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PODIUM ART

Anything for which people enter a stage.

Culture Council: The Netherlands underestimates its own music theatre culture. (Why opera still seeks talent abroad)

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... 

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PODCAST! Govert Schilling and Leoni Jansen find solace in total nothingness via Twitter. (Why Joni Mitchell, too, is immortal)

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... 

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Why you shouldn't miss 'Im wunderschönen Monat Mai' at Paradiso

On Wednesday 16 January, Reinbert de Leeuw will present his cycle Im wunderschönen Monat Mai at Paradiso. A unique opportunity to see him at work once more in his globally believed masterpiece. In 2003, he surprised friend and foe alike with this composition inspired by songs by Schumann and Schubert. Was that not swearing in church? Arnold Schoenberg had the Romanticism... 

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Petra Gerritsen goes to a concert almost every night off. 'You're with your own group. But how bad is that?'

'I work five nights a week and so I have to find out specifically when I can go to a concert. Sometimes I take time off for it. And then they do say, "hey, are you going to a concert again already?", and I say, "of course I'm going to a concert again". But I don't think it's extreme either.' Petra Gerritsen is process expert 

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Fred Wondergem: 'There is always more that you don't see than what you do see.'

'When I look in the auditorium at a classical concert now, I do think: it's full now, but in 20 years eighty per cent will be dead. So the bottom has to be fed, and TivoliVredenburg does that well. They do it, for example, with Out of the Blue, which is a programme where you get great food and by a special host 

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The Netherlands has a cruel history. This is how Theatre Group Alum makes it palpable in '1619, make it short'.

Never knew I would feel a tear welling up for the fate of a 17th century Council Pensionary. Yet that happened on Friday 21 December, at the premiere of '1619, make it short...'. With this final volume, author Erik Snel puts a crown on his trilogy on the Eighty Years' War. Was volume 1 (1600, battle of Nieuwpoort) mainly a cheerful accumulation of... 

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Forty times a year to TivoliVredenburg: 'You get everywhere if you love music, eh.'

Peter Vossen says he experiences live concerts on average twice a week. Not just in TivoliVredenburg, although he visited there almost 40 times last year. 'I also see a lot of free concerts on the streets and in cafés, of course.' Jazz is his great love, but he also attends soul, funk, Latin or pop concerts. Regularly, he can be found 

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Three CDs you wouldn't have wanted to miss in 2018

The end of the year is approaching. So the lists fly around our ears again with 'most beautiful', 'best', 'most unforgettable', 'most moving'... fill in the blanks. I think compiling top-soaps is actually a typically male thing, but I'm not that bad. Here are three CDs you wouldn't have wanted to miss this year - in no particular order. Louise Farrenc: Variations for Piano Biliana Tzinlikova,... 

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Kind of a recovery in the performing arts, but pay particular attention to what's happening in the southern Netherlands

As part of "Hi, Figures!", Statistics Netherlands today released updated figures on the performing arts in the Netherlands. These show a cautious recovery, although the consequences of the 2011 interventions by the VVD and PVV are still painfully visible. The figures show that theatre in particular is struggling. There, the... 

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On Bergen and Delden, Greg Nottrot and the lost million: Culture Press' Best Listened To podcast.

Linda Huijsmans and Wijbrand Schaap catch you up in a good half hour on the backgrounds of the larger Culture Press News of the past few weeks. It's a bit more about the nude/nude situation in the arts, but of course it's also about money, that million that was drilled through the nose of performing artists by a row in the board of the Social... 

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Man stronger than Fate? Forget it! - Oedipe by George Enescu at #DNO

Anyone wishing to pass through the gates of Thebes must solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Those who fail die an irrevocable death, their bones fading into the charnel field around her. Oedipus challenges her, determined to save the city. 'Name someone or something more powerful than Fate!', oracles the Sphinx from her single-engine plane. 'Man!', jubilates Oedipus. To which. 

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Performing artists miss out on million in European grant due to 'administrative inability'

'Indecent and rude,' is how Miep van Diggelen, former chairman of the board of the Performing Arts Social Fund (SFPK), calls the actions of the board of that same fund. That board, or at least about five members of the seven-member board, decided - outside the official meeting - to withdraw a subsidy application they had initiated earlier, without having read it. The promising... 

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Why something needs to happen soon for amateur theatre in Utrecht

The Utrecht Centre for the Arts is bankrupt after a long ordeal. It was cut back. There is no more room in the Netherlands' fourth city for a large, centrally organised music and culture school. Nor for pottery, painting and video filming. The city council has found a solution. For the soon-to-be homeless UCK students, the municipality thinks... 

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Introdans programma Moderne Meisjes

No discussion of women at Introdans, because they have Modern Girls.

