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News about events and festivals, backed by the industry but independent in content. Find out more: info@cultureelpersbureau.nl

Touching each other is taboo. Anne Nguyen brings breakdance and capoeira, vulnerable men and video games in Kata @hollandfestival

In Kata, the latest work by French breaker and choreographer Anne Nguyen, hip-hop men transcend the clichés of hip-hop. Toughness, untouchability and the usual frontal relationship with the audience are exchanged for indirect gestures, delayed effects, diagonals and laterals, double entendres and irony. Nguyen, herself an adept practitioner of capoeira, ming chun and breakdance, challenges her dancers to use their... 

Read More "Touching each other is taboo. Anne Nguyen brings breakdance and capoeira, vulnerable men and video games in Kata @hollandfestival

Poets with evergreens and hits make a poetry festival. But what about the table talk? #pifr

Alí Calderón has written quite a body of work, but I didn't hear much of it during my stay at Poetry International. However, the poem 'Democracia Mexicana' did come along three times. A formidable poem, as it ends with a rotting baby corpse, so not for the soft-hearted among us. Democracia Mexicana is Calderon's hit poem. Like pop singers can make a hit... 

Read More "Poets with evergreens and hits make a poetry festival. But what about the table talk? #pifr

Podcast: Hear the Buddingh Prize nominees and results here #pifr

Welcome to the culture press podcast. Episode I don't know how many. Today, once again, I am keeping my mouth shut, because the floor belongs to the new poets of the Netherlands. I saw and heard them on Thursday, 31 May 2018, during poetry international. The evening was dominated by the presentation of the Cees Buddingh Prize. The prize for the best Dutch poetry debut of 2018.... 

Read More "Podcast: Hear the Buddingh Prize nominees and results here #pifr

Martin Crimp on Lessons in Love and Violence at the @hollandfestival: 'The past is a playground, in which I can escape from the rolling news.'

No love without power relations. And certainly not when that love takes place in a royal bedroom. That bedchamber is now the setting for a tragic love triangle between a king, his lover and his wife in Lessons in Love and Violence, the third opera by English composer Georges Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp. The Elizabethan drama Edward II... 

Read More "Martin Crimp on Lessons in Love and Violence at the @hollandfestival: 'The past is a playground, in which I can escape from the rolling news.'

A tense conversation about anxiety and sex early Sunday morning: The String Quartet's Guide to Sex and Anxiety @HollandFestival

It feels like a variation on a scene from a farce. On stage: Birmingham REP's public relations officer, a journalist flown in from the Netherlands for the premiere and the director's assistant rushed in. Location: an upmarket hotel in the heart of Birmingham. Time: Sunday morning a little after ten o'clock. The subject: sex and the all-encompassing concept of anxiety. Go! The big absentee is director Calixto... 

Read More "A tense conversation about anxiety and sex early Sunday morning: The String Quartet's Guide to Sex and Anxiety @HollandFestival

'Fleshy, divinely bawdy at times.' - Buddingh Prize 2018 for Radna Fabias during sizzling Poetry International (#pifr)

Danez Smith is quite something. Or rather two, because the American poet likes to be addressed in the gender-neutral, or rather gender-plural plural form. A form of address not yet very common in Dutch, and thus avoided by everyone. Thursday night, 31 May at the former ro theatre, now Theater Rotterdam - Witte de With, fell around the... 

Read More "'Fleshy, divinely bawdy at times.' - Buddingh Prize 2018 for Radna Fabias during sizzling Poetry International (#pifr)

Four men were given the task: invent a festival you would like to attend yourself. That became TREK, a mishmash of food trucks, mayor and pastor.

You have to be a serious misanthrope not to have a good time in Stadspark Maastricht that Friday. The sun is shining. It is subtropically warm with a light spring breeze. The location, next to a pond embraced by ramparts and turrets, is perfect. Under the ancient oaks, some 40 food trucks and bars with simmering kitchens await you. Oh... 

Read More "Four men were given the task: invent a festival you would like to attend yourself. That became TREK, a mishmash of food trucks, mayor and pastor.

Podcast: This is how to freshen up the opening of a poetry festival. Poetry International Rotterdam successfully deploys rejuvenation.

The lectern. The lectern. The paper holder, if possible with its own light, which, shining upwards, draws stern shadows of the reading glasses on the poet's face. It is the kind of necessary evil that every poetry or literature festival has to deal with. Only the powerpoint is missing to make it a boring seed onion conference. Poetry International Festival Rotterdam has in... 

