Het Holland Festival is het meest toonaangevende festival van Nederland, en toont het beste wat er internationaal en nationaal op de grotere podia wordt gemaakt.
Duitsers en humor. Ik heb daar slechte ervaring mee. Zal grotendeels komen doordat ik de fijnere nuances van de taal niet meekrijg, zeker als die bedoeld is om te lachen. Dus het is niet dat het Duitse gevoel voor humor niet klopt. Sterker nog: soms kan er in het Duitse theater zomaar iets gebeuren waarom je moet lachen. Ik wil…
‘Nooit, nooit zou ik een voorstelling maken over mijn moeder, of over mezelf. Jamais.’ Caroline Guiela Nguyen, kind uit ‘een huwelijk tussen een Vietnamese moeder en een ‘pied-noir” (Algerijnse koloniaal) is niet van de persoonlijke verhalen. De theatermaakster veroverde vorig jaar de harten van het publiek op het Festival van Avignon met de voorstelling Saigon. Dit ontroerende, diep menselijke stuk…
Fifty-three 'ultras' from a football club in an art theatre. That might be asking for trouble. Especially if they were the hard core of, say, Ajax, FC Den Haag or FC Utrecht. But this is France. There are no hooligans in France. The 'ultra's' of Racing Club de Lens, for example: they are bound to throw a punch somewhere, but in...
Listen to an atmospheric impression and the full interview with Stef Aerts here. Children have the ability to turn adults' worlds upside down. Eleven-year-old JR is really getting into it. On a school trip, he learns how the stock market works and then turns it to his will. In doing so, unhampered by a prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain...
In the early 1990s, I am sitting in a small auditorium at The National Theatre in London. Before the performance starts, someone on stage asks if you want to greet the visitors next to you. This immediately creates a different, more intimate dynamic in the auditorium. On a sleek stage with only a few props are four actors and an Arab musician. Yoshi Oida...
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) was the four-year older sister of Felix Mendelssohn. They both received a solid musical education, with her surpassing him in virtuosity at the piano. Her relationship with Felix was intense, but also suffocating. At his hands, Fanny Mendelssohn failed to build an independent career as a composer. To this day
The neat couple next to me, in the front row at the Holland Festival press conference, hadn't counted on it for a moment. Four members of the Nederlands Kamerkoor starting to undress one by one down to their pecker-sized nakie. A giggle, a small cough, but hey, this is the Holland Festival, they said to each other. So too...
William Kentridge and Faustin Linyekula. Remember those names, if you didn't already know them, because they are going to help shape the face of Holland in the coming year. They have been appointed by the Holland Festival as 'associate artist'. In doing so, the festival puts the phenomenon of 'artistic director' out of business. A necessary choice at a time when the price for that kind of figure is faster...
Well, we're not big on hypes and traditions here, but still. The dark days around Christmas are very dark this year, so why not something with lists. This year, no list of toppers from the editors, but random entries from random readers, in random, if slightly alphabetical order. Motto of the reader question was: which things...
Hoog in een chique appartement gaf Lavalu (artiestennaam van Marielle Woltring, Cleveland, Ohio, 1979) onlangs tijdens het Eindhovense festival FlatFest een try-out van haar nieuwe programma. Voor het eerst gaat ze nu zonder band, solo met piano, op tournee in kleine zalen waar een goede vleugel staat. Op die zondagmiddag in Brabant werd al snel duidelijk dat er ergens iets…
Nationale Toneel Theatre is working on its mission to bring society to the stage. The Nation, that insane marathon with Romana Vrede about a disappearance in the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, and Mark Rietman, will be ready this autumn. Anyone who thought it was time for another slice of tedious retro hag comedy after that is wrong. We do have a classic coming up in...
This week, two things already became clear about the Dutch theatre world. One: the topic of diversity is finally really on the map and two: the theatre world, however small, is hopelessly divided. During Het Theaterfestival, there were two debates/ meetings/ symposiums on the lack of diversity in theatre. One on Monday, the other on Thursday. Bit much in one...
