God and Devil play a game with man - Holland Opera's Flying Dutchman: a feast for the eyes and ears
With its expressive music, stylish costumes, dazzling video images and beautiful lighting, The Flying Dutchman is a feast for the eyes and ears.
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Down with the veil! Three gutsy girls found Iranian Women Composers Union: 'We want to form a global home front'
Things can change. In 1979, Iran changed from a Western-oriented secular state to a spiritual dictatorship, where Islamic leaders call the shots. Women must henceforth go through life veiled and music is banned as extremely sinful. Four decades later, three women founded the Iranian Female Composers Association. In America, though. 'Music is like a drug, those who feel...
Where did things go wrong between culture decision-makers and the region?
It could have been so beautiful. In a not so grey past, the Council for Culture, then under a different management, initiated a movement that would give more authority to the region outside the Randstad. That was three years ago. Now there is an (entirely justified) angry letter in the newspaper from the culture deputies of 9...
The city as we knew it is doomed. Long live rural art?
Disturbing reports, over the past few days, in various media. First, there was Patrick van IJzendoorn in De Volkskrant, who observed that life had moved away from London's business heartland. I saw a few confusedly delighted reactions come along from friends on my cultural timeline. After all, the article made a clear connection between the closure of museums and theatres and the...
Divers
The best book I know is called Arthur, King once and for all. That is, that's the name if you buy the latest translation by Jolande van der Klis. Everything you need to know about the world is in this book. It begins like a children's book - I started reading it too when I was a boy
Youngsters
94-year-old Jan Hoek from Rotterdam wrote a letter to the youth that everyone will have read by now - there has not been so much attention paid to a message from an elderly person since that string from Terlouw's letterbox. That message is sympathetic and clear: young people, just hang in there a little longer, for our sake, then you can...
Life has turned into a B-Movie, and no better location could be imagined than 'Sender Boulevard'
Exterior, day. A deserted street in a southern Dutch town, unusually bright daylight. No sound. A man drives up and parks at a vacant power point. He walks to the entrance of a large, empty, modernist building. He is greeted by a very very old veteran, who tells him that "the wife is in for a moment", "she asked me to go on the...
Taking off and landing softly. That's what Schweigman& offers during Sender Boulevard, and we need it
Boukje Schweigman is an artist this country desperately needs. My deep admiration for her arose with 'Klep', the performance with which she graduated from the Amsterdam mime school long ago. With eight others in a trolley, looking around through very small flaps in a world where sweet creatures are equally curious about you, after which a minimal touch has the impact of...
Sender Boulevard pauses to remember the Dutch East Indies
'For Indonesian Dutch, 15 August is definitely not liberation day,' explains playwright Bo Tarenskeen. The last day of the alternative Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, Sender Boulevard, coincides with the commemoration of Japan's surrender on 15 May 1945. The Dutch East Indies, the colony exploited by our country for centuries, had also been liberated from the Japanese, but the end...
Pierre Jarawan: 'In Lebanon, people fill the gaps in society with stories'
This week, a massive explosion of 2,700 tonnes of poorly preserved ammonium nitrate destroyed most of the Lebanese capital Beirut. For German-Lebanese writer Pierre Jarawan, who lives in Munich, the disaster is yet another black page in the history of Lebanon, which he himself has only just come to know.
Greg Nottrot offers vision of a new future for theatre at the time of Corona with 'Graves'
Ok, the Mauerpark in the real Berlin is more grubby, but what they call the Berlinplein in Utrecht's new Leidsche Rijn centre has something in common with it. Of course, a frayed edge organised by the local government is a bit suspicious, with a megabios as its biggest attraction, but property developers, the biggest abusers of artistic frayed edges, can't do much else on...
Sender Boulevard: Seeking a coronaproof future for summer festivals
What festival director Viktorien van Hulst, together with her team, is pulling off seems almost impossible, but it fits the tradition she has developed since taking office. For a few years now, Boulevard has been as much about massive events as intimate encounters.
DBS
In the second half of the 1980s, when Wim Deetman was still a cheese soufflé and many Utrechters of my age wore kletter vests with broken rifles, it was very easy to know what you were against. This was because of a few clear principles: anyone on the right was bad. Christians were stupid, hypocritical and scary. Anyone who rented real estate...
