All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
The children introduce themselves one by one. They build sets, make music and play scenes. A catastrophe is imminent. They speculate loosely: will it be a nuclear or biological attack, a plane or a missile, a tsunami or a bombing? In Next Day, shown last weekend at Theatre Frascati, they rehearse an attack by 'aliens'. That...
He had had a TED training. It couldn't be otherwise. Bart Moeyaert, poet, writer and multiple award winner, sometimes literally wriggled into numerous corners to warm up the Dutch literary guild to his plans for 2016. That year, for the first time in a long time, the Netherlands will host the Frankfurter Buchmesse again, the Art Basel of the literary world....
'Do you not agree with me that many of you - like members of Roman Catholic curia - are already trying to make yourselves immortal and indispensable? That you are suffering from severe mental and spiritual petrification?' Kees 't Hart measured himself a papal role on Sunday 18 January, when delivering The State of Dutch Literature,...
Rarely have I seen two female artists at a table more different from each other than Dominique Goblet and Leela Corman. Two female comic artists, on either side of Peter Breedveld who is flown in every year as a connoisseur of the comic genre at Writers Unlimited. Corman, a comic book artist as well as a dancer, writes her stories in a fairly recognisable style. Impressive stories, historically, like her latest...
Writers Unlimited's Friday night kicked off with an Islam debate. In no uncertain terms, religious historian Karen Armstrong argued that Islam and jihad are not the same thing. There are only 41 jihads in the entire Quran, most of which are the peaceful struggle to help the poor when one is destitute oneself. But after the Paris attacks...
"Everyone who writes will sooner or later run into a wall, a limit of what cannot, should not and should not be written. And almost everyone will flinch at that moment and refrain from writing it. Because that wall is there to protect us from what we don't want." Karl Ove Knausgård, already compared by some to Marcel Proust,...
The Official Nominations for the first Dance Photo of the Year election have been announced. From 43 entries, Hans van Manen (choreographer) and Thomas Cott (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) compiled a top six. We couldn't think of a better jury for a preselection. Now we are curious to hear your vote. The Dance Photo of the Year election puts dance photographers and their work in the spotlight. Because.
An upstairs room on an abandoned industrial estate becomes a cosy jazz club, a 43-year-old girl from the Achterhoek becomes a black jazz diva and her band makes a comeback after the demise of its musical director. With Masha Bijlsma, the wonders are not yet out of the world. Music can make time stand still. That happens lol but sometimes; I make it...
The Official Nominations for the 2014 Dance Audience Award have been announced. Check out the 10 favourite dance performances and 10 favourite dancers of 2014. You can also vote for them. Varied entries For the Dance Audience Award, almost 800 dance performance visitors sent in nominations of no fewer than 105 dancers and 65 dance performances. From Igone de Jongh of the Dutch National Ballet to the young Carlos Puts in...
This morning, Anita Ekberg died in a hospital in Italy. She turned 83. But for us, she actually always remained 28 and stood forever in the Trevi Fountain. Ekberg began her career as Miss Sweden and left for the US armed with that title. There, she played a number of small film roles in which she was mostly beautiful and...
Toneelgroep Centrum, Utrechtse Theater Inititatieven, Jeugdtheaterplatform Utrecht, Theaterplatform Utrecht, De Paardenkathedraal, De Nieuwe Paardenkathedraal, De Utrechtse Spelen. The ostentatious names for Utrecht theatre companies had run out of steam over the past 30 years. Not entirely unexpected, then, that the city theatre company of the Netherlands' fourth city opts for sobriety and clarity. Since Sunday 11 January, 5pm, De Utrechtse Spelen has been called...
They were always a bit of the drain of marketing land: city promotion people or city marketers. Especially arts and culture marketers would rather see them go than come, because it only costs them money. So nice idea of Culture Press partner ACMC to bring them together for once. After all, Citymarketing now has the wind in its sails. City promotion is hot, and has discovered where its strength lies: outside the...
After the brutal attack on the staff of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris yesterday, journalists, cartoonists, politicians and the general public rallied worldwide to defend the freedom of speech. Many a front page of today's newspapers showed the cartoons for which chief editor Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier) and 11 others were brutally murdered by Said and Cherif Kouachi,...
I'm in shock: 12 dead in horrific attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. - Just before the attack, it tweeted its latest cartoon: a cartoon showing the leader of IS expressing a New Year's wish. Humour connects, humour fraternises, humour helps break taboos, humour puts painful life themes into perspective.... At least, that's what I've thought all my life, until in 2005 my worldview tilted....
Stable, stable, stable. That refrain sounded again and again at the announcement of the cinema industry's annual figures at the New Year meeting in Tuschinski. Hajo Binsbergen, vice-chairman of the Netherlands Association of Film Distributors, informed that in 2014, with the high number of 30.8 million visitors, the passage to the cinema was almost the same as 2013. The Dutch market share was with again...
650,000 euros. The municipality of Enschede is prepared to lend that amount to HET Symfonieorkest. Not for a special cultural project in the city, no, for a renovation. Not surprising, as municipalities, after all, prefer to invest in bricks and mortar rather than culture. But in this case, we are talking about very special bricks. According to director Harm Mannak, the barely used bicycle shed needs to be converted into a...
After the annual lists, the recommendations for the new year. All dailies participate in it. Problem: much is not yet known. Festivals and companies present their programmes sometime in February, March. So we cannot yet give the tips for the whole of 2015. But we do have the tips for the coming month, in chronological order, because ranking performances we still have to...
Art ends its 70th anniversary as a 'Leftist Hobby' in 2015. There is not much more to predict for this year. Art goes back to the bourgeois status it held since the start of the industrial revolution. 1: Art was never left Art, of course, has never been 'left'. Subsidy may have come from the thinking tubes of social and Christian democrats, but art an sich...
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...
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