Usually without lyrics, often with music, always with movement
Today, Amsterdam Dance City sent a fire letter to funds and policymakers. Because things are going hard in the wrong direction with talent development. Especially independent choreographers lose out in the new subsidy plans. While these artists are already struggling to survive. Their own economic situation is hopeless and there are no good independent facilities to stage performances.
While things are rumbling in the Amsterdam dance and performance world due to a total lack of solid support for development and experimentation (see Alarm Letter), choreographer Ola Maciejewska is showing the impressive Bombyx Mori at Veem House of Performance this weekend. Maciejewska is a fine example of a talented maker who has taken refuge elsewhere because of the crumbling art climate in the Netherlands. After...
'What is the relevance of dance?' Since the conference The Relevance of Dance in March 2016, this question has been haunting my mind. That weekend, the main topic of discussion was the relevance of dance as a performing art to watch. An approach that left me unsatisfied, because my main interest myself is to know what the relevance of dance as an activity...
The enthusiasm that characterised Toer van Schayk and his generation of choreographers is disappearing. With the programme Dutch Masters, the Dutch National Ballet is honouring an era. The success of Toer van Schayk and his generation If it is up to the public, the master ballets of the three great Van's (Rudi van Dantzig, Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk) may stay for a while longer. As one man stood...
TING! is a pitch-black anniversary spectacle by Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. But the NITS give the evening luster. Large billboards along the entrance to the Ferro Dome in Rotterdam still hint at the colourful history of the 70-year-old Scapino Ballet. Once inside the round gas holder, however, choreographer Ed Wubbe cuts straight to the chase with a world dipped in sombre tones. A...
Vacancy: Advisors one-off grants - Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) From 1 March 2017 The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) invests in art that enriches life in the city. The AFK provides grants to artists and cultural organisations, drives innovation and stimulates the quality, dynamism and pluriformity of Amsterdam art. The AFK supports both experiment...
Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) seeks a member for the Supervisory Board from 1-1-2017 The AFK invests in art that enriches life in the city. The AFK provides subsidies to artists and cultural organisations, drives innovation and stimulates the quality, dynamism and pluriformity of Amsterdam art. The AFK supports both experimentation and proven quality,...
September, the month of the Dutch Theatre Festival and the Fringe Festival full of old and new performances you must see. But a lot is also happening in the rest of the country at the start of the new theatre season. Five must-sees. Toneelgroep Maastricht, Eyes wide shut (theatre) 'The new Shakespeare' he has been called, I already called him 'devil's advocate'. Fact...
In Dance Around The World, ex-dancers Jan Kooijman and Ish Ait Hamou travel the world. Because dance connects. That makes for television that is more fun than you think. The programme, now being trialled in 3Lab, is a kind of cross between Top Gear and Looking for God. Were you already bombarded to death with celebrities looking for religion...
The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts would love a central 'vibrant dance venue' in Amsterdam. But surely such a Dance House has just been torpedoed? It was striking: in the Introduction to Dance to the grants awarded by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) for the 2017-2020 grant awards, they note an "ardent need" for a "dance house": a central place for development, production and the...
Being the best at your craft, and then not in one craft, but in three or so. That, too, is what makes an artist an artist. Ben Duke is a great artist. He is a gifted dancer, a phenomenal actor and a cum laude graduate in English literature. It is therefore logical that he wrote the greatest poem in British history, the...
Nederlands Dans Theater's summer course gives a glimpse of the future. At the top dancers of tomorrow, but also the choreographers: many of the company's dance makers created a first piece for this summer course. This year, the course also gives a look at the old stage of the half-demolished Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. You can catch a...
Adding three tonnes a year is cause for celebration. But Viktorien van Hulst, at the helm of the Bossche Theatre Festival Boulevard for the second year, had to restrain herself in her opening speech. Because the subsidising Performing Arts Fund does not give money to a large number of well-performing fellow institutions despite a positive assessment, the suffering in the performing arts exceeds the joy. Torn is called that....
The Performing Arts Fund announced the awards for the 2017-2020 period. What does this mean for the dance sector? Pluralism and 'bleeding through'. While everyone is on holiday, the Performing Arts Fund announced the grant awards for the performing arts for the 2017-2020 period. And it was reiterated: the fund is facing a previously initiated budget cut of 30 per cent. That would...
The effects of the previous cabinet's arts cuts are finally becoming clear. The Performing Arts Fund today announced the winners and losers of the battle for four-year subsidies. From 2017, the Dutch art world will be a lot smaller, more meagre and poorer than it was until 2013. Big names are gone, traditions dismantled, while what is new faces an extremely uncertain existence.
Festival Boulevard kicks off on 4 August. The traditional reason to come back from holiday in August has a fuller programme than ever this time. With lots of youth theatre. We'll help you get started in advance.
Three dancers and three dance productions have been nominated for Swans 2016. On Friday 7 October, Daphne Bunskoek and Art Rooijakkers will announce who the winners are during the Nederlandse Dansdagen's Opening Programme 2016 in Maastricht. But you can already draw a few conclusions from the list of nominees.
It is a new and important trend within the programming of international dance and performance festivals in the Netherlands: not only showing relevant work by international choreographers, but also paying explicit attention to dance makers connected to Dutch dance practice. Spring Utrecht opened in May with Nicole Beutler and closed with Jan Martens, while during Julidans Pere Faura was allowed to kick off with sin baile no hay paraíso (no dance, no paradise).
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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