All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Cesc Gelabert Cesc Gelabert is a distinct figure in the world of modern dance. The Catalan with German roots makes a habit of keeping repertoire from the hot period of dance innovation alive, touring theatres and festivals with it for decades. So no Cinderella and Swan Lake for this engaging perfectionist, but dance steps from...
We gathered the cream of Dutch dance journalism for these ten days of dance innovation. Fransien van de Putt, well known in Belgium and the Netherlands, Maarten Baanders, well known in the wide surroundings of Leiden and Daniël Bertina, well known in the wide surroundings of Het Parool were ij the opening of Springdance and were actually happy with what they got to see. ...
The opening of Springdance was a beautiful, continuous movement, from left to right across the stage of Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg theatre. Before the performance, Wijbrand Schaap spoke to choreographer Guilherme Botelho about this special dance piece. ... 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...
Photo: Judith Zwikker Jens van Daele concludes his series of choreographies on the seven deadly sins with the performance Brides for Peace. The piece is based on the art performance Brides on Tour by Italian artists Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro. Hitchhiking and dressed in wedding dresses, with a text 'Peace' on their chests, they travelled from Milan to Jerusalem in 2008....
Rutger Hauer must be a happy man, and not just because he is receiving a career award tonight on the opening night of the 27th Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Imagine. Once drawn to America more or less on good luck, now one of the few Dutch film actors with a broad and still expanding and insanely varied international career. Blonde robot in Blade...
"Dear Mr Zijlstra, culture is an essential part of civilisation. It contributes to social cohesion and economic growth. The Dutch orchestras can make a major contribution, which, by the way, is not synonymous with everything just staying as it was." Unlike the 'Table of Six', the talking shop of six arts bobos who, in their enthusiasm about an entrance at...
She is a 'stand-up philosopher'. With that self-coined term, she created a new form of theatre, halfway between cabaret, a lecture and theatre. She plays with her own role, deploys actors as if they were puppets, but ultimately turns out to be their plaything, as good as that of fate. In short: Laura van Dolron is a case apart. She makes...
Gerlinde Sämann I am not a connoisseur of the performance practice of Bach's Johannes Passion and know that other piece, the Mattaheus Passion, mainly from a few TV excerpts and far-flung arrangements like the one at Platel's Pitié. So don't expect me to pass judgment on how good the version was, which was seen and heard at the Concertgebouw on 5 April 2011,...
We could say something derogatory about Belgians and arithmetic, but we won't. Firstly, because the Belgians have disbanded themselves and, secondly, because there is nothing wrong with the Flemings' ability to calculate. At least, those Flemings who have calculated at the Flemish Theatre Institute how the subsidy money for the arts is spent. In Flanders. And it turns out that.
Reports of the collapsing music industry have been rife. Apparently, as a musician, you no longer survive on the basis of record sales (alone). In niche genres, however, it is easy to survive. So proves the band Current 93, which performed in Stadtgarten, Cologne, last week. Playing live a lot and selling merchandise seems to be the golden rule for...
We were deep in Amsterdam's canal belt for a while. After all, prominent resident of this city Rudi Fuchs was presented with a new booklet, written by himself together in the pages of De Groene Amsterdammer. This weekly magazine, by all accounts the oldest in the country, hosts the art connoisseur and former museum director in its pages. On it, he stomach writing about artworks that...
Image via Wikipedia After the cry, now the official piece. With a fitting, tad Den Uyl/Van Agt-like title: 'Less where it can be done, better where it must be done.' But let's not laugh too hard. It is quite brave what they have done. Gitta Luyten, Marianne Versteegh, Joke Hubert, Henk Scholten, Siebe Weide and Ben Holvast, together as bosses of arts umbrellas and...
Photo: Sanne Peper The Amsterdam company Dood Paard itself translated Shakespeare's 'Othello' and waves goodbye to the bard with 'Bye Bye'. The quirky collective brings a one-and-a-half-hour contemporary comedy of morals and soul mirror, in which pointing at 'The Other' is central. Shakespeare's plays are quite often performed quite reverently. . The adored 'bard' from Stratford-upon-Avon has the Angel... You can log in now...
The festival for short film Go Short in Nijmegen is not quite over yet, but last night the winners of the various competitions were announced at the Award Show in LUX. The award for best short fiction went to Incident by a Bank by Swedish director Ruben Östlund. He took a failed 2006 bank robbery as the starting point for...
To protest against the cuts in culture, you can of course shout loudly, but as an artist you can also just do what you are good at - make something really beautiful. Dutch film director Danyael Sugawara (Alles stroomt) opted for the latter and in a day and a half he and the best Dutch actors shot Na U, a small drama about unconditional love and...
Dutch theatre-maker Adelheid Roosen, who is currently working with director Merel de Groot on a theatre project with Syrian art students, sees her project hindered because of student protests, although we are not entirely sure in the totalitarian country, from which we rarely receive news. The University of Damascus, where she is working on the project To tell You I call...
Of course we are being horribly abused. By the coughing chain-smoker with his trench coat in that Hague car park. Is there a bigger plan behind it. Which again we know nothing about, but which will become clear on 23 May. So be it. Until then, we can do nothing but slavishly write down what the coughing oracle coughs at us. Well: We already knew that...
Trouble with your voice? You don't talk about that. Because competition is so high in the music industry, there is a taboo on showing weaknesses. While the consequences would be much smaller if attention was given to it sooner. Time for the Muziek Centrum Nederland to ask the question at its music café on 3 March where...
Bettina Masuch (1964) has been artistic director of Springdance since 2008 and presents its third festival programme this year. We asked the woman behind this leading festival for innovative dance about this season's highlights. One of the performances she describes already makes us very curious: the Japanese street fighters of Contact Gonzo. Could just happen that somewhere between 14 and...
Art costs money. The current Rutte administration has hammered that into it: it's expensive, no one but a small club of insiders goes there, and either way those are leftists or pseudo-leftists who can easily pay for it themselves. So much for the government's opinion. The opinion of the art world can be guessed: it is...
The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra currently has an unprecedented luxury: it is releasing CDs on two labels at the same time. How is that possible? The orchestra signed under its own name with BIS Records, the label with which the eccentric owner Von Bahr releases one extraordinary recording after another, while chief conductor Yannick Néze-Séguin is old-fashionedly under contract as maestro with EMI....
This message has since been confirmed by the Halbe Zijlstra on 14 March. We thank our source for being accurate. We once again visited our trench-coat-clad coughing chain-smoker in his Hague car park. Because there had been no news from The Hague for another week, and with the elections so close to the door, that's always...
It looked like a party. Coffee and flan, a Maastricht song, brass band music and a speech by Prince Carnival. Optimism surrounded the launch of the website nadeschreeuwnudestem.nl on 21 February. Surely the cry for culture in November was mainly a voice of dissent. Now there is a chance to take forward-looking action. 'Mobilise everyone you know to join the March 2...
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