Read More "Podcast: This is how to freshen up the opening of a poetry festival. Poetry International Rotterdam successfully deploys rejuvenation.

Gesualdo project at @hollandfestival by De Warme Winkel: 'We want to anoint and flog the ears' #HF18

Say 'Carlo Gesualdo' and you say 'heavenly music', and 'cruel disposition'. This Renaissance composer's name is inextricably linked to the gruesome double murder he committed on his wife and lover when he found them in flagrante delicto. Who else but The Warm Shop could make an appealing performance of this thought Tido Visser, artistic director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir. So. 

Read More "Gesualdo project at @hollandfestival by De Warme Winkel: 'We want to anoint and flog the ears' #HF18

Untitled's Lenny Oosterwijk opens door for @poetry_en: 'I love accessible work that captivates an Albert Heijn cashier as much as a university professor.'

Als je Lenny Oosterwijk voor het eerst ziet, denk je niet: ha, een galeriehouder. Op de een of andere manier verwacht je daar een meer chique uitstraling bij. Maar de man die in 2011 in Rotterdam Noord Galerie Untitled oprichtte komt uit een andere hoek. Hij is fotograaf en art director en werkte een tijd bij het meest gestolen tijdschrift… 

Read More "Untitled's Lenny Oosterwijk opens door for @poetry_en: 'I love accessible work that captivates an Albert Heijn cashier as much as a university professor.'

A Tale of a Tub: 'Poetry is a new way of looking at the world.' @poetry_en Rotterdam offers fascinating collaboration with visual artists

What lies on the ground, spread over a white sheet? Hard to determine. Shrapnel? Aircraft parts? Battered remains? Upon entering A Tale of a Tub, the impression is unsettling, and slightly overwhelming. A crime scene, but unclear who, what or where it is about. They appear to be plants, but magnified and cast in bronze. But that see... 

Read More "A Tale of a Tub: 'Poetry is a new way of looking at the world.' @poetry_en Rotterdam offers fascinating collaboration with visual artists

German Anna Karenina in @hollandfestival as seventies disco show: 'We were sometimes worried whether we were going too far. But then we always had the music.'

Germans and humour. I have a bad experience with that. Will largely be because I don't get the finer nuances of the language, especially if it is meant for laughter. So it's not that the German sense of humour is wrong. In fact, sometimes something can just happen in German theatre that makes you laugh. I want... 

Read More "German Anna Karenina in @hollandfestival as seventies disco show: 'We were sometimes worried whether we were going too far. But then we always had the music.'

Podcast: This year, Poetry International explores the role of nationalism in poetry.

Jan Baeke has been associated with Poetry International as a programmer for many years. In this podcast, I talk to him about the programme and the theme of this 49th edition: The Nation of Poetry. It's about nationalism, of course, but also about identity. And about what role poetry plays in that. And then, of course, it's not primarily about folk songs. We... 

Read More "Podcast: This year, Poetry International explores the role of nationalism in poetry.

Everyone is welcome at Pitfest. 'Bands playing at our place should be especially hard, or dirty and grimy.'

The Drenthe village of Erica was rocked on the last weekend of April by the cosy noise festival Pitfest. And that attracted a motley mix of people. I walked around there for a day. A golf cart zooms across the roundabout of the 4-star resort in the outskirts of the Drenthe town of Erica. To the right of the tarmac are tightly mowed golf courses, to the left is a plot of land... 

Read More "Everyone is welcome at Pitfest. 'Bands playing at our place should be especially hard, or dirty and grimy.'

'Saigon' director (@hollandfestival) seeks extreme emotions: 'I don't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

'Never, never would I make a performance about my mother, or about myself. Jamais.' Caroline Guiela Nguyen, child of 'a marriage between a Vietnamese mother and a 'pied-noir' (Algerian colonial) is not into personal stories. The theatre-maker captured audiences' hearts at last year's Avignon Festival with the play Saigon. This moving, deeply human play... 

Read More "'Saigon' director (@hollandfestival) seeks extreme emotions: 'I don't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

A fertile repertoire landscape.

Performing arts policy greatly determines what can be seen and heard on Dutch stages. It underpins government funding of theatre and music. This policy pays a lot of attention to the quality of performances, but it hardly discusses the choice of pieces played, let alone what kind of repertoire landscape... 

