Anything for which people enter a stage.
Colombia's biggest export not only allows Urk fishermen to work long hours, or Amsterdam Zuidas lawyers to keep up with the global 24-hour economy. The white gold also dissolves the nasal septum of the cream of world culture, and costs thousands of lives in the country itself. That had to lead to a theatrical performance, and it did
Djino Alolo Sabin (1990) sits there, relaxed, in the morning at the hotel in Brussels. The night before, he has danced his solo Piki Piki for the first time, which will also be shown at Theater Frascati during the Holland Festival. The performance touches on many intense themes, but is anything but melodramatic. Rather, it expresses a relentless optimism....
Some stories are too big to tell. Too big, but no less important or true for that. Like the story of the millions of Africans who died in World War I in the service of the warring factions there: Britain, France, Italy and Germany. No one knew that last story. At least, nobody I knew knew about it, and neither did I myself. It...
Woest is a cultural education festival for and by young people and offers a place for experimentation outside education. Woest is a unique partnership between education, culture providers and young people. In fact, what makes Woest unique is that young people themselves come up with new things that can make education more fun and better. The pupil's voice is always the starting point. In recent months,...
The dance film occupies a unique place among the film offerings. Not driven purely by psychologising or text, it offers every opportunity for experimentation in form and content. But that also means it is difficult to place. And therefore difficult to make. The second part on the growing pains of the dance film features 2 dancers and performance artist....
You have those performances where, as an unsuspecting spectator, you are invited on stage and, once there, get completely blocked. SOUL #3 Co-Creation is not one of those. Well almost. Indeed, in this work, dancer Claire Hermans explains that fear is a blockade to creativity. The four performers therefore do not urge you to take to the floor to...
'How do I make the world a little more beautiful? That's what I ask myself in everything I do.' Romana Vrede, award-winning actress with Het Nationale Theater, 'table lady' on De Wereld Draait Door and Summer Guest, likes to look positively into the world. So will her contribution to SPOT-Live, the performing arts symposium taking place in Rotterdam on 28 May, be optimistic...
There is a lot of grumbling about Dutch cinema: it is too good, not creative enough, there is not enough experimentation. However, there is one small island where other laws apply. Where, sometimes with hefty budgets and sometimes for next to nothing, films are made that speak a different language: the dance film. No psychologising, no endless dialogue, but...
That you cannot shamelessly treat a black man as a rutting primal beast and a faceless object for your unlimited lust fantasy as a white woman? Seems logical to me, but for Angélica Liddell, world-renowned performance artist, it is typical of the new puritanism that threatens free art. She now brings The Scarlet Letter to the Netherlands, a theatrical performance that is rather...
'I was harassed twice on my way to school last year.' The young actress, barely 15, says it with considerable anger in her voice. It is the morning after the Berlin premiere of the Chilean play Paisajes para no colorear, in which she plays along, with eight peers. That anger was there the previous evening, during the performance that 14...
Together with two 12-year-old kids, I go to a theatre performance. To a theatre performance labelled 'adult performance'. Tickets cost 25. Discount for students. Discount for CJP. No discount for children, excuse me, youngsters, because yes, those two bridge students are already 12. Is this performance made for children? No. It is made for the curious, open viewer, for...
'Aid workers come to my city to leave again. I come there to stay.' You cannot get Faustin Linyekula any more concise. 'Aid workers do not create a bond with the people they want to help. Their work is gone as soon as they leave. I don't come to help, but because I want to be there. If that makes me a few...
'We are on the brink of a new cultural revolution. We need to move away from our paradigm and art can play a role in this. Art can show us images of a different future, a different thought. Artists can help bring that realisation in.' Speaking is writer and journalist Philipp Blom. In 2017, his...
In 2016, the Holland Festival, De Nationale Opera, the Royal Conservatoire and the Stockhausenstiftung joined forces to stage the German avant-gardist's magnum opus at Amsterdam's Gashouder. Light far surpasses Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen in ambition and scale. Against the four full-length operas of his older colleague, Stockhausen places 'Sieben...
'I have broken every bone on the left side of my body at least once. My knee ten years ago, my elbow five years later, a toe, a finger, and under my left eye I have a scar from a stone someone threw at me when I was a kid.' Jesús de Vega, dancer, choreographer, videographer and teremin player, has had the requisite...
'What we so often forget is to just talk about our love for theatre.' Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre, wants to talk about substance for once. And then with the entire performing arts sector. Soon there will be SPOT-Live, the renewed Congress of Performing Arts, and there he wants to talk about love. 'Quite by chance, it happened a month ago....
A fortnight ago, we reported that the unique open-air theatre group Vis à Vis had started a petition. Reason: the Almere city council was reportedly planning to convert the company's permanent site on Almere beach into a residential area. This would go against an earlier promise made by the alderman. Since that alderman has since ceased to be an alderman, it would...
Recently, Kees Vlaardingerbroek, programmer of the NTRZaterdagMatinee published a plea against what he calls 'identity politics' in music. 'Bach was not a woman and not Western. So what?" reads the headline. In the subtitle, we read: 'If a composer is not a woman or Western, then it no longer fits into the classical canon.' Quite boldly put, because in any concert brochure you will find...
Playing the piano without hands is quite difficult. With one hand it is already almost impossible, although Paul Wittgenstein came a long way. The pianist - and elder brother of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein - lost his right arm in the First World War trenches. He set about training his left arm with some dogged determination and was able to...
'Don't use drugs, listen to my music!' This is what Sander Germanus (Amsterdam, 1972) writes confidently on his website. Words you don't immediately expect from a composer of modern-classical music. After all, in this context, many think of incomprehensible 'plink-plonk' rather than mind-blowing sounds. A refreshing sound from someone who designed his own method of composition, so-called 'horizontal harmony'. Ehm... What should we...
'I am not at all optimistic about the planet. Nor am I optimistic about the optimism with which the people in my show keep finding a solution to live on despite the calamity that befalls them.' Philippe Quesne has turned that despair into a beautiful play. Full of non-cynical survivors who turn everything into an adventure. How he does that...
Monday 15 April 2019, this date is forever etched in our memory. I couldn't keep dry at the images of the all-consuming fire at Notre-Dame de Paris. Like millions of others, I sat glued to my screen for hours with bated breath: this cannot be true! When the structure, the rose windows and even the organ turned out to be saved, I jumped...
Shocking mail, this afternoon. Theatre group Vis à Vis, the company that has been making very fine open-air spectacles on the beach near Almere for many years, would have to leave their just-built accommodation in just under a month. At least, so it seems. Read the text of the emergency message: 'After 10 years of uncertainty, Vis à Vis has been told by the college of...
A petition was recently started to restore Olivier Keegel's press accreditation by The National Opera. He was denied press passes because he frequently expressed negative views on Pierre Audi's programme choices on the blog Operagazet and in Het Parool. Moreover, he denounced his penchant for "director's theatre", in which, according to him, the content falls prey to a far-fetched...
Art at a music festival often degenerates into decoration, but that certainly does not apply to Groningen's CLASH. 'We don't want art to be left out of the programming, but rather to be given full attention. We think it deserves that,' says organiser Milou de Boer. Fifty per cent of CLASH's programming budget goes to the arts, and that was too...
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