Dance pioneer Lucinda Childs is actually the reason I went to Modern Girls. I am a lover of that. Of her work. But as a bonus, I got Regina van Berkel. With Frozen Echo. Why is it important for Introdans to bring a programme of work by female choreographers only? Huh? That's the feeling I got. With Van Berkel's Frozen Echo. Right from... 

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Why it's good that De Nederlandse Reisopera is coming to you with Die Tote Stadt.

In 1920, Erich Wolfgang Korngold experienced triumphs with his psychological opera Die tote Stadt. The work was performed in more than eighty cities at the time, with unanimous critical acclaim. The opera then disappeared from the stage for a long time but is nowadays performed again sparsely. So it is good that the Nederlandse Reisopera is bringing this almost forgotten piece back to the stage.... 

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Cultural sector on expedition to Zero Waste: A prelude to a circular cultural sector

Eight cultural institutions started the first Zero Waste Expedition Culture this year. During this expedition, the first steps were taken in terms of waste separation and waste prevention. The Maaspoort in Venlo, Kunstlinie Almere Flevoland, Luxor Theatre Rotterdam, Museon, Paradiso, Tivoli/Vredenburg, the Zuiderzeemuseum and the Van Abbemuseum are the frontrunners in the expedition, setting an example for their... 

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The Best Listening Cultural Press PODCAST! Greg Nottrot visited Putin's dacha, where Halbe Zijlstra was not.

'How many realities can we handle? For me, that is the theme of 2018. Those ladies from North Korea who were cheering, for example. But it was also in Halbe Zijlstra who had lied about Putin's dacha.' Greg Nottrot, theatre maker from Utrecht, had set out for this year to create an end-of-year performance that would capture the zeitgeist well.... 

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programma V lighfoot kylian foto: Rahi Rezvani

Will Kylián's work return to NDT? (The 3 questions everyone is asking now that Paul Lightfoot announces departure)

Paul Lightfoot, artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater, announces his departure from 2020. A remarkable decision. Just recently, the energetic leader was on stage at Zuiderstrandtheater to properly wave off Gerald Tibbs, former artistic director of NDT2 to his retirement. But there are some questions. 1: Why the day after a departure of his own... 

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Music publicist Maarten Brandt: 'For one note from Mahler's Ninth, I would give the gift of Shostakovich's entire oeuvre'

Sounding Alchemy, is the name of the chunky volume recently published by music publicist Maarten Brandt (1953). It has 715 pages, including illustrations and an extensive index. In 98 articles, Brandt unfolds his views on music and music programming. He dedicated the beautifully designed book to his admired Marius Flothuis, programmer of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for many years. His heirs received a first copy during... 

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Fit tijdens Significant Moments van NDT2

Vulnerable surrender for NDT2 in Significant Moments

Moving. Before Significant Moments begins, the brisk Fernando Hernando Magadan presents himself as the new artistic director of NDT2. Applause in the auditorium. But the reason he stands behind a lectern with a huge flower arrangement is to pay tribute to the retiring artistic director: Gerald Tibbs. Gerald Tibbs. The peerless dancer everyone could walk away from 

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Curious: arts sector support institutes turn against plans for new theatre and music sector institutes

There are quite a few petitions floating around these days. The most curious of all petitions was in the digital mailbox today. In it, the existing support institutes in the cultural sector urge the Lower House not to put money into new support institutes. In doing so, clubs such as the Landelijk Kennniscentrum Amateurkunst (LKCA), Cultuur+Ondernemen, and the Boekmanstichting put in a small but... 

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The 5 concerts you don't want to miss at November Music

The female composer, she continues to stir minds. My article following Mathilde Wantenaar's world premiere of Damocles unleashed a fierce discussion on Facebook. 'Why should women be given preferential treatment?" an angry man asked. 'All that matters to me is quality, not whether a piece of music was written by a man or a woman.' He got icky about the m/f discussion, which... 

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WO-MAN in theatre: 'Crazy actually to link 'power' directly to 'masculine'.'

One of the sources of inspiration for director Ingrid Kuijpers was a film about a certain kind of flatworm. It has also found a place in her performance WO-MAN. Flatworms are hermaphroditic animals. Mating amounts to a fight over which of the two gets fertilised. Kuijpers: ,,The one that manages to get the other pregnant has won. If you get pregnant... 

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Jan van de Putte: 'My work is about conquering music'

Dutch composer Jan van de Putte (b. 1959) invariably crosses the boundaries of music. Hesitant starts, silence, wide gestures and explorations of our subconscious are as natural in his score as resounding tones. Last autumn, he published his four-part song cycle set to poetry by Pessoa, in which he aptly stammers the Portuguese poet. On 8 November, his latest composition, Cette... 

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