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Ritual dance around digital Calf: M.U.R.S. by Fura dels Baus at Holland Festival

Visiting M.U.R.S. without the app on your smartphone is a challenge. The performance by the infamous Barcelona-based theatre collective is a commentary on how people are unwittingly becoming part of a SMART society run by international corporations via all sorts of gadgets. Are you in or out? Is there actually anything to choose? According to Jürgen Müller, one of the founders of... 

How do you remove the negative sound around 'amateur art'?

A tricky question, but Festival Havenwerk director Erik-Jan Post has an idea and likes to bad some sacred cows. About arts education. About the concept of 'amateur'. About how big you should want to be as a festival. 'We are much less a festival in the classic sense. Havenwerk is more of a meeting place, with the participants at the centre. This year, therefore, the entrance fees are... 

'A drunken panda who wants to have a tussle' - The Loom of Mind on HF15

In The Loom of Mind, Icelandic folk singer Mugison, his bosom friend Pétur Ben, and Flemish baroque ensemble B.O.X. join forces. What does that sound like: melancholic Icelandic blues with 17th-century instruments? Like a stand-up storytelling concert performance? Or like a drunken panda who wants to have a game? How did you find each other? Pieter Theuns, lutenist and founder of B.O.X.: "I found Mugison... 

Advertising column Three Sisters

Chekhov's helpless, poetic creatures - three actresses on Three Sisters

Three Sisters by Chekhov directed by Theu Boermans is back with the Nationale Toneel. Two and a half years after its original performance, the play will play nine times exclusively at the Royal Theatre in The Hague. There is news about all three "sisters". Anniek Pheifer (Masja), Ariane Schluter (Olga) and Sallie Harmsen (Irina) talk about their careers and about Chekhov.... 

A dozen questions to Vis à Vis

Theatre group Vis à Vis, based at Almere Strand since 2007, has been around for 25 years. In all those years, the group has mainly made accessible, successful open-air theatre performances such as PICNIC, Silo 8 and HaRT. Visual comedies with lots of spectacle, where solid themes are treated in a light-hearted way. EXIT is their anniversary performance. A dozen questions to Arjan Anker, artistic director of Vis à Vis:... 

Theo Verbey: 'A composer is first and foremost a songwriter'

Dutch composer Theo Verbey (Delft 1959) writes music of lush tonal beauty, in which the achievements of centuries of musical tradition resound. He made his name with works such as Triad (1991) for orchestra and Expulsion (1988) for large ensemble, and with orchestrations of pieces by composers such as Modest Mussorgsky and Alban Berg. For the closing concert of De Vrijdag van Vredenburg, he wrote Traurig wie... 

Flnr: Koen van Impe, Clara Cleymans and Waas Gramser of Comp Marius in Rotterdam, Figaro. Photo: Wijbrand Schaap

Brilliant actors in smooth comedy at Europe's biggest hangout

Europe's biggest hangout. That's the best way to describe the roof of that half-sunken car park in the heart of Rotterdam. Transformed fifteen years ago into the impression of a ship's deck, that 'Schouwburgplein' is now mostly owned by groups of skaters, vagrants, street urchins and other metropolitan troublemakers. Visitors to the Schouwburg usually rush without looking around too much to the... 

Vormidable: two Flemish visions of renewal sculpture

The annual major sculpture expo in The Hague in 2015 is called 'Vormidable'. In its own museum, on Lange Voorhout and at several satellite locations, Museum Beelden aan Zee shows how Flemish art experienced a true revival from the 1990s onwards. Panamarenko, De Bruyckere, Fabre, but also lesser-known names renewed sculpture - in two opposite ways. Guest curator Stef van... 

Arnhem decides: who takes decisive lead in the battle of the orchestras?

Tonight, the Arnhem city council will take an important decision on the renovation of Musis Sacrum, the monumental concert hall located at a prominent point in the city. But the real news is not in what will be decided tonight, but in the far-reaching consequences. Musis Sacrum dates back to 1847 and is part of the cultural heritage. The venue complex is in dire need of refurbishment and with... 

arie doeser op #cityt2cities

Sluit de wethouder op! 6 lessen van boekenfestival #City2Cities 2015

Alleen al vanwege het gebouw was literatuurfestival City2Cities een bezoek waard. Het Postkantoor op de Utrechtse Neude, in 1924 gebouwd als ode aan de vooruitgang in een stijl die het mooiste van de Amsterdamse School samenbracht, was immers al jaren dicht. Dus ook wie niet opgewonden raakt van Nick Cave en wie Michel Houellebecq een engerd vindt, had een reden… 

Jens Hillje of the Gorki Theatre Berlin (Photo Wijbrand Schaap)

Play 'Nibelungen' debunks modern Europe at Holland Festival

Berlin's Gorki Theatre won a prize this year: it was named the best theatre in the German language area by the German-language press. The company won the award partly because it employs many actors of immigrant origin. With its performance Der Untergang der Nibelungen, which can be seen in this year's Holland Festival, the group also thematises the... 

