Things we do for members and partners.
After co-organising FATFORM, a radical series of art events in Amsterdam Southeast - with furious crossover exhibitions and performances on the roofs of an abandoned shopping centre and a car park, the collective around creative production agency Vinger.nl has thrown itself into the new edition of the Open Art Route 2014. And it will be something.
One of the rules of thumb of contemporary theatre art reads as follows: There is no middle ground in a production with an insanely long title. Such a production is either fantastic or dies of its own pretensions. At Judson church is ringing in Harlem (made to measure) / twenty looks of paris is burning at the judson church (m2m) is the latter.
"You know ma'am, that big red painting? Turn right before that". A young attendant shows us the way. At first glance, it's nothing. A man in semi-uniform, black trousers, white shirt, slowly turns on his axis. Sol Lewitt's mural, number 1084 from 2003, lends him the necessary decorum. Around the corner hang Barnett Newman and Andy Warhol. Would the man care? In this 'hall of fame' of conceptual art, the man's spinning stands out a little timidly. Some visitors remain standing, leaning against white walls or sinking down on the polished wooden floor. Those who take their time watch the spinning of the man and his fellow dervishes slowly take possession of the Stedelijk.
This year's trip will go to India and Nepal. Because that seemed nice to him. Visitors to the Dutch premiere of Jelinek's Die Schutzbefohlene were looking forward to the summer. Next year they would visit a friend in Vietnam. Little hassle to get a visa. As a white European, the whole world is yours. You can go anywhere. The man did not realise how privileged he was.
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
The Holland Festival presents Abel Gance's restored film epic on Sunday Napoleon, with live orchestra. A rare event, for the first time in this form on mainland Europe. In 1927, Gance had performed with Napoleon delivered a groundbreaking and monumental piece of work that made unusual demands on the projection (three canvases) and went out into the world in a variety of severely shortened versions after the first performances.
Napoleon at Ziggo Dome promises to be spectacular, but who was That ambitious loner Abel Gance?
In school, we used to have a very good way to check the quality of wine: the yield. Wine with 14% alcohol was better than wine with 12% alcohol. After all, the goal was clear: to get drunk. Wine of 14% was more effective at that. So we preferred to drink wine with a yield of at least 14%.
After partially or even completely failed productions of Falstaff The National Opera now does everything right. Twenty years after the previous attempt in the Holland Festival, Verdi's last opera gets a dream performance that could only just become audience favourite of the entire festival.
Like many of my contemporaries, I have played Jeff Buckley's CDs grey, but know next to nothing about Pakistani Sufi music. Except that it's great. And that Abida Parveen is the queen of that genre. Tonight, this Voice of God and her ensemble are on stage at the National Opera & Ballet.
In cinemas this week: In the Name of, an old-fashioned solid Polish drama about a priest who tries in vain to escape his homosexuality through celibacy. He works in a village in the province with difficult-to-educate teenagers. "I would like to fuck all those boys," he exclaims
Breaking new ground in theatre is the aim of Canadian director Robert Lepage and his group Ex Machina. It seems like everything is unusual about 'Playing Cards: Spades': playing floor, lighting, seating around the stage, the stories, the acting and the surprising denouement.
It seems like a statement, opening the latest Holland Festival under Pierre Audi's direction with 'Vortex Temporum'. The collaboration between the two top Belgian ensembles Rosas and Ictus does everything that is scarce in the present day.
A surfing Dutch marketing guy noticed in South Africa that a disease was thinning the population indiscriminately. That made him care. Now, as an undisputed highlight, dance4life is celebrating its tenth anniversary at The Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
It will be a total experience, as if you were briefly in another world. 'Mirror Mirror' by Conny Janssen Danst is set in a former submarine hangar of the Rotterdamse Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM). The audience is taken there by boat.
After seven concert seasons, the broadcasting series takes 'The Friday of Vredenburg' farewell to emergency venue Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, better known as 'The Red Box'. From September, the concerts will again take place in the restored Great Hall of the otherwise brand-new TivoliVredenburg. The concert on 6 June will feature the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Groot Omroepkoor, conducted by Antony Hermus. They will play music by Beethoven, Richard Strauss and a brand new piece by Wim Laman, Requiem Songs.
William Forsythe, dance innovator, and widely regarded as one of the most important choreographers of our time, is quitting the company to which he attached his name on September 2015. The New York Times reports that. He will still remain associated with the company as an advisor, but the real management will probably be taken over by Jacopo Godani, a former student of the legendary choreographer.
Barely five months between first audition and first performance. That was all the time the makers and local residents had for the Volksopera Ondiep, which experienced the first of two performances on Friday 23 May. It was a warm May evening, touching at times, sometimes dreadful, but fun anyway: classics by Verdi (most of them), Bizet, Puccini and Offenbach, set to Dutch text and sung by complete amateurs. Accompanied, for once, by the Groot Omroepkoor.
Much has been written about it. And much talked about: the Reinbert de Leeuw biography by Thea Derks, which Reinbert de Leeuw did not allow to be published. Now Thea Derks, a member of the Cultuurpers cooperative, gets to explain her side of things to Peter Gielissen, also a member of the Cultuurpers cooperative. Nice story turned out. On Lezen.tv
The news: today it is hot, tomorrow the fish will be wrapped in it. In his video opera The News gives Jacob ter Veldhuis/JacobTV it a second life by putting it in a new context. 'These days, news is infotainment, dipped in sentiment.' Next Friday, the Dutch Travel Opera the premiere at the Wilminkteather in Enschede.
Nobody had foreseen, let alone wanted, the commotion caused by the performance series 'The Funeral' in the St Willibrordus Church in Utrecht. The apostolate of St Willibrordus Church feels that the church has been 'desecrated' and no longer wants to hold Masses there, now that Dries Verhoeven is performing 'The Funeral' there for ten evenings with the help of Sens Uitvaarten. These are theatrical funeral masses, with which he has buried the welfare state and social support for art, among other things. But hurting someone with this was never his intention: ''If I seek provocation at all in the project, it is the one with the spectator.''
The digital canvass battle in cinema is still some time away. For now, moviegoers are benefiting, according to research.
About two years ago, the digitisation of the Dutch cinema business was completed. All cinemas and film houses have been projecting digitally since 2012. In the projection booth, the disappearance of 35mm equipment meant a landslide.
Tonight, the 67th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opens with Grace of Monaco, a biopic with a major lead role for Nicole Kidman. Jury president of the world's most important film event is New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion. Three of the other six jury members also
his women. Does Cannes have something to make up for?
Straight lines, single-coloured surfaces. Red, yellow, blue and white. Representing the essence of reality. That was the aim of the painters of De Stijl in the first half of the last century. At the same time, Hendrik Valk also had this ideal.
The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.
370 million cost to renovate the Rijksmuseum. All but a tonne. 5.5 million less than the last estimate from 2010. Which again it was almost quadruple the original budget, which still assumed 134 million. But that was before the crisis over those stairs and that bicycle route, and before all kinds of construction companies went bankrupt, and before the whole thing was in danger of collapsing anyway.
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