Fringe notes (3): 5 Questions to Tim Honnef, Dutchman at the Fringe #edfringe
Tim Honnef is one of the few Dutch with a performance at the Fringe. How did he end up here?
ACTUAL
All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
NJO Music Summer presents 'Drama in Vienna'
Since its inception, the NJO Music Summer has spread its wings. It started in 2001 as a summer course for music students who were allowed to work with internationally renowned musicians, composers and conductors. Since then, the NJO Music Summer has grown into an unmissable, audience-friendly festival, covering the entire province of Gelderland. On Friday 19 August, it takes a step across the border to Overijssel,...
Jetse Batelaan (Artemis) is a great innovator of theatre #tfboulevard
Jetse Batelaan is one of the greatest theatre innovators of this still young century. His star rose in 2003, with a show in which five unique actors made reality theatre, and vice versa. Now, 13 years later, Batelaan has been the boss of one of the country's best youth theatre companies for some time, pushing the boundaries of that industry once again. And that...
Piet Piryns: 'TivoliVredenburg is main character of The Night of Poetry'
It has been eagerly awaited for weeks: the Night of Poetry. For the thirty-fourth time next month, poets and audience gather around the stage for a night of verses and music. Regular presenter Piet Piryns, now fused with the event, looks back and ahead. He remembers it well, his first...
Fringe notes (2): Choice stress, tinder appeals and a Fringe thriller #edfringe
How to avoid choice stress at the Edinburgh Fringe bursting at the seams on all sides? We conduct an experiment: a day on the flow of flyers.
A few comments on bare breasts (m/f) on #tfboulevard
Let's talk about breasts (m/f). Or, if that's a bit too confrontational: the tendency of young up-and-coming acting talents to get naked on stage. And then do something with juice. Of fruit mostly, or just water, or oil and glitter. At Festival Boulevard yesterday, for the third time in a week, I had...
André Manuel and Ben Duke: craftsmanship of the highest order on #tfboulevard
Being the best at your craft, and then not in one craft, but in three or so. That, too, is what makes an artist an artist. Ben Duke is a great artist. He is a gifted dancer, a phenomenal actor and a cum laude graduate in English literature. It is therefore logical that he wrote the greatest poem in British history, the...
'Return Turkey': brave confession from a gutmensch on #tfboulevard
The world is changing quite a bit and it's nice when artists do something with it. Festival Boulevard gives Lizzy Timmers the opportunity to make an attempt. That attempt, performed in a somewhat run-down cultural centre in a real Bossche power district, is quite something. Backurk is the name of this semi-documentary performance. Timmers has immersed herself in young, well-educated, well-integrated Turks who have come to the Netherlands to...
Griet Op de Beeck's MONA will blow you away at Festival Boulevard #TFBoulevard
No, these sentences are not in Griet Op de Beeck's theatre monologue Mona, but nicely sum up the bestseller Come Here That I Kiss You (28 printings in just under two years). Op de Beeck adapted the first part into one of Festival Boulevard's most impressive performances. We do see nine-year-old Mona's sentence as a backdrop, complete...
Fringe notes (1): Hard lessons in comedy at Edinburgh Fringe festival #edfringe
Amazing how more than a thousand performers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival are willing to try their hand at the most difficult genre: comedy
Horror and humour vie for power at Festival Boulevard #tfboulevard
Project Cloud, the latest experiential artwork by Bossche city artist Lucas de Man, may need a disclaimer. Anyone entering the seven-storey work had better not do so in the company of a solid existential crisis. The visitor before me did, and still needed a very good talk with a psychological counsellor afterwards. Who...
'Bicycle thief': Last-century Flemish formation theatre at Festival Boulevard #tfboulevard
Once upon a time there was this film, Ladri di Biciclette, Bicycle Thieves in Dutch. Italian director Vittorio de Sica established a totally new film movement with it in 1948: neo-realism. Amateur actors pretty much played their own lives at the bottom of the social ladder. Engaging, inspired, raw and confrontational, especially at the time. Little people, caught in the spiral of social...
Tent Theatre in Den Bosch: high quality, shame about the sound #tfboulevard
Sometimes, people are so angry politically that they furiously turn down the chance to become the country's boss themselves upon hearing the word 'prime minister'. Oscar Kocken, the cheerful host and creator, together with Daan Windhorst, of 'Het Torentje' noticed this last Friday. He was trying to warm up a passer-by to his performance, in a tent on the...
Tomorrow's dance summit now on show in The Hague
Nederlands Dans Theater's summer course gives a glimpse of the future. At the top dancers of tomorrow, but also the choreographers: many of the company's dance makers created a first piece for this summer course. This year, the course also gives a look at the old stage of the half-demolished Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. You can catch a...
