Charm and muscle at final performance of dance courses
Overwhelming final performances from the dance departments of the Royal Conservatoire and the National Ballet Academy shed light on young talent. And at the courses themselves.
PODIUM ART
Anything for which people enter a stage.
Theatre Festival Boulevard: Not the Avignon, but the Berlin of the Netherlands?
There are many reasons not to go on holiday. It costs money, you come back more stressed than you went, the food is no good, it costs tons of CO2 and it doesn't increase mutual understanding between countries either. Reason enough, then, to just stay here and enjoy the free time given to you by the boss, or by yourself if you are self-employed. Without being barked at by airport staff.
Jubilee concert #DNO: unnecessary flexing of muscles
'I feel cheated,' said the man next to me as we left the auditorium at ten to nine-thirty. He had come all the way from Tilburg to the Stopera for the concert that concluded the National Opera's 50th anniversary on Wednesday 29 June. 'It will take me even longer than the concert lasted, including intermission,' he grumbled. He also had little to say about the offering itself. And that while all around us the audience stood on their seats to cheer on the internationally renowned soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek.
Oy. @geertwilderspvv sets Richard III as an example to the Netherlands
Finally, it was not quite literal, but he was clearly referring to it: Richard III. Geert Wilders, himself not too culturally savvy, quotes Shakespeare in his umpteenth plea to get the Netherlands out of the EU with pot-covered borders. In the second chamber. I saw it on Nieuwsuur, and you can watch it back. At 39′:49″ minutes into the broadcast he is in debate with his great friend, the VVD's Halbe Zijlstra.
Suburbia’s Vijand van het Volk waarschuwt voor neoliberalisme
Vijand van het Volk is de zomervoorstelling van Theatergroep Suburbia, in de regie van Albert Lubbers. Het stuk haakt aan bij de actualiteit van corrupte bankiers, milieuschandalen en overheidsdienaren die klokkenluiderkwesties in de doofpot stoppen. Deze sterke voorstelling is scherp van toon, polemisch en met vileine humor. Beter dan in eerdere Suburbia-voorstellingen past het vertrouwde dynamische acteerwerk mooi in de theatrale ruimte. Dit keer is dat de grote open schuur op Stadslandgoed de Kemphaan.
Nicolas Mansfield: Today I feel more European than ever. #Brexit
24th of June, 2016. What a day. I spent it at the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in The Hague. Speaking with civil servants about the achievements, plans, challenges and dreams of the Dutch National Touring Opera. All in the shadow of something I find difficult to process.
Akram Khan's 'Until the Lions' drags you through borders #HF16
As soon as you enter the Ketelhuis of Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek, a dark droning tone takes you into the misty, somewhat ominous atmosphere of 'Until the Lions' by Akram Khan Company. A huge disc from a tree trunk, with jagged annual rings and cracks, will become the scene of a mythical battle. At stake is the human body: weak, strong, male, female. Boundaries will perish.
Roaring, pounding big band overwhelms with conspiracies #hf16
A big band, a ticking clock, conspiracy theories and twelve-tonality. Mix that in a theatrical setting and it can go whooping out of control. Yet composer Darcy James Argue manages to make it a propulsive and energising whole, with help from director Isaac Butler and cinematographer Peter Nigrihi.
Wunderbaum sends you into the night with a smile #HF16
This year's Holland Festival spotlights Rotterdam-based theatre collective Wunderbaum with the revival of 'The Coming of Xia', premieres of 'Privacy' and 'The Future of Sex' and the film 'Stop acting now'. With this film, Wunderbaum concludes their four-year project 'The New Forest', a 'Platform for social change', according to Wunderbaum, "The New Forest depicts transition and casts a...
Neil Bartlett's Stella: so perfect it's a bit irritating #HF16
The smallest details speak for themselves. For the second time during this edition of the Holland Festival, the legendary BBC series This Life comes along. Richard Cant, who plays a flawless lead role in Neil Bartlett's play Stella, has previously appeared in This Life, the series that set the standard for the modern docusoap in 1996. So now live, up close, in De Brakke Grond's Red Hall, the man who also played a solid role in Midsomer Murders.
Olga Neuwirth sticks to old avant-garde #HF16
It is good that the Holland Festival dares to stick its neck out, by making Olga Neuwirth (1968), unknown here, its focus composer this year. On reflection, by the way, I would have preferred to hear her high-profile opera Bählamms Fest in a staged version once, rather than Le Encantadas. This piece composed last year did not quite manage to live up to the high expectations...
Pascal Gallois: formidable champion of the bassoon #HF16
Bassoonist Pascal Gallois gets laughs when he tries in vain to insert the flowers he has just received into the tube of his instrument. Also in the now classic Dialogue de l'ombre double by Pierre Boulez, he manages to make the audience chuckle on Sunday 19 June, when he produces a kind of elephant-like trumpet with much misfiring. His performance is part of the action ''Save the bassoon', which will conclude on Sunday 25 June with a concert at the Holland Festival Proms at the Concertgebouw. For this hundreds of (amateur) bassoonists ON. Action successful, in other words.