New music loses advocate Ton Hartsuiker

On Monday 18 May 2015, he will be cremated in Utrecht: Ton Hartsuiker, tireless champion of new music in our country. In recent years, his health was ailing; he would narrowly miss his 82nd birthday. He was active as pianist, music educator, conservatory director, administrator and radio presenter. Even after his retirement in 1998, he did not consider quitting his... 

Music missionary looks back: "That King's Day concert is indefinite!"

Yep, I'm running behind, because just now I finally saw (in parts) the King's Day concert! But hey, good music has no expiry date and for now this concert will be online for a while. What a party! Some of my favourite musicians participated. Faithful readers of Culture Press know that violinist and composer Oene van Geel is definitely one of them. He brought along Zapp4... 

Crushing Benvenuto Cellini by Terry Gilliam

Even before the final notes of Benvenuto Cellini had sounded, the audience erupted in loud cheers and cheers last night (12 May). So Monty Python director Terry Gilliam's team pulled out all the stops to make this first opera by Hector Berlioz an unforgettable experience. That his dadaesque staging evokes memories of the joke-and-roll approach of the... 

With the French stroke: Cappella Amsterdam sings Ton de Leeuw

Ton de Leeuw lived in Paris for the last decade of his life and studied with Olivier Messiaen in his younger years. On 21 May, Cappella Amsterdam will present four of his French-language choral works in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The programme also includes works by his student and friend Daan Manneke and the young French composer Laurent Durupt.... 

Kenneth Herdigein, Vastert van Aardenne, Urmie Plein, Reinier Bulder in Race by David Mamet.

Discussion on colour should also rage in theatre

At Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, Hans Kesting will once again play the title role of Shakespeare's Othello, in a legendary version by top director Ivo van Hove, already 12 years ago. A stone's throw away, at De Balie, is the equally impressive actor Kenneth Herdigein in David Mamet's play Race. Why connect the two? Hans Kesting, the... 

#Reinbertbio one year on: biographer looks back

There once was a celebrity (pianist, composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw), a biographer (Thea Derks) and a riot. De Leeuw was against the publication of his biography Reinbert de Leeuw: man or melody and made no secret of it. In the TV programme Zomergasten (Summer guests), he even dismissed the dissertation-like standard work as an almost endearing puff piece. Meanwhile... 

La Re-sentida (Chile) charges against leftist church in Holland Festival 2015

The 1970s have for some time been the target of what we shall conveniently call the up-and-coming generation. And so we are talking about the 1970s as the glory years of hippy-dom, the jubilant times of the left-wing church and everything else that, with today's knowledge, is dirty and dirty. They were the years when... 

The five shows you must see in May

Nederlandse Reisopera, Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice (opera), 1 May to 6 June Dazzling debut by director Floris Visser at the Nederlandse Reisopera. Rather than showing a centuries-old opera about an even much older myth, he exposes the core of Gluck's opera. It results in a heartbreaking performance about mourning and the inability to accept that your loved one is no longer there.... 

How data saved music (and can help other arts)!

The power of data The arts sector in general is little 'tech savvy'. Sure, no one can do without a website and a Twitter account will hardly be lacking anymore either. But there are few examples of groups, theatres or artists making the most of the power of digital. Setting up a good 'client relations management system' (crm) with profiles of all visitors or buyers, to keep those... 

Navigating between art and politics, an intermediate view

Woensdag was de openingsavond van de driedaagse conferentie What’s Art Got To Do With It? Over kunst, politiek, en Israel/Palestina. Hoe open je een conferentie over een beladen onderwerp waar iedereen, zeker vanaf de zijlijn, een mening over heeft? Met muziek. Want hoe kun je daar tegen zijn? De avond begon gemoedelijk met een kort optreden van het Amsterdams Andalusisch… 

Chapman for president- a film without images.

Is that possible? Picture-less film? Sure, just see-or better-listen to Chapman for President by the Eef van Breen Group on 2 May during LISFE: a cinematic sound project based on a personal story. A meeting with political refugee Chapman gave trumpeter, singer & composer Eef van Breen new eyes, ears and the idea for this film without images.... 

Orfeo ed Euridice: opera aller opera’s

Vanavond brengt de Nederlandse Reisopera de première van een nieuwe enscenering van Orfeo ed Euridice van Gluck, opera aller opera’s. Met dit meesterwerk maakte de Duitse componist in 1762 een eind aan de wanpraktijken uit de Barok. Niet alleen was er aan de libretti geen touw meer vast te knopen door de eindeloze reeksen subplots, maar ook werd de zaak danig… 

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