All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
About a decade ago, on the main stage of Rotterdam's De Doelen concert hall, there stood a frail and still searching young woman, a singer-songwriter in a language other than English. Sometimes in Portuguese but mostly in the criollo of the Cape Verde islands, this Sara Tavares presented, with minimal accompaniment, her CD 'Mi ma bô' that would later give her international...
It was predictable. Now that the Culture Council has given the secretary of state a go-ahead for massive and very deep cuts in dance, the first press releases are appearing with the outraged reactions. The National Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater are aggrieved: 'How
We at culture press did not use the word cheese slicer, so it is not about us, but still. Today, the Council for Culture is reacting rather furiously to the many negative reactions to its advice issued last week. Of course, it is also kind of unfortunate that the Council has to issue an opinion that it itself does not support at all, and then the...
State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra does not like whining. Don't come to him with email bombardments, Twitter campaigns, angry letters and abusive language. He is not only insensitive to it, it even backfires on him. At least that is what he told
Our overview of Twitter responses to the Council for Culture's advice, released on 29 April. [View the story "Twitter reacts to Council for Culture advice" on Storify]
Once again, we are using a new web service. Just to see how it works. Feel free to let us know (in the comments) if you find us too geeky. We'll do something about it. [View the story "Springdance 2011" on Storify]
On Wednesday 27 April 2011, we reported on the annual symposium of the Royal Association of Booksellers. Interesting bi9jeen meeting, we can say, but of course not every speaker was as brilliant as Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaar, the director of the Collective Propaganda of the Dutch Book Foundation, whom from now on we will call the John and Jesus of the storytelling industry...
Nothing is more uplifting than singing a canon together. French choreographer Boris Charmatz's Frère Jacques, seen as the bouncer on the final night of Springdance, is a special case, though. 'Levée des conflits' has no recurring refrain, but it has no fewer than 25 stanzas, which are danced by each of the 24 dancers. The insane polyphony that rises from this monster canon of dancing bodies slowly rattles the viewer apart over 1 hour and 40 minutes, at least if they keep following the multitude of movements and manipulations. 'Levée des conflits' presents the audience with a dilemma: does it surrender to the inimitability of interlocking phases and versions of a composition that it cannot possibly oversee? Or does it frantically search for structure, something to hold on to, something to orientate itself in this hall of mirrors of repetition and multiplication?
Springdance Utrecht has ended. Boris Charmatz gave the last performance of the Utrecht dance festival last night with "Levée des conflits". Critics Fransien van der Putt and Daniël Bertina already show their opinions in the film below. They also have a conversation with Boris Charmatz. Read more about this performance.
The Springdance Festival in Utrecht is coming to an end. Today, the last performances take place. Three reviewers from the Cultureel Persbureau look back on the festival, in an interview with Jeroen Stout. Reviewer Fransien van der Putt does get spring fever from Springdance, she says in the interview: 'This festival exceeded my expectations.' Daniël Bertina (also a critic) also found it a particularly...
Her full thighs clatter together. She shakes her bare arms, grinning at the trembling skin on her upper arms. She stomps furiously across the Theatre Kikker's playing floor, while her hefty body - dressed in a small, nondisguising black dress - emphatically bounces happily on all sides. You just have to dare. In her one-woman show 'Gina', Swiss theatre maker Eugénie Rebetez beyond all embarrassment. In the skin of Gina, Rebetez shows her own yearning for stardom, with plenty of self-mockery and absurdist humour. A quirky mishmash of mime, stand-up comedy, cabaret and contemporary dance.
Had we completely forgotten about the goat from sheer terror. Anyway. That goat, or at least its completely skinned carcass according to Dutch law, plays a role in the finale of Ishmael Houston-Jones' show Them. Afterwards, we saw the audience come out rather affected.
When music sounds, almost everyone tends to move with it. Music leads to dance. That link is crystal clear. But in modern dance, that obviousness is broken. Watching 'Silent Ballet' by Emanuel Gat Dance, this becomes poignantly clear. Without a single sound being sent into the auditorium, the eight dancers swarm across the stage....
