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Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016): Fins ikoon van de eigentijdse muziek

Afgelopen woensdagnacht, 27 juli overleed Einojuhani Rautavaara in zijn huis in Helsinki, ten gevolge van complicaties bij een operatie. Hij werd 87 jaar oud en gold algemeen als de ongekroonde troonopvolger van Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), die rond 1930 zijn laatste noten schreef.

Zwanen 2016

Dit zijn de winnaars van de Zwanen 2016. Of niet.

Drie dansers en drie dansproducties zijn genomineerd voor de Zwanen 2016. Op vrijdag 7 oktober laten Daphne Bunskoek en Art Rooijakkers in Maastricht tijdens het Openingsprogramma 2016 van de Nederlandse Dansdagen weten wie de winnaars zijn. Maar je kunt alvast een paar conclusies trekken uit het lijstje van genomineerden.

Suburbia’s Vijand van het Volk waarschuwt voor neoliberalisme

Vijand van het Volk is de zomervoorstelling van Theatergroep Suburbia, in de regie van Albert Lubbers. Het stuk haakt aan bij de actualiteit van corrupte bankiers, milieuschandalen en overheidsdienaren die klokkenluiderkwesties in de doofpot stoppen. Deze sterke voorstelling is scherp van toon, polemisch en met vileine humor. Beter dan in eerdere Suburbia-voorstellingen past het vertrouwde dynamische acteerwerk mooi in de theatrale ruimte. Dit keer is dat de grote open schuur op Stadslandgoed de Kemphaan.

Nicolas Mansfield: Today I feel more European than ever. #Brexit

24th of June, 2016. What a day. I spent it at the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in The Hague. Speaking with civil servants about the achievements, plans, challenges and dreams of the Dutch National Touring Opera. All in the shadow of something I find difficult to process. 

Akram Khan Until the Lions © Jean Louis Fernandez

Akram Khan's 'Until the Lions' drags you through borders #HF16

Al bij binnenkomst in het Ketelhuis van de Amsterdamse Westergasfabriek neemt een donker dreunende toon je op in de mistige, ietwat onheilspellende sfeer van ‘Until the Lions’ van Akram Khan Company. Een enorme schijf uit een boomstam, met grillige jaarringen en barsten, zal het toneel worden van een mythische strijd. Inzet is het menselijk lichaam: zwak, sterk, mannelijk, vrouwelijk. Grenzen zullen sneuvelen.

Roaring, pounding big band overwhelms with conspiracies #hf16

Een bigband, een tikkende klok, samenzweringstheorieën en twaalftonigheid. Mix dat in een theatrale setting en het kan gierend uit de bocht vliegen. Toch weet componist Darcy James Argue er een stuwend en enerverend geheel van te maken, met hulp van regisseur Isaac Butler en filmmaker Peter Nigrihi.

Olga Neuwirth sticks to old avant-garde #HF16

Het is goed dat het Holland Festival zijn nek durft uit te steken, door dit jaar de hier onbekende Olga Neuwirth (1968) tot focus componist te maken. Bij nader inzien had ik  overigens liever haar spraakmakende opera Bählamms Fest eens in een geënsceneerde versie gehoord, dan Le Encantadas. Dit vorig jaar gecomponeerde stuk wist de hooggespannen verwachtingen niet helemaal in te… 

Bombarie on Bombarie? New festival in Utrecht has broad profile

In onze participatiesamenleving is Community Art ‘hip, hot & happening’. Er zijn dan ook veel projecten en initiatieven die amateurs en professionals samenbrengen. Gelukkig maar, want hoe breder kunstuitoefening en -beleving gedeeld en gedragen worden door zoveel mogelijk mensen, hoe mooier de wereld wordt, vind ik dus.

Courage Conny Janssen Danst

COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst shows a delicious new world

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.

