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ACTUAL

All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.

Music school @uckutrecht spots trend: parents invest more in music education

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.

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Saving Tropenmuseum paid for from art acquisition budget

Het Tropenmuseum is gered, dat wisten we al, maar de Tweede Kamer wilde nog weten waar dat uit betaald werd. Immers: meer geld gaat de overheid niet uitgeven, dat moeten wij doen. Enfin. Uit de beantwoording van de kamervragen door cultuurminister Jet Bussemaker blijkt dat de musea in ieder geval in 2016 5,5 miljoen minder uit kunnen geven aan kunstaankopen.… 

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I Like To Watch Too is a must for keeping the performing arts in the Netherlands young and fresh

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.

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Doek valt voor filmtheater en podium Provadja in Alkmaar

Al meer dan tien jaar tobt het Alkmaarse filmtheater en podium Provadja – een van de oudste Nederlandse filmhuizen – met een veel te krappe behuizing. Al meer dan tien jaar zijn er plannen gemaakt en gisteravond stemde de gemeenteraad over de herhuisvesting. En koos daarmee voor een optie die bestuur, medewerkers en vrijwilligers van Provadja al categorisch hadden afgewezen. Namelijk

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Ech Uterech tour of the Cetraol Stetion and Hoog Ketrijne #callofthemall

"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."

Read More "Ech Uterech tour of the Cetraol Stetion and Hoog Ketrijne #callofthemall

Dutch Symphony Orchestra loses lawsuit and name

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.

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Fewer audiences, but fuller halls for @hollandfestival 2013

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.

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Nowhere does the sun set so functionally as on Terschelling

Oerol, the festival with Terschelling as its stage, has had two wet, cold and windy days. The streets are coloured yellow, red, blue and black by rain suits. Actors play in transparent rain suits, to make costumes still come into their own. Or have someone standing behind them with umbrella to protect them from the rain.
Read More "Nowhere does the sun set so functionally as on Terschelling

Art breaks the rut of Hoog Catharijne in Call of the Mall

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

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Community art of 'Hidden War' forges bond between Dutch and Guatemalans

Treaty of Utrecht
It is cold, chilly and dark. But also quiet, green and spacious. Visitors were not tolerated here until recently. And now Fort Nieuwersluis, near Breukelen, is opening its doors. From 20 to 23 June, the performance 'Hidden War' can be seen there. In it, Guatemalan players show what it is like to live in a violent country. And Dutch actors add their experiences of what it is like to go from a free country to a country like Guatemala.
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Marie on a string: Anja Röttgerkamp stars as an unknown soldier in Gisèle Vienne's The Pyre @HollandFestival

Holland Festival 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.

Read More "Marie on a string: Anja Röttgerkamp stars as an unknown soldier in Gisèle Vienne's The Pyre @HollandFestival

Desdemona in black and white

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Is the kingdom of the dead in the opera Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa a 3D garden full of brilliant colour, director Peter Sellars chooses in Desdemona by Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré for sober black and white. On the stage of a sold-out Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ are glass bottles and jars, sometimes lit from below, sometimes from above, with hanging light bulbs like flickering candles. On the left are a number of ngonis (Malian lute) and two koras (Malian harp lute), played by black musicians.

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Escape from Guatemala's hidden war for a while

Treaty of Utrecht
'Hidden War', the theatrical exchange between actors from the Netherlands and Guatemala, is nearing performance. The Guatemalan actors of the company Caja Lúdica have been in the country for a few weeks now. Together with the Dutch actors, they are rehearsing at Fort Nieuwersluis (near Breukelen), where the performance can also be seen from 20 June. Alan Hack (18) is one of the Guatemalans playing in the show. He experiences his stay in the Netherlands as a paradise encounter with freedom[/heading].
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Crushingly good: Nine Rivers by composer James Dillon, with conductor and percussionist Steven Schick @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

From the mild, everyday cacophony around the Muziekgebouw in the afternoon, on the terrace by the IJ, you'll get into the silence of the concert hall in a few steps. For three and a half hours (with over two hours of breaks in between), Asko|Schönberg, Slagwerk Den Haag and Capella Amsterdam will play and sing your ears off. Steven Schick (a.o. once Bang on a Can), not only conducts, but also takes charge of the middle part of the concert, at the Bimhuis, as a percussionist. Under his inspired direction, 'Nine Rivers' navigates between spectacle and purism: a battle between complex form and the simplicity of raw sound matter.

Read More "Crushingly good: Nine Rivers by composer James Dillon, with conductor and percussionist Steven Schick @HollandFestival
Photo: Jurgen Koopmanschap

First children's book ambassador @jacques_vriens on the breach for reading pleasure: 'Frighteningly few Dutch children enjoy reading'

Since two months, the successful children's book author Jacques Vriens can call himself the first Children's Book Ambassador of the Netherlands. For much longer, he has been doing all he can to increase children's reading pleasure. International research shows that only ten percent of Dutch children really enjoy reading. That is shockingly little.'
Read More "First children's book ambassador @jacques_vriens on the breach for reading pleasure: 'Frighteningly few Dutch children enjoy reading'

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