Clara García Fraile represents England in the international programme Europe in Motion. Young choreographers interacted during the festival and will present their own work at the end of this edition. Clara has nothing to show, she says, but that is also because, as a video artist, she is working on other things than dance. And those other things are...
With their name, the five Japanese of contact Gonzo refer to the gonzo journalism by the late Hunter S. Thompson. Raw, harsh and subjective. Thomspon also showed how he worked in his pieces. Contact Gonzo warms up during the performance, taking snapshots of each other with disposable cameras and passing the water bottle. Gonzo-style: what you see is what you get.
Contact Gonzo adheres to simple rules. For example gravity: jumping and coming down. Or attracting and repelling: pushing, pulling, like a rugby scrum. In doing so, they touch on minimal art that adhered to a set of parameters; one thinks of Sol LeWitt.
It could be a circus number, but the stillness in this technical dance installation ensures that it rises above the level of a pretty trick. Hanging from pulleys supported by counterweights, Sylvain floats in the Academy Theatre. Here, he briefly explains how it works. Spoiler alert. And in French.
She is on her knees. Shaking and trembling, she jerks backwards. With clawed fingers that seem to grasp at the void. Like a frightened cat. Shuffling, the dancer moves backwards in a semicircle on the white stage floor of Theatre Frog. One by one, the five others step onto the empty open stage, while the first dancer keeps looking anxiously at the audience. Thus begins 'Storm end come'. With this performance, Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder shows the overwhelming effects of fear on the bodies of her dancers. But it doesn't really get scary.
The performance 'Ast im auge' is an extremely hushed show that focuses on the viewing of viewing, the feeling of feeling, the experiencing of experiencing. Anyone who recognises the thinking of philosopher Immanuel Kant in this is right. Yet the result is also - unintentionally - sensual. This is evident from the conversation with choreographer Jana Unmussig....
The 27th edition of Springdance in Utrecht is in full swing. Cultural Press Agency reviewers are there, attending dance performances from all corners of the world. For instance, Fransien van der Putt visited the opening performance Sideways Rain by Brazilian Guilhermo Botelho and the jazzy tap dance performance by Broadway star Savion Glover. Maarten Baanders attended Studium by Belgian dance collective...
Terts Brinkhoff , founder of De Parade, has a set of sheds on the frayed edge of Weesp in which all the travelling festival's tents are stored, when not rented out. In April, the management (now Ray van Santen and Nicole van Vessum) gathers all the artists from the upcoming summer tour there for an introduction. Press time, of course. And with the weather like...
In 1945, advanced rocket technology allowed a group of Nazis to escape to the moon. There they hid and soon they will return to take over again. At Imagine, Amsterdam's festival for fantastic film, there was a sneak preview of that. If the omens do not deceive, Iron Sky, as this Finnish production is called, promises to be a...
Margret Sara Gudjonsdottir explores the unequal power relationship between spectators and dancer. And goes very far in doing so. Uncomfortable' is still the mildest description for the work 'Soft Target'. Which is not at all the case for a conversation in private.
It was so nice, using the 1980s band Talking Heads' song 'Road to nowhere' to get your political message across. Now yes. Ex-Senator and Governor of Florida Charlie Crist thought he could get away with it, and he may have succeeded politically, financially he is going to lose out big time. The compensation amount has not been disclosed, but...
"I don't care about the body, I make music," Savion Glover said last night, leaning against the doorframe of his dressing room after the performance Bare Soundz. The dance audience at Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg theatre struggled to master the mores of a jazz audience. As the concert progressed, it increasingly produced encouraging yells when the three tap dancers loosened up
A shy, unassuming man, who transforms on stage into a brilliant clown and artist at the same time. You can't get more typically British than choreographer and dancer Jonathan Burrows. He has achieved cult status in the dance world, and it is actually strange that his performances do not reach a wider audience. Although he himself says he has no shortage of audience members,...
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