If Mama Ain't Happy also wins awards again at Go Short
If Mama Ain’t Happy, Nobody’s Happy van Mea de Jong krijgt prijs van de jongerenjury op het Go Short Festival.
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The whole world is a fan of the UFC, now the Netherlands
Two men in a cage. Super trained and muscular to the marrow. Small gloves, bit in, tok on for protection. Scantily clad except for bermuda shorts. Some reinforcing tape wrapped around a joint here and there. At Stockholm's Tele2 Arena, a 30,000-plus crowd screams like mad. This modern gladiatorial spectacle is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Macbeth as childless killer
On Thursday 9 April, I saw the new production of Verdi's tenth opera Macbeth of The National Opera. It was unanimously slammed by the press after its premiere last Friday. German director Andrea Breth,
Half-hearted advice puts touring opera companies at odds with each other
There is too little money for two travelling opera companies. Quality is at risk, something must be done. But the Culture Council does not offer a solution.
Crisis at The Symphony Orchestra only gets worse thanks to fact-free politics
HET Symfonieorkest's financial problems have not gone unnoticed. Regional newspaper Tubantia reported last Monday that PvdA MP Jacques Monasch had minister Jet Bussemaker (also PvdA) summoned to the Lower House. In that report, Monasch passes with seven-mile boots advice, applications and decisions that have already been made or are yet to come, and immediately reports that a symphony orchestra will continue beyond 2017...
Artists, say NonNeinNEE to ridiculous questions!
Why a fun house festival still haunts my mind weeks after the fact. Let me tell you: OuiJaYes I was looking forward to it. Fancy space. Freedom. So it made perfect sense that I went to Jazz in de Kamer Leiden at the end of March. I could choose from various itineraries with groups and musicians like Artvark, Jeroen van Vliet, Ruben Hein, Ntjam Rosie. I chose...
Culture Council sounds alarm: 29.5 million needed to preserve arts sector
What is already going on on a small scale in Groningen, Enschede, Zaltbommel, Amersfoort, Gorinchem and Vlaardingen, is threatening to happen nationwide as well: cultural institutions falling over while politicians look on helplessly. According to the Council for Culture, the situation is alarming: 'Institutions are draining their own funds, cultural funds are maintaining schemes by drawing on reserves. We therefore make the urgent...
Zoek de ‘uncanny valley’ op het Imagine Festival
Met zoveel robots en zelfs een masterclass robotontwerp (Mark Setrakian, 16 april) op het Imagine Festival kan het geen kwaad weer even in de ‘uncanny valley‘ te duiken. Hoe zat dat ook al weer? Een robot hoeft volstrekt niet op een mens te lijken om toch schattig te zijn en echte emoties op te roepen. Zie bijvoorbeeld Pixar’s vuilnisrobot Wall-E. En…
Butt pinching for Amersfoort cultural organisations
Amersfoort's cultural scene is in turmoil over a series of possible austerity proposals. In recent weeks, the public was allowed to give its opinion. The city council will make final decisions in May. Meanwhile, beloved theatre De Lieve Vrouw is already in dire financial straits. Amersfoort has been under financial supervision by the province of Utrecht since the end of 2014. The municipality mainly suffers...
Minimal Music Festival figurehead: 'I'm not a minimalist'
Wednesday 8 April kicks off the fourth edition of the biennial World Minimal Festival at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. For five days, the capital will be dominated by the immensely popular music movement, which invariably attracts packed halls. Several parts of this instalment are already sold out, including the opening concert with special guest Terry Riley. There are still...
Nature conservation on canvas in Dordrecht and The Hague
The double exhibition 'Holland op z'n mooist - Op pad met de Haagse School' opens at the Dordrecht Museum on 5 April and at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag on 4 April. The two museums are joining forces with Natuurmonumenten to show the nature of the late 19th century alongside that of today. In two exhibitions (genre pieces in Dordrecht, landscapes in The Hague),...
Erkki-Sven Tüür: 'I want to tap into the listener's creativity'
He has been given many labels. From (post-)minimalist to hardcore modernist and from neo-romanticist to neo-spiritualist. 'I don't pay attention to them anymore,' says composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (Estonia, 1959). Yet he responds somewhat surly when I ask in an email what he thinks of such descriptions: 'You either like my music or not.' Via Skype, he answers eight...
Here come the Robots! Imagine Film Festival 2015
Lately, you are inundated with predictions in the media about the increasing impact of artificial intelligence on our lives. Take for instance Nicholas Carr's book The Glass Cage, which analyses the revolutionary impact of new technology in the workplace. These are developments that have not passed Imagine programmers by. The 31st edition of the film festival, which...