Grunberg doesn't come out of his hole in The Future of Sex #HF16
Woody Allen made sure in 1972 that his fans could not watch Star Wars with dry eyes years later. The final scene of his film 'Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask' shows us the male brain as the bridge of a Star Cruiser where the crew is hard at work to bring a date to a successful conclusion. The spermatozoa in the front are a squabbling gang of take-off runners, heading for an uncertain descent towards beating egg.
COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst shows a delicious new world
You don't have to go to Terschelling at all for an atmospheric location performance. COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst is an exciting experience on a totally, totally neglected place.
In the 1980s, she started choreographing with Djazzex, years later she performed for Obama. Now Conny Janssen (interview here) with her ensemble at the Ferro Dome. A dilapidated venue you wouldn't expect much from the outside. Plans to turn it into a Rotterdam Heineken Music Hall are according to the AD cancelled. It's as if the city of Rotterdam said to Conny: here's a place we can't do anything with, you do something with it. Dut succeeded her wonderfully: thanks to a creative approach, the entire industrial entourage has a underground-appearance.
The Dark Ages: beautiful investigative theatre by Milo Rau. #HF16
When we think of 'The Dark Ages', we think of the rough raw dark Middle Ages, with church and king and no hygiene. However, Swiss director Milo Rau's performance, now at the Holland Festival, refers to a much more recent piece of European history. In a recent interview With the Culture Press, he said:
Though dated, Pina Bausch' Nelken still impresses #HF16
This way from row nine, it is like being knee-deep in carnations yourself. The heads of the audience in front of me merge silently into a forest of stems crowned with pink, through which dancers carefully step back and forth like leggy chickens.
The find is great: Nelken by Pina Bausch depicts paradise as a place where you have to be careful or things will go wrong. The carnations force the dancers to be careful. As a spectator, you go along with them, without all the underlying thoughts immediately coming through to you.
Digging in the earth stays on the surface in Gardens Speak #HF16
There I am. Next to Holland Festival director Ruth Mackenzie, on a grave, as part of the installation Gardens Speak on the stage of the main hall of Theatre Bellevue in Amsterdam. There is nothing to see, little to hear. Tone lights suggest a rising sun after a few minutes. I get up together with the ten other visitors. Quite a shame, because I was actually quite comfortable lying there.
The programme booklet sounded promising:
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Choir and orchestra are the true stars in Pique Dame #HF16
The biggest applause at the end of Tchaikovsky's opera Pique Dame went to the choir of the National Opera and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Wednesday 15 June. And rightly so: choristers and orchestral musicians brought the highly varied score to sound flawlessly, without once getting out of sync with each other. Dynamics, rhythm, phrasing, empathy, everything was solid. A performance of stature rarely seen in the Stopera. The vocal soloists were somewhat pale in comparison.
Olga Neuwirth: Weltkatzenmusik or acoustic preservation? #HF16
Austrian politician Jörg Haider labelled its work Weltkatzenmusik. When his far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs joined the government in 2000, it led to mass protests. At one such rally, Olga Neuwirth (Graz, 1968), under the title 'Ich lass mich nicht wegjodeln', denounced his anti-intellectual and anti-cultural agenda. The rest is history: Haider drove himself to pieces in 2008, Neuwirth...
All 18 gloomy: Melancholia is concert for sour old men #HF16
We are all going to die! We already have that certainty in. And since the dawn of mankind, every new generation invariably knows that it is going to happen to them now. After all: their successors have never prospered anywhere like today's youth. Nice premise for a concert, thought German director Sebastian Nübling[hints]Nuling was a guest at the Holland Festival last year with an adaptation of Hebbel's play Nibelungen, read the review and a interview.[/hints], good idea to programme, thought the Holland Festival. I seriously wonder why.
Film fails to lift Die Schöpfung to higher plane at Holland Festival #HF16
Full of religious inspiration, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote the oratorio Die Schöpfung, his famous musical ode to the Biblical creation story. Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b 1965) reflects on Haydn's masterpiece with an aesthetic film that shows how humans bend the world to their will. During the Holland Festival this film was screened at a live performance of the music by Collegium Vocale Gent and baroque orchestra B'Rock led by conductor René Jacobs. Got Die Schöpfung an extra charge through this film, which largely consists of people in white suits walking around sandy landscapes?
We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16
There are countries in the world, where the boundaries between art disciplines are not as sharply drawn as they are here. The Holland Festival, under the new leadership of Ruth MacKenzie, is catching us up. She is bringing events here where the boundaries between visual art, performance, video, film and performing arts can no longer be drawn. Events that generate meaning in ways that are quite new to us, such as The Encounter, last week, and Gardens Speak, later this week.
'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16
Swiss playwright Milo Rau created a theatrical trilogy about the demise of the European ideal. The second part The Dark Ages is now at the Holland Festival. Rau combined his actors' painful, personal life stories with themes from the works of Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies. With a Freudian sauce: 'Countless people who are The Dark Ages have seen ask me: 'Milo, is something wrong with your father?'
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