If theatre can do anything, it is to put us outside reality. Not even to make you dream away, but to stop that reality for a moment and look at it in a different way. Call it the Ti-Ta-Wizard moment. To stop the action at the dramatic climax, to take the sting out of the wasp, or the fuse out of the powder keg....
Het voordeel van een lidmaatschap als abonnee van Cultuurpers is natuurlijk vooral dat we kunnen bestaan dankzij jou. Zo blijft ons onafhankelijke geluid hoorbaar, zo krijg je de duiding van het nieuws zoals je die nergens anders krijgt. In juni zijn in totaal 14 auteurs voor je op pad gegaan om zoveel mogelijk voorstellingen te zien van het Holland Festival.…
Smoothly they descend the stairs of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Lucas and Arthur Jussen are dressed to kill. With their fussy-cut, see-through costumes, they have already won their first battle before they have even played one note of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mantra. Not only in their outfits, but also in their quirky playing, the young pianists show guts. Lovely, such a...
Lucas and Arthur Jussen are 'hot'. You could call the young piano brothers the headliner of this Holland Festival Proms. Well before the start of their concert, visitors are therefore already gathering in the corridors around the main hall of the Concertgebouw. Everyone is out for a good seat. To sit, because standing, as we know it from...
Soms heb je niet heel veel woorden nodig voor een mooi verhaal. Vaak vergen weinig woorden ook meer inspanning dan veel woorden. Dat idee wist Blaise Pascal ooit te munten. Gisteren, op de voorlaatste dag van het zeventigste Holland Festival, werd de stelling op een andere, onverwachte manier kracht bijgezet. Het Australische Back to Back Theatre vertelde het verhaal van…
Setan Jawa is the latest film by prominent Indonesian director Garin Nugroho (b. 1961). It is a 'silent' film, shot in black and white by Teoh Gay Hian. It was shown at the Muziekgebouw aan t IJ during the Holland Festival last weekend. The music to the film is played live by Rahayu Supanggah Gamelan Orchestra and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Inspired...
Annet Lekkerkerker is one of the few women in the cultural sector for whom the glass ceiling is no longer an obstacle. That she is now, after several years as 'business director', formally becoming top woman of the country's most important performing arts festival is wonderful for more reasons. She is not only the first woman at that high position. Her appointment also makes clear why...
Florian Boesch is at the front of the stage, around him are his bandmates. On big screen behind the band, a chair slowly melts away. Boesch has hands casually in his pockets. With a smile, the violinist initiates a horlepie-like tune. Wie leiblich und frölich, Zu schweben, zu singen, Von glänzender Höhe, Zur Erde zu blicken! By the clutches...
De kans is niet ondenkbeeldig dat je nog nooit van Fortunato Depero hebt gehoord. Of misschien ben je een liefhebber van classic design en heb je nog ergens een oud miniflesje Campari staan. Dat heeft hij gemaakt. Als toneelschrijver zou je hem best over het hoofd hebben kunnen zien. Op 21 juni ben ik gaan kijken of je jezelf daarmee…
The plofnies came totally unexpectedly. The family father behind me, out with wife and presumably reluctant adolescent son, burst out after about 10 minutes into the performance. Just when a deafening silence had descended over the sold-out Theatre Carré. At least four people, including myself, were shocked to the core. A sneeze had never been this loud before, but as quiet as during...
During the first two weeks of this Holland Festival, almost all art was about something. The festival theme 'democracy', conceived for the occasion, appears to have penetrated just about every hairline. Sometimes painful and highly topical, as in the National Theatre's phenomenal 'The Nation', sometimes downright embarrassing, as in Romeo's heavily overrated 'Democracy in America'...
Twenty-five Canadians are listed for design and production of sound, video, music, lighting and stage technology. Nine Canadians are working behind the scenes for two hours. During those two hours, one Canadian is on stage. In front of six hundred spectators. What those 35 people have all managed to pull off tickles your imagination and tells...
The opening image of Octavia. Trepanation is an immediate hit. On either side of Lenin's lauded head is an army of Chinese terracotta warriors. - Headless. Lenin's brain suffices for all, the suggestion is. Associations with the image of Che Guevara in Reconstruction from 1969 come to mind. But where that opera conveyed its (anti-American) message with crystal clarity,...
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