'It's important for Shai to make something again.' Ka Yan Tang and Shailesh Bahoran on Illusionary Rockaz Company in times of Corona
Illusionary Rockaz Company was due to release a new work by Shailesh Bahoran this spring. A new production for the first time in two years, after a time in which the Utrecht-based choreographer was constantly winning awards. And then Corona broke out. For Shai, reason to pause for a while: 'For Shakti, the performance that is coming up now, we have to...
Culture Council marginally updates opinion, but sticks to controversial decisions
The National Opera had made a mistake in preparing its application. According to the Culture Council, the multi-million-dollar national institution had failed to break down performance data between dance and music. As a result, the company had to come up with an entirely new application before 1 November. Now it turns out that was not so bad. As it turns out, the data...
Bright Richards remains combative in times of Corona: 'Why don't we use art to bring about inclusion?'
'Of course Corona has an impact on me, but the impact of Black Lives Matter is much bigger. I want to get to work activating young people. They need to feel that this is our country. I think it's important to always use every stage to make that clear.' Bright Richards is twenty years after graduating from the Arnhem...
'It was as if I had ended up in my book.' How Tatiana de Rosnay's dystopian new novel suddenly became suspiciously similar to reality
It is scorching hot in Paris on the day of the interview with Tatiana de Rosnay (58). In her new novel Flowers of Darkness, Paris suffers yet another heatwave, with the thermometer touching 48 degrees. 'The past few days have been almost as bad as in my book,' De Rosnay tells via Zoom from her Parisian study....
Traveling While Black grabs you by the throat
Traveling While Black touches you deeply and that is exactly the intention. The 20-minute or so Virtual reality film immerses you in the history of institutional racism in the US and especially what it does to people. The location is Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC*. We sit at a table in a classic diner with people...
In the UK, a huge outflow of self-employed people from the cultural sector is looming. What about here?
That they came up with a one-and-a-half billion support package for the arts in Britain last month seemed like very good news for a while. For a country of almost 67 million people, such a rescue package, which also consists of three quarters of loans and advances, is proportionately much smaller than what there is in the Netherlands in terms of support for the arts. How keen...
hugo's shoes
Over seven years ago, I started as house poet at Sven Ratzke's Late Night Show in Utrecht's Blue Hall. It was a special time. Not for Sven, who probably came into the world singing and wearing designer clothes through a curtain of peacock feathers and imitation ermine fur. For him, the sultry, permanently ramming sold-out nightclub show was cut-and-dried. For...
Halima El Ghamarti started her new job just before Corona: 'The new normal? That's my normal here.' (Podcast and video)
Barely three weeks into her job when the corona pandemic and lockdown came. So, for Halima el Ghamarti, who started as director of the Jongeren Cultuurhuis Kanaleneiland and Overvecht in mid-February, there is no other normal than the new normal: working from home, and doing so with an organisation whose main purpose is to connect young people in Utrecht with...
Dutch focus on November Music 2020
With a focus on the Dutch music scene, November Music aims to highlight the vitality and creativity of composers, creators and musicians during this 28th festival edition. Besides many new home-grown works, there are several concerts with leading roles for renowned foreign names. November Music 2020 takes place from 6 to 15 November at various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch with over 80 different concerts....
NPO brings a debate about a debate. Let that sink in.
I have long put myself on the 'listen first, talk later' mode when it came to how we all deal with the festering sore of racism in the Netherlands. There's so much we don't know about each other, and there's especially so much I can't know about my fellow Black people, because for a long time I felt too little...
Council calls minister's plan to let Museum Association audit itself 'questionable' and contrary to 'good governance'
Just over a year ago, Culture Press carried the story that Wim Hupperetz, director of the capital's Allard Pierson, had resigned his post as chairman of the museums and heritage advisory committee to the Culture Council. The reason was Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven's decision to hand over control of national museums' policies to...
stone
A school friend was a mountain climber. He was good at it; he never did anything else in holidays. The school friend was tall and so strong that he could pull himself up by one finger. On the first day after the autumn holidays, he told me that another climber in his group had fallen to his death before his eyes. If I remember correctly, he was alive...
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