The Dark Ages: beautiful investigative theatre by Milo Rau. #HF16

When we think of 'The Dark Ages', we think of the rough raw dark Middle Ages, with church and king and no hygiene. However, Swiss director Milo Rau's performance, now at the Holland Festival, refers to a much more recent piece of European history. In a recent interview With the Culture Press, he said:

Gardens Speak ©-Tania-El-Khoury-1-

Digging in the earth stays on the surface in Gardens Speak #HF16

There I am. Next to Holland Festival director Ruth Mackenzie, on a grave, as part of the installation Gardens Speak on the stage of the main hall of Theatre Bellevue in Amsterdam. There is nothing to see, little to hear. Tone lights suggest a rising sun after a few minutes. I get up together with the ten other visitors. Quite a shame, because I was actually quite comfortable lying there.

The programme booklet sounded promising:

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Melancholia-Bryony-Dwyer-junges-theatre-basel-©-Sandra-Then

All 18 gloomy: Melancholia is concert for sour old men #HF16

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.

Film fails to lift Die Schöpfung to higher plane at Holland Festival #HF16

Full of religious inspiration, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote the oratorio Die Schöpfung, his famous musical ode to the Biblical creation story. Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b 1965) reflects on Haydn's masterpiece with an aesthetic film that shows how humans bend the world to their will. During the Holland Festival this film was screened at a live performance of the music by Collegium Vocale Gent and baroque orchestra B'Rock led by conductor René Jacobs. Got Die Schöpfung an extra charge through this film, which largely consists of people in white suits walking around sandy landscapes?

As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.

Thoughts as fuel for space travel

No actor to be seen in the auditorium of Theatre de Veste in Delft. Just a house with walls and roof of transparent cloth. It holds thirty people. On the walls of the hall around it, projected images pass by at whirling speed. This is fascinating: usually, when you are in a house, the walls close you off from the surroundings, but this time they actually give a view of a world as big and beautiful as you never experience in ordinary life.

Is stage poetry inferior, or do we then exclude large groups? #pifr

Report on a hidden battlefield. Poetry International in Rotterdam has moved into a new, informal venue. The home of the Ro theatre in William Boothlaan, just over basic than the Theatre on that strange square. And the terrace between roaring motorbikes is lively, full of old and young lovers of poetry. Or of spoken word, or from slam. Anyone who might think Poetry International is an elitist poetry festival will be deceived on this sunny Thursday afternoon. A stenographic report.

Education, education, education. But with an ideological basis.

No, the culture debate on 8 June in the province of Overijssel was not uplifting. The 2017-2020 Culture Note was adopted unanimously, except for two votes from the SGP. No fireworks about, for instance, the forced cooperation between the Orkest van het Oosten and Het Gelders Orkest. No hefty investments to fix national and provincial cuts. All spokesmen came up with predictable monologues, comparisons were made with other regions and, above all, they looked enviously at the Randstad, but there was no debate. The Christian parties are worried about empty churches, and the PVV, which is of course actually against subsidies, made some obligatory remarks about safeguarding the Overijsselian identity.

Which identity?

The Walking Forest is performance you definitely want to watch twice (HF16)

De Braziliaanse Christiane Jatahy was vorig jaar al met het stuk What If they went to Moscow op het Holland Festival. Ze kwam, zag en overwon. Dit jaar komt ze met het laatste deel uit de trilogie van toneeladaptaties, The Walking Forest. De titel verwijst naar de drie heksen in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, die zijn opkomst en ondergang voorspellen. Het stuk vormde het uitgangspunt voor een performance met vier videoschermen, een bar, een actrice, een dode vis en, o ja, publiek.

Anneke Brassinga, Jeet Thayil, Laura Accerboni: nu live op Poetry International

De poëzievoordrachten vormen het hart van Poetry International festival. Anneke Brassinga, Laura Accerboni en Jeet Thayil lezen alle gedichten die ze voor het het Poetry international Festival hebben meegenomen. De vertalingen naar het Nederlands en/of Engels worden simultaan met de voordracht mee geprojecteerd, zodat u er geen woord van hoeft te missen. Voorafgaand aan hun voordracht worden de dichters kort… 

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