Anything for which people enter a stage.
'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...
The Flemish-Dutch House deBuren promotes cultural and social cooperation and exchange between Flanders and the Netherlands by presenting, producing, inspiring and connecting. Spearheads of deBuren are Flemish-Dutch cooperation, talent development and diversity. As a house of culture and debate, we offer an extensive programme with 150 public activities a year and various cultural productions and projects. deBuren covers many...
Learning is less about what you learn than from whom you learn it. Not that what you learn doesn't matter, but you simply learn more from an inspired person than from a teacher who completes his list. Fortunately, I have had many good teachers. Some of them are now demented or dead, with almost all of them...
Some 400 virtual metres we go up with the dancers. Beforehand, we are warned to look straight ahead if we are afraid of heights. For me, this was unnecessary, I loved flying along in the huge circular space, knowing I was safely ensconced in a chair. Choreography, avatars, architecture and Blixa Bargeld. Those are a few...
The heritage sector is not the sexiest sector of the Dutch cultural world. Even though nude exhibitions are flying around your ears this season, you're more likely to think of obscure museums, monuments, stamp collections, old stuff. This is how it happened that the Digital Heritage Netherlands Foundation could exist for almost 25 years without anyone in the 'more popular' arts (stage, film, literature)...
Water and dance have agility in common. Yet there is much more to be gained from this interface. Two choreographies in the New Adventures series give audiences a water experience that is both playful and reflective. Under the title New Adventures, Dansmakers Amsterdam presents work by selected dancers and choreographers that they created during a four-week study residency at the production house,...
Is production house Dansmakers Amsterdam losing its housing? Together with other institutions in the dance sector, it has made every effort to align and further develop the whole spectrum of dance facilities in Amsterdam. In 2018, for example, the joint plan Danswerf was developed and submitted as an application for a two-year development grant to the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK)...
'Please stop the show!", shouted an 83-year-old former reviewer from the back row. Theatre Frascati fell silent for a moment. There had never really been such an interruption at the Holland Festival's traditionally festive press conference. And that while Faustin Linyekula had just got into his stride, telling about the projects he is carrying out with his Studio Kanako in Kisangani. They provided...
Because the weather was record beautiful, I walked from Amsterdam Centraal to Theater Bellevue on Sunday 17 February 2019. I was going to see the performance 'And so I shall go again.' going to see, by Ilay den Boer, someone I used to follow intensively but had lost track of since I am no longer a paid opinion seller. I considered the title of the performance as...
What exactly was said remains unknown for now. That there was considerable discussion is clear. In any case, the result is clear: the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (which does not want to be written with capital letters) is back in business with the arts education projects in North Brabant. The brass band and kettle music, with which the Limburg-Brabant merger orchestra earlier announced all the little kids, together with three smaller youth theatre institutions, in...
Cultural summit will take place Friday, February 1, 2019, at the North Brabant Provincial House. Reason: The 'Orkexit', or, the decision by the Philharmonie Zuid Nederland to cease all education activities in North Brabant with immediate effect. This not only deprives thousands of children of culture, but also puts a number of small youth theatre companies in dire financial straits. The Philharmonic, a merger orchestra, formed...
Oratorios are notoriously undramatic, because they only tell a story for one second and do not zoom in on human emotions. Juditha Triumphans is no exception and the narrative itself has little to it. To rid her town of its assailants, Judith gets their general drunk and then cuts off his head. This could make for a compelling story, were it...
Peaks and valleys right from the opening night of CaDance, the festival of contemporary dance. From toe-curlingly long dance to sky-high drama. Highlights: dancer Sammie Hermans and the entire Mom:Me. Crushing New artistic director Stacz Wilhelm, in the presence of the minister during his opening speech, names the harsh years of austerity since 2013. The so-called obviousness of art he wants to...
There is an artist café in Utrecht that few Utrechters know about. And I don't mean Theatercafé De Bastaard, where by now a whole generation of actors, filmmakers and writers come from, but the artists' foyer of TivoliVredenburg. I've eaten and hung out there a few times, as an embedded reporter of De Nacht van de Poëzie, when it's very late into...
The Performing Arts Fund is failing to professionalise and make the music theatre sector sustainable. So says the Council for Culture in an advice leaked yesterday on the future of music theatre in the Netherlands. The advice presented today to the rest of the Netherlands therefore wants to transfer more different music theatre makers and companies from the Performing Arts Fund to the Cultural Basic Infrastructure. This partly...
It all started with a tweet. Leoni Jansen, singer, got into her car after a performance in Winsum, and looked around for a moment. She saw that the starry sky, far from the big lights in the Randstad, was beautiful. 'Just started the journey back from Winsum, fog low to the ground, clear sky. On the right, I think Castor and...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français