Usually without lyrics, often with music, always with movement
Years ago, Nederlands Dans Theater profiled itself with the slogan "challenging dance". That applies well to Straight Around. This performance by youth company NDT2 premiered at Holland Dance Festival in The Hague on 18 February. The company does not immediately make things easy for its audience with the four danced pieces, but for those who know how to empathise, there is...
Following the exploration of the labour market in the cultural sector made by the Social and Economic Council (SER) and the Council for Culture last month, there was a lot of attention on the low earning self-employed in the cultural sector. Promising headlines such as "Everyone gets paid except the artist" (NRC) and "It's a matter of waiting every month to see if I earn enough" (Volkskrant) could account for recognition...
'In the new season, we go back to normal,' Pierre Audi said on Monday 15 February during the presentation of the new season of The National Opera. He does, however, continue the forward-looking Opera Forward Festival, which was set up to mark its 50th anniversary. There are also quite a few new own productions on the roll, including the world premiere of...
Three mongols playing Mongols. Dschingis Khan, the opening performance of Something Raw, is provocative and consequential. With this performance by German theatre collective Monstertruck, or the also Berlin-based Man Power Mix by Sheena Mcgrandles and Zinzi Buchanan, the festival Something Raw lives up to its name. Something Raw is a festival in which Amsterdam theatres Frascati, De Brakke...
Never before has the Holland Festival placed itself at the centre of society as it is today. The 2016 programme is steeped in the turbulent times in which we live. The Netherlands holds the presidency of the European Union this spring. Artistic director Ruth Mackenzie has taken this fact unflinchingly to give 'Europe' a wide place in the programming. In presenting...
Time for our success list. In 2015, we attracted 60,000 more visitors than in 2014. That's something to be proud of. A website that focuses on the stories that existing media find the small, and then figures like that. That we attracted those 300,000 visitors is one, that they spent an average of 2 and a half minutes per story,...
Mrs Cornelys' Entertainments. Under that remarkable title, baroque company New Dutch Academy presented a concert in a theatrical setting. The Hague's Korzo Theatre turned into a society evening. Visiting a much-discussed lady from 18th-century London. It was a feast for the eyes and ears. New Dutch Academy has a changing line-up in addition to some permanent members. The Academy keeps itself - the name...
When the car park of the Zuiderstrandtheater is full at a pre-premiere, you know something exciting is happening inside. And that's right: Isabelle Beernaert and her ensemble present the new production Under My Skin. Dance like an Instagram account: popular, photogenic and ephemeral. Woman Actually, dance is like a Pinterest account. Because that seems to be mostly for women. And there is a lot of...
I hesitated for a while whether to report on the theatre workshop offered to Syrian refugees by Koon Theatre on Monday 9 November, as part of Dancing on the Edge. During the workshop, the refugees prepared a short presentation to be shown in Stadsschouwburg Utrecht on Friday 13 November, prior to the theatre performance Above Zero. The reason...
No war scares or torturous refugee issues tonight 5 November, but getting unexpectedly intimate on stage with a strange woman. That could happen to you during Dancing on the Edge. The congenial, biennial festival featuring artists from the Middle East and North Africa can be seen in several cities until 14 November. Once started by race entrepreneur and dancer Gary Feingold, the...
At Amsterdam's Brakke Grond, the Dancing on the Edge festival (DOTE) opened yesterday with an evening that immediately showed what the span is all about. The first performance, Blank, engaged directly with the audience. The second, and official opening performance, Plastic, was more about the dynamics between the performers themselves and with the soundscape. With her opening speech
In the wings of Nederlands Dans Theater, the new generation of dance makers is ready. Medhi Walerski and Johan Inger are both former dancers of the company and have previously created pieces there. In NDT2's Shearing the Wolves programme, they each surprise with a world premiere full of intense, pure dance. In comparison, an older work by house choreographers Sol Léon and...
