All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Dat de boekenmarkt het moeilijk heeft, is inmiddels wel bekend. In de strijd tussen papier en ereader gaat het er hard aan toe. Uitgevers vinden digitaal lezen eigenlijk een vorm van diefstal. Mag u een gekocht papieren boek behalve lezen, ook verknippen, uitlenen, weggeven, doorverkopen en verbranden, met een ebook mag dat allemaal niet.
From facebook gesponst: those who wondered why there was art again. Or why it costs money. Those people are there .
Series of videos now.
The Theatre voucher has been more popular than its publisher suspected. Theatre-goers have certainly used this performing arts book voucher more than expected over the last decade. One and a half million euros more. As a result, the Foundation for the Promotion of Theatre and Concert Attendance SPTC has faced negative assets since 2011.
Ever since the establishment of the NJO Summer Academy in 2001, one composer takes centre stage every year, in the current edition it is Steve Reich (1936). During the NJO Music Summer, two hundred music students from fifteen countries will play a good number of compositions by the American grandmaster.
Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch sold 55,000 tickets this year, 5,000 less than in 2012. The festival, which this year was held from 1 to 11 August, did attract more crowds for the free offerings on the festival square. This brought the total number of visitors to the festival this year to 145,000, 5,000 more than in 2012. As the venue occupancy is still nice at 85%, the drop in ticket sales will mainly be due to a smaller offer of performances.
The Performing Arts Promotion Office which will be disbanded from 1 October, has not fallen victim to cultural cuts or the economic crisis. The Stichting Promotie Theater- en Concertbezoek (SPTC), the BPP's backer, has turned off the money tap for other, unclear reasons.
We are far from having all the info, but we have enough by now: the Bureau Promotie Podiumkunsten (BPP), funded by the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Managements, is quitting as of 1 October. Reason unknown, but surely the malaise in the cultural sector, and especially the performing arts, will have something to do with it.
Dancer Ellen Edinoff died in her hometown of Amsterdam on Tuesday at the age of 70. Ellen, together with her husband Koert Stuyf, formed a unique dance couple in the 1960s-'70s that reactions in extremes. The Dutch dance world came of age partly thanks to them.
On the day that a vote was to be held in The Hague on the new Spui Forum, it has been announced that Robert van Leer is leaving as business director of Nederlands Dans Theater. Van Leer is resigning for purely "personal reasons", according to the press officer of the renowned dance company.
Despite the crisis, parents invest eagerly and heavily in their offspring's musical development. This is the finding of the Utrecht Centre for the Arts (UCK). Their talent development programmes are running well. "Parents now choose to spend money on this more consciously than ever. They also come along to lessons more often and let their children start at an increasingly younger age," says cello teacher Floris Dercksen.
Monsters University provides merry summer entertainment in 3D from this week. Last week World War Z be viewed with 3D glasses. At the end of 2009, Avatar overwhelmingly clear: 3D was back never to leave. We are now almost four years on
Still competing at the top and successfully entering Europe with sixty per cent less budget. Impossible, cries many. Only with a new stadium, argues another. And with extra investments in the winter break. But it can be done, according to one and all.
The Tropenmuseum has been saved, we already knew that, but the House of Representatives still wanted to know where that was paid from. After all: the government is not going to spend more money, we have to do that. Anyway. Culture minister Jet Bussemaker's answer to the parliamentary questions shows that museums will be able to spend 5.5 million less on art purchases in 2016 at least....
Young choreographers Cecilia Moisio, Giulio d'Anna and Melissa Ellberger have been nominated for the Prize of the Nederlandse Dansdagen Maastricht 2013.
A man and a woman dance passionately in the hall of Paradiso. Such an experimental dance performance is unusual for the Amsterdam pop palace. Yet the festival I Like To Watch Too right here. Many people feel a barrier towards this kind of performance, but here there is just the right 'in and out' atmosphere to make avant-garde art something you can just look at and that always triggers something in you.
For more than a decade, Alkmaar film theatre and stage Provadja - one of the oldest Dutch film houses - has been struggling with housing that is far too cramped. Plans have been made for over a decade and last night the city council voted on relocation. And thus chose an option that Provadja's board, staff and volunteers had already categorically rejected. Namely
Isn't avant garde dance too lofty? Is it still viable in these harsh cultural times? I Like To Watch Too aims to clear up this misunderstanding. The festival brings experimental dance closer to the public than ever.
"Let's move on people! I would like to introduce you to Frans van Montfoort. One of the very first buskers in old Hoog Catharijne and almost a living statue." Guide Ton van den Berg, today in the guise of his alter ego Koos Marsman, slaps Van Montfoort on the shoulder. "Good to see you again boy."
We already wrote about the name change of the Orchestra of the East into the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (NedSym). The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra (NedPho) was not amused and felt that the Enschede-based orchestra was infringing its trademark and trademark rights and demanded that the orchestra choose a different name. Summary proceedings followed and in April 2012 the court ruled that the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra could only not use the abbreviation NedSO, but did not have to change its name.
69,500 visitors, at least 5,000 fewer than previous editions, but the halls were fuller. With 82% audience occupancy, the Holland Festival organisers are satisfied with the 2013 festival. Whether that higher occupancy rate, apart from the smaller number of performances (14 fewer than last year) is also due to smaller halls, is impossible to find out from here, but the fact that the large Theater Carré, with its many unsellable low-visibility seats, was also hardly used this year will certainly have helped.
You don't really give it much thought, how weird standing still in a shopping centre like Hoog Catharijne is. At least: if you are not standing still with your head towards a shop window or your fingers in a bowl of fast food. The code for glancing around a shopping mall is so common that it takes some getting used to even for yourself when something forces you to suddenly
Holland Festival
'The Pyre', the latest show from internationally rising star Gisèle Vienne, initially seems less disturbing than her previous work. Pieces like 'Jerk' (2008), based on the true story of a young serial killer, and 'This is how you will disappear' (2010), starring a dark forest, were only seen in a few places in the Netherlands. Hopefully, this performance at the Holland Festival will change that. Gisèle Vienne once studied harp, then philosophy and eventually trained as a puppeteer. But Vienne sees herself primarily as a visual artist working with time, on a stage, where different rhythms, motifs and figures come together.
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