful: someone from weblog cultuurpodium.nl, two people from the Stadsblad Utrecht and an indeterminate camera crew who had come exclusively for Suzan Visser....
Dodo Holland Festival journal becomes Dodo Holland Festival Hangout #HF12
We've already had one episode on it, and it was obviously a huge success, but right at the climax you have to start something new. That's why tonight at 22:30 we have a new thing: The Dodo Holland Festival Hangout. Live, interactive and online. Innovative, in other words, as you know it from us. You know them: those reporter trucks with metres of spaghetti...
Actors' award for Theatre Institute threatened with dissolution
Mail from Actors' Interests, the actors' 'union'. Whether we want to abide by the embargo. Of course we do. We do. Butreh: so the Theatre Institute Netherlands, to be dissolved by Halbe Zijlstra together with the Netherlands Music Centre, is getting an award. And that seems to be a sculpture, which in turn makes us wonder where the thing should be after 1 January 2013....
The Dodo goes out of its way to tell you all about the Holland Festival 2012 #hf12
Top theatre from all corners of the world, big names we had never dared hope for, and a newsreel that we will broadcast at unexpected times. Festival day newspaper The Dodo, now a household name in festival land, is going all out at this year's Holland Festival. Of course. It is the dream of every blogger, professional or amateur, to be at the performances of the...
Live from 11am: What remains of the arts? Culture Council pronounces verdict.
200 million less, half out at the basic infrastructure of the arts in the netherlands. what remains, how does the field react. Follow it here. advice council for culture... You can log in now to continue reading! Welcome to the Cultuurpers archive! As a member, you have access to all, more than 4,000 posts we have published since our inception in...
Cultural Press Agency reinvents itself
What Rabobank can do, we can do too, thought the journalists of the Cultural Press Agency: working together in a cooperative association. In June, the new form for the news agency will become a reality. This will increase our clout and boost our innovative capacity. The Cultural Press Agency Foundation received time and money from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in 2010 and 2011 to...
Soul Seek is the world's first internet opera. With a nod to Mulholland Drive.
"For me, opera is much more than just music," says Israeli director Sjaron Minailo. "It may sound a bit pompous, but my internet opera is completely in the tradition of Richard Wagner. Soul Seek is really a multimedia gesamtkunstwerk, in which fashion, web design and digital media, play, cinema, theatre, dance and experimental music merge into one. Without one element...
Still 8.5 million needed to get Culture Card back to old level
The culture card has been saved. This is wonderful news, so soon after the rock-hard slap in the face of the schoolgoing youth of the Netherlands that the now outgoing cabinet dealt in 2011. On improper grounds, as the Court of Audit revealed, the negotiators of PVV, CDA and VVD already scrapped during the formation this opportunity for schoolchildren to gain knowledge at steeply discounted...
Fragmentary first choreography by artist Martin Creed is non-committal, sketchy and lacks tension
"We've been working on some songs and dances," says visual artist Martin Creed, assisted by his five-piece band and five ballet dancers. In his fragmentary performance, Creed explores the relationships between the five basic positions from classical ballet, the bouncy off-beat rhythms of his post-rock band, and Creed's own video art. This is his first choreography and it shows. "Works No....
Portuguese Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz make language move and their movements speak
You have those performances that remarkably simply and unobtrusively drag you into a world completely your own. Performances in which everything is recognisable. Words, movement, scenery. Everything equally familiar and homely. But then there is a tap against it. Patterns blur. Language is at odds. Everything rattles and drifts. And yet it makes sense. To your eyes and ears...
In volatile and agonisingly slow "Untried Untested", childlike wonder at the laws of nature remains too distant
What is gravity? What is air? What is breath? In Untried Untested by choreographer Kate McIntosh, four women explore the magical workings of nature using simple means. They are armed with dozens of black balloons, a tangle of ship's rope, a handful of feathers, a few bags of potatoes, wind machines and fluorescent lights, a playground made of wrapping paper. And their own bodies. Unfortunately, that wonder remains...
'More room for proven talent'
Historical material, shall we call it. The letter from Halbe Zijlstra, outgoing State Secretary for Culture, and Uri Rosenthal, the equally outgoing Foreign Minister on the international cultural policy of populist Holland. As cold and matter-of-fact as the fallen Rutte government dealt with culture, so is the formulation of cultural policy in an international perspective, according to the...
Pure camp with tremendous theatrical intelligence in (M)IMOSA, in which four flamboyant drag queens vie for attention
Maniacally, she gallops across the stage, stomping like Michael Flatley on crack. Gravely thin and bare-chested, Marlene Monteiro Freitas tap-dances around. She squeezes her tits and pulls handfuls of (fake) hair from her scalp. "My name is Mimosa Ferrara," she panted menacingly, as her black leggings sag off her ass and linger just above the pubic area....
The Cultural Press Bureau goes full steam ahead for ten days with The Dodo at Springdance
It may be a crisis and the cultural winds may also be blowing from the wrong right corner, but that doesn't stop The Dodo from flying. The festival day newspaper we launched two years ago as a new commercial product is ready for another 10 days of Springdance. We're going to review a lot of performances, and compare even more. And we're going to make a journal. It...
'Sometimes the desire not to be seen turns into an excess of exhibitionism.' - Yasmeen Godder on The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act
She has been busy. Highly pregnant, Yasmeen Godder (Jerusalem, 1973) worked on her first choreography for Batsheva Dance Company. In a month, she stomped out her new performance The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act under the wings of Batsheva, and in between gave birth to a healthy daughter. scenefoto For the third time, Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder is presenting her...
EYE on the IJ - a spaceship with allure
Tonight the queen may officially open the new home of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, last night director Sandra den Hamer did it herself in advance at an opening party for relations. In doing so, she spoke of a historic moment for film culture in the Netherlands. Seen from a distance, the building, conveniently referred to as "the new film museum", is most reminiscent of a...
Too full or not too full at subsidy theatre
Hein Janssen (Volkskrant) wrote a column in response to a couple of performances with BN stars in the subsidised circuit in which he argued that subsidy was not meant for that. The association for actors thought this was reason enough for a debate. We made a short film to go with it. We formatted it in storify, a feature that allows you to put tweets and other social media messages together and...
Their carnival is already more fun, too. Brazilian arts budget grows by 10% a year.
Brazil has 10% more to spend on arts, sports and entertainment every year, plus an extra 600 million this year. street art in Brazil If we in the Netherlands ever start growing the economy again, we can choose between the Chinese and Brazilian models. In China, growth goes mainly to puissant wealthy entrepreneurs, and wealthier citizens buy en masse...
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