Chamber opera 'I'm leaving': away from the smartphone
Last year the hit of Stadsfestival Zwolle, to be seen again this year at NJO Muziekzomer: the opera Ik vertrek by Lucas Wiegerink. The NJO Muziekzomer kicks off its new edition today, 4 August, with the publicly accessible dress rehearsal of The Mother of Black-Winged Dreams by Hanna Kulenty. I wrote about this opera, in which protagonist Clara is besieged by inner demons, here last week....
Performing arts employers (NAPK) angry: subsidy system must change
They totally agree with us, the employers in the performing arts sector. These company and theatre directors and other managers of dwindling coffers, gathered in the Dutch Association of Performing Arts (NAPK), are circulating a letter today, calling on the Lower House to review the system of subsidies. After all, now the middle class is falling between the cracks. Has happened before, and...
Performing Arts Fund cuts dance subsidies. Not enough, according to some.
The Performing Arts Fund announced the awards for the 2017-2020 period. What does this mean for the dance sector? Pluralism and 'bleeding through'. While everyone is on holiday, the Performing Arts Fund announced the grant awards for the performing arts for the 2017-2020 period. And it was reiterated: the fund is facing a previously initiated budget cut of 30 per cent. That would...
Viktorien van Hulst (Boulevard): 'The thresholds are low but the bar is high' #TFBoulevard
Boulevard flags fly everywhere in Den Bosch in the sunshine. The office of the 32-year-old Theatre Festival Boulevard on Sint Josephstraat is a jumble of people walking in and out. The beaming director, Viktorien van Hulst, has bags under her eyes like a festival director should have three days before the opening.
Performing Arts Fund announces battleground. It's as bad as we feared.
The effects of the previous cabinet's arts cuts are finally becoming clear. The Performing Arts Fund today announced the winners and losers of the battle for four-year subsidies. From 2017, the Dutch art world will be a lot smaller, more meagre and poorer than it was until 2013. Big names are gone, traditions dismantled, while what is new faces an extremely uncertain existence.
The 5 youth performances you must see during Theatre Festival Boulevard
Festival Boulevard kicks off on 4 August. The traditional reason to come back from holiday in August has a fuller programme than ever this time. With lots of youth theatre. We'll help you get started in advance.
These are the winners, losers and newcomers in Amsterdam arts
Diversity in the Amsterdam art world is not yet flourishing. The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, which announced its grant awards today, is getting a bit tired of it: "Across most disciplines, committees note that cultural diversity of audiences, staff and governance is disappointing, as are efforts to change this. Outside specialised organisations for which cultural diversity is a core business, ambitions are still not high, despite two decades of cultural policy in this area. If the ambitions are there, organisations do not always manage to give them hands and feet. There often seems to be a certain discomfort or 'not knowing how'."
So to start with the good news: Marmoucha grows 398 per cent compared to the previous grant round. The capital's producer and promoter of performing arts in the field of North African and Middle Eastern arts and culture in the Netherlands was severely cut back in 2013, but the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts found its work over the past four years to be so good that the grant has been more than deserved. In the new round of awards which became known on 1 August they rise from 25,070 euros to a tonne, adding that perhaps they should not be so ambitious.
These are the winners of the Swans 2016. Or not.
Three dancers and three dance productions have been nominated for Swans 2016. On Friday 7 October, Daphne Bunskoek and Art Rooijakkers will announce who the winners are during the Nederlandse Dansdagen's Opening Programme 2016 in Maastricht. But you can already draw a few conclusions from the list of nominees.
Romeo and Juliet: loose highlights in the Amsterdam Forest
Huge passenger trunks, like those at the airport, are stacked crosswise on the stage in the Amsterdam Forest. This immense rendition forms the backdrop of Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare in the Amsterdam Bostheater's performance. Director Ingejan Ligthart Schenk stages Shakespeare's classic modern, with acrobatics by the Tent Circustheater group and musical input by De Veenfabriek.
Joseph Puglia shines in music Luciano Berio
American-Dutch violinist Joseph Puglia is a passionate advocate of contemporary music. Last year he scored highly with his rendition of the Violin Concerto by Anders Hillborg, together with the young musicians of the NJO Symphony Orchestra. He is first violinist of Asko|Schönberg, with whom he presented the world premiere of the violin concerto composed especially for him earlier this year Roads to Everywhere By Joey Roukens.
Julidans double bill with Levi and Serussi mostly raises questions
It is a new and important trend within the programming of international dance and performance festivals in the Netherlands: not only showing relevant work by international choreographers, but also paying explicit attention to dance makers connected to Dutch dance practice. Spring Utrecht opened in May with Nicole Beutler and closed with Jan Martens, while during Julidans Pere Faura was allowed to kick off with sin baile no hay paraíso (no dance, no paradise).
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
You must be logged in to post a comment.