Ivo van Hove directs Bowie's The Man Who Fell To Earth II: Lazarus
Indeed, you couldn't release this message on 1 April, because nobody would have believed it. But it is coming, then. Bowie, The Musical. But from the man himself. Sort of. Ivo van Hove, the boss of Toneelgroep Amsterdam who is now more famous in America and England than in the Netherlands, is going to direct Lazarus. That's a new...
Supervisory failure at HET Symphony Orchestra: drama that could have been avoided
The money at HET Symphony Orchestra has run out. Despite all the extra millions from the province and after years of writing off tons of general reserves, the end is in sight. And so the orchestra is scrapping concerts, will be seen less in theatres in Deventer and Zwolle, stops CD recordings and shuns any risky performances. To keep the...
Waarom je naar Snorder moet (nu het nog kan)
Het theaterproject ‘Snorder‘ begon ooit als de soap waarmee de lange avonden op het festival Hollandse Nieuwe werden afgesloten. Een festival voor nieuwe toneelschrijvers, eerst in theater Cosmic, later in MC. Beide Amsterdamse theaters bestaan intussen niet meer, Hollandse Nieuwe ook niet. Maar regisseur John Leerdam en zijn crew hebben nu de ruimte gekregen voor een revival in de Balie…
Academy of Arts: core fusion of art and science
Bring 50 distinguished and cross-disciplinary artists together and things will crackle tremendously. That will be the thinking behind the new Academy of Arts. The installation of 16 new, high-profile members already gave a taste of this. Actor Gijs Scholten van Aschat (board member) and visual artist Barbara Visser (president) expressed themselves a little cautiously a while ago about what the Akademie...
Football fans on stage? Sanja Mitrovic is a theatre maker with a secret
Sanja Mitrović is a theatre maker with a theme and a secret. She builds on the theme with each performance. And the secret is right on the heels of her work. Her theme is the collective: how it grows, what it is based on, how deep the mutual love can be, how the euphoria can turn into rage, how it comes from within...
Pierre Boulez is alive!?
He is the last surviving avant-gardist, and it will not have escaped new-music lovers that he turned 90 on Thursday, 26 March. I mean, of course, Pierre Boulez, the composer and conductor who once declared Schoenberg dead and suggested that maybe opera houses should be blown up because of their moldy programming. The same man then tirelessly broke a lance for the music of Arnold Schoenberg ...
'All-rounder' Boy Edgar staggeringly portrayed
Boy Edgar was the most famous big band leader of his time, but at the same time a busy doctor and an alcoholic. A biography on this ADHD'ing all-rounder was published for the first time. An impressive, sometimes disconcerting book marred only occasionally by factual inaccuracies. By day he was, among other things, a renowned neurologist, a revolutionary abortionist and the first general practitioner in the Bijlmermeer. 's...
Cultuureducatie aan de afgrond: 18 discusssiepunten waar één strategie nodig is
Kantelen is in. En dat is goed zolang het kantelen inhoudt dat je een scherpe bocht neemt en met nieuw elan de vers gekozen koers volgt. Kantelen is onverstandig als je aan de rand van de afgrond staat. Want dan wordt kantelen al gauw tuimelen. De cultuureducatie is, naar ik moet vrezen, begonnen aan een tuimeling. Vorig jaar bleek dat…
Where have they gone: the protest choreographers?
In June, Boris Charmatz comes to the Holland Festival with manger. He introduced the theme of adults touching children at the former papal palace in 2011. A statement on a tricky current issue. Why don't choreographers speak out more often on poignant topical issues? Pass by new works from recent months and it strikes you that there are hardly any choreographers among them who...
Amersfoort masterpieces for Flehite museum
The Amersfoort museum Flehite has been able to acquire two masterpieces with the support of an antiquities association. The oil painting Still life with rose and anemone (1933) by Albert Fiks (1908-1945) and the 'canvas' Dahlias in ginger jar (1917) by Jakob Nieweg were added to the collection. Both paintings are among highlights of the Amersfoort artists' oeuvres. Jakob Nieweg (Hogebeintum 1877) was trained as a pastor....
Anton Corbijn in The Hague: Iconic portraits, dated musicians
In the halls of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Mark Rothko has made way for photographer Anton Corbijn. A bigger difference hardly seems conceivable, but an exhibition with lots of pop photographs fits seamlessly into the museum's mission to bring 20th-century avant-garde art, stresses director Benno Tempel. Corbijn, who celebrates his 60th birthday this year, will be honoured with a double exhibition; besides...
Grand Theatre disaster update: Performing Arts Fund saves creators from bankruptcy
The misery in Groningen is a bit bigger than we thought. Meanwhile, the Grand Theatre appears to be at least 250,000 in the red. And counting. Money that the theatre subsidised by the city of Groningen owes mainly to artists. Choreographer Dunja Djocic, for instance, had received €90,000 in subsidies to create performances at the Grand for 2 years. Theatre-maker Andreas Denk had received...
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