All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Last weekend, we thought we were on the safe side with our list of best-read stories on Culture Press. True to old media laws, we thought the days between Christmas and New Year's would be quiet. Aber nein. It turned out there was another list on the way, which turned the whole thing upside down. Instead of 235 thousand interested readers...
NTR Podium: the television programme about music and dance, is calling it quits. Tonight is the last broadcast with the Harmonium by John Adams by the Residentie Orkest. In 2015, NTR Podium gives way to the new Podium Witteman. This will be mainly about classical music and jazz.
Always start with the good news. The Information Department of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science did a very good job in 2014. They sent one jubilant press release after another into the world. While there was actually hardly any good news to report. About culture. But because there are a lot of lazy journalists, good news often goes in a...
It's raining annual lists and we're merrily joining in. As subjective as anyone, after all, no one sees everything, and opinions on taste can always differ. Of course, also in this list many performances in or from the Randstad, but half of them were not yet shown there. And all genres mixed together. As long as it is theatre. With the only limitation: no repeats, apologies Ring and Lohengrin (DNO), St John Passion (NRO). And no dance, because for that our partner dance audience.
Today, the International Film Festival Rotterdam announced that director Rutger Wolfson is handing over the baton after the 2015 edition. About his decision, Wolfson says in the press release: "Eight years is a long time to lead an important film festival and with the 44th edition, which will be very strong, I have achieved everything I wanted to achieve. Together with my family, I have...
'With a little help form my friends' may be his biggest hit. My eternal favourite Joe Cocker song is and remains The Letter. Not Cocker's vocal acrobatics here, turning the rather side-splitting Beatles song into a screaming victim's plea. In The Letter, the man who did mostly brilliant covers actually changes bitterly little to...
Tonight many drunk screenwriters on the streets, and in Leiden a few very happy older journalists. Lira, the organisation that has to collect money for them from the big, wealthy, and non-paying guys, has won twice. They already had, of course, but the cable companies didn't want to get rid of the gold plating on their luxury yachts. So they ignored the judge's ruling and...
Good going, over there in The Hague. After the company announced earlier this week that it would take a young creator into its artistic leadership before his death, today follows the announcement that Het Nationale Toneel wants to merge with the Koninklijke Schouwburg. This would mean that, for the first time in a long time in the Netherlands, the performer of a city theatre would again be...
It gets crazier and crazier with The Interview, the US comedy in which the CIA wants to implicate two television journalists in an assassination attempt against the leader of North Korea.
You could almost say that film has once again been overtaken by reality.
Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker sends out an alarming press release. Following the decision by the Brussels theatre De Munt/La Monnaie to stop programming dance, she wonders whether Rosas is still welcome in Brussels. "The news that the management of La Monnaie is scrapping all dance fills me with disbelief. Historically, ...
Ten per cent fewer performances and ten per cent fewer visitors in Overijssel headlines RTV Oost. Bam! That chops it. Into the bin, that jubilant press release by Jet Bussemaker. And if there is one province that does not need to apologise to Halbe Zijlstra, it is Overijssel. Well, we reported earlier that apologies are not necessary anyway, but as a province...
Two corpses. Despairing bystanders. A blood-red photo. The cover of the Exploration, released by the Amsterdam Arts Council, makes one fear the worst. A massacre has been committed. Even if it is a scenic photo of a performance by Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Or is it all different? Are only two dead, and the rest live on? Something about shows that on must go?....
What is it like to experience what you usually undergo with a large group of people on your own? Swedish television sought it out. With the biggest finale being a performance by Bob Dylan in front of one fan.
5:Echo, choreographer Nicole Beutler's most recent production, is a curious show. All focus is on two famous pioneers of Dutch dance in the 60s and 70s: Ellen Edinoff and Bianca van Dillen. Yet Echo mainly shows how impossible (and perhaps undesirable) it is to want to revive past glories. Dancer Kelly...
Eric de Vroedt will succeed Theu Boermans at the Nationale Toneel in The Hague in 2018. The company announced this in a press release today. This puts an end to speculation surrounding the future of theatre-maker De Vroedt. Indeed, he had long been mentioned as Alize Zandwijk's successor at the ro Theater in Rotterdam,...
Since the cuts, it has become a bitter necessity for many, cultural entrepreneurship. But what exactly that is, nobody knows at all. Even the government actually has no idea when talking about it. But, the government asks, so there must be an answer. In recent years, the Dutch art world has been flooded with self-proclaimed experience experts on cultural entrepreneurship....
What does the theatre of the future look like? That question Odeon De Spiegel Theatres posed to the FMT Workforce, the online brainstorming environment of our partner Fast Moving Targets. We also brought the message here. Odeon and De Spiegel are two theatres in Zwolle. Well-run theatres, but always looking for the new opportunities offered by new technologies and developments....
Dancer and choreographer Truus Bronkhorst initiated a collaboration between Antwerp-based Kunst/Werk and Tilburg-based T.R.A.S.H. The double programme and duet combines choreographies by Marc Vanrunxt and Kristel van Issum. Ende der Zukunft has become a wondrous staging of gaping gaps: of time of life, of artistic experience, but above all of artistic conception. Intergenerationality (oui, c'est un mot) concerns relationships that...
Saturday 6 December sees the start of the first edition of Music Theatre Days, the successor to the annual Babel Festival. To present the work of young makers, the Ostadetheatre and production core Diamantfabriek joined forces again, for a programme that offers flash performances by conservatory students alongside world premieres by professional makers. Splendor's monthly Salon also takes place at the Ostadetheatre. Red thread...
The Speech Doctor reviews: The 3 Anti-Speakers of TEDX Amsterdam 2014: Duncan Stutterheim, Ton van Oostwaard and Henk Schiffmacher. What is TEdx Amsterdam? On Friday 27 November 2014, the Netherlands' most famous TEDx, TEDx Amsterdam took place again at the Stadsschouwburg. TED is a global organisation where people of name and fame (or before name and fame) show up to present their 'ideas...
The producers of film and television, who colluded with cable companies not to pay writers for their work, are coming up with a plan. Unwilling to agree to the creators' just demand to just do what the courts have ordered, they set up a fund. Into that, they put the money they feel should...
That it smells a bit like rotten fish in the Fifa offices is well enough known. The men's club of upstart youth team managers has refined its own revenue model considerably. So now it appears it is no longer just about beautiful women, cocaine, money and other things you put in brown envelopes, but about art. And then it gets interesting. According to a further...
The distinguished part of the arts sector is also reacting furiously to the VVD's statements, chronicled by De Telegraaf this morning. This brings the number of reasons for the sector not to apologise to Halbe Zijlstra to six. Whereas we previously gave five reasons, the Dutch Association of Performing Arts now also declares that we are only in the course...
Chris Nauta breaks through. The Amersfoort-based artist makes new clothes from old blankets, tents and other unlikely materials. She was prominent at Oerol and can count stars including Gregory Porter among her fans. 'My customers get a unique piece of art and reduce waste.' Chris Nauta is Central Netherlands' recycling artist. She makes winter coats from used blankets, brightly coloured bags from...
According to the VVD, all artists and art lovers in the Netherlands should say 'sorry' to Halbe Zijlstra. Because they were so angry with him when he abolished 30 per cent of art subsidies without any underlying idea. After all, according to the Ministry of Culture, things were going fan-tas-tically with the arts in the Netherlands. Anyone who reads the press release the ministry issued yesterday on that...
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