Unemployment is rife in Tunisia. Young men there now clean plastic from the streets and beaches, as a heavily underpaid job. It led theatre-maker Meher Debbich to a surprising insight: 'Old ideas are like plastic. They don't decay. They have to be disposed of, for recycling. Otherwise we will perish in them.' He tells me about this in the interview below
Next week sees the start of festival Dancing on the Edge. Unlike its name suggests, this festival, with performances in The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam, is not only about dance, but also about film, theatre and politics. The 'Edge' it is about, the festival looks for in its theme: an urgent artistic dialogue with the Middle East. More needed now than...
Some think dance has nothing to do with politics. German theatre maker Helena Waldmann clearly thinks otherwise. Waldmann makes socially engaged dance theatre and uses her work to point out the 'social sore spots' of different cultures and sees transcultural similarities in them. Made in Bangladesh is a haunting and poignant performance that draws a parallel between the poor working conditions...
As I wrote in my earlier article about the Nederlandse Dansdagen, choreographer Loïc Perela won this year's Nederlandse Dansdagen Maastricht Prize. It earned him 12,000 euros to put into his new project HASHTAG. The award has helped some previous winners on their way (Monique Duurvoort, Joost Vrouenraets, Erik Kaiel, Muhanad Rasheed, Joeri Dubbe,...
The India Dance Festival received just a little less attention from the national media this weekend than the Amsterdam Dance Event. Something that theatre director Leo Spreksel of The Hague-based Korzo Theatre was a bit worried about on Sunday. Because for three days now, his halls have been so muddy that he even turned away visitors who came all the way from Switzerland....
With Henry by Itamar Serussi, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam makes an exciting statement. After all, the kickoff of the anniversary season is not a corny look back at 70 years of dance history, but stands in the middle of the present and looks ahead. Scapino does so with a relatively unknown choreographer delivering his first full-length work, in an unusual dance style. Mars Not entirely unknown is Israeli Itamar Serrusi. He is...
The first weekend of October saw the Netherlands Dance Days (NDD) take place in Maastricht. As Ruben Brugman reported, important prizes for the dance world are awarded there. But the Dance Days seem mainly intended to promote Dutch dance, more than being a critical evaluation or artistic boost. At the Dance Days, no pithy speech on the State of Dance as...
Those who go to a dance performance want to enjoy beautiful movements, expression, movement composition and a fine stage setting, wrapped in music or a soundscape. But there is something, which is always overlooked: the sound of dance itself. Dancer and choreographer Eline van Ark discovered that this forgotten aspect holds great richness and subtle expressiveness. The sound...
During a festive dinner at Theater aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht, 'Zwanen' were awarded to dancer Jorge Nozal of NDT 1, Ann Van den Broek for The Black Piece and to Roel Voorintholt (Gouden Zwaan), artistic director of Introdans. The annual highlights festival De Nederlandse Dansdagen hosted this successful 'Swan Dinner': posh sponsors and stakeholders ate side by side with messy dance artists. This is how it should be...
Bodies are dragged away to loud applause and cheers: a more symbolic beginning Nederlands Dans Theater could not have imagined. With Start Again, the international ballet company highlights an exile until 2019 at the harbour in Scheveningen. A tricky location, because remote. But also a dynamic place. A Dutch choreographer would surely invent a choreography there with ferries, cutters and lifeboats. NDT, however, chooses the...
A Korean in a military suit singing karaoke, a crotchety dancer mewling with her knees kneading the floor, eight elderly people sweeping in and a son who turns out to be the father. Don't try to interpret this performance, the line of believability is miles behind you. Welcome to Father. 'Nothing is taken for granted anymore, boundaries blur, the old...
From 22 November, the five-part NTR series ADO danst can be seen. This is not the first time football and dance have merged. Surely the most famous example of football and dance is Schijnbewegingen: an NOS film by Piet Erkelens and Pim Marks about the similarities between the two different worlds. They showed this through interviews with...
Two choreographers exploring how a dancer and the eye of the audience interact. Dance makers who rattle common ideas about identity and sexuality. Artists who confront us with the dreams of perfection and glamour that advertising and marketing throw at us. The famous Cullberg Ballet made a striking choice by performing choreographies by the...
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