Read More "A fertile repertoire landscape.

'Totally twarrel in the post after a fine combo of pills.' Unity.co.uk offers fine info on drugs in the festival scene

On Tuesday 17 April, Gerard Alderliefste performed at TivoliVredenburg. This time, the interpreter of French chansons had left his guitar and piano at home. This evening he was there in his capacity as an addiction doctor. On behalf of the Landelijk Medisch Spreekuur Partydrugs, he talked about the long-term consequences of party drugs such as XTC, MDMA, GHB and Cannabis. He was there at the invitation of Unity.nl, a voluntary organisation 

Read More "'Totally twarrel in the post after a fine combo of pills.' Unity.co.uk offers fine info on drugs in the festival scene

Millennial Poets at Poetry International (@poetry_en) - Social Justice with Self-mockery and Laughing at Rape... Is it possible?

Poets Danez Smith and Patricia Lockwood once broke the internet with their virtuoso wordplay. Smith with a frothy tirade about ineradicable racism and police brutality in America (Dear White America) and Lockwood with a heartbreaking/funny poem about her rape (Rape Joke). Both have outgrown their hypes. They have secretly been doing a fantastic job for years, using Twitter, YouTube, paper and stage... 

Read More "Millennial Poets at Poetry International (@poetry_en) - Social Justice with Self-mockery and Laughing at Rape... Is it possible?

'Stadium' at @hollandfestival: Meet the hardcore supporter core of Racing Club de Lens. But then for real.

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... 

Read More "'Stadium' at @hollandfestival: Meet the hardcore supporter core of Racing Club de Lens. But then for real.

Number of film festivals down 20 per cent last year. Amsterdam still leading with 47 film festivals.

Where can you indulge as a film lover in the Netherlands? With 54 festival editions in 2017, North Holland appears to be the province where you can enjoy film festivals most often. Amsterdam takes the crown with a whopping 47 film festival editions, according to a study by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA). Lecturer Harry van Vliet of the Crossmedia lectureship of the HvA faculty,... 

Read More "Number of film festivals down 20 per cent last year. Amsterdam still leading with 47 film festivals.

Poetry Performance Workshop teaches poets what 'taking a rest' means: 'my next performances will be a lot longer now.'

'There would be a difference between paper poems and poems that only fit into a recitation. I don't think it's a good poem in either case then. A good poem you can read well, and also reread, but it also fits very well in a performance.' Poet Anne van Winkelhof has clear views on what makes poetry good poetry.... 

Read More "Poetry Performance Workshop teaches poets what 'taking a rest' means: 'my next performances will be a lot longer now.'

Stef Aerts directs 3D show JR at @hollandfestival: 'To go from 700 pages of real literature to a manageable stage text doesn't just happen.'

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... 

Read More "Stef Aerts directs 3D show JR at @hollandfestival: 'To go from 700 pages of real literature to a manageable stage text doesn't just happen.'

Money does make happy, and writers' block is an illusion. Many myths busted on Evening of Herding.

Rather listen than read? Listen to the podcast here! (With lots of extra quotes from Ab Dijksterhuis) Money makes horribly happy. And that doesn't stop at 1 tonne. Those who earn half a million are considerably happier than those who earn 2 tonnes. The ING boss who would get 60 per cent more salary would also have become very much happier as a result. This... 

Read More "Money does make happy, and writers' block is an illusion. Many myths busted on Evening of Herding.

We gaan een drukke tijd tegemoet. En jij wil van FB af. Mis niets. Abonneer je op onze gratis nieuwsbrief.

Abonneer je op onze gratis nieuwsbrief. Omdat het kan! Dit is waarom. Holland Festival, Poetry International, een zomer vol kunst. En ondertussen wordt een heel nieuw kunstbestel in elkaar gerommeld. Nederland staat te springen om naar buiten te gaan, muziek te beleven, kunst mee te maken en foodtrucks leeg te eten. En het subsidiestelsel om te gooien. Het is een… 

Read More "We gaan een drukke tijd tegemoet. En jij wil van FB af. Mis niets. Abonneer je op onze gratis nieuwsbrief.

Martine Dekker (Cinedans): 'The new generation does not respect the demarcation between the arts at all. That's very fun and interesting for a festival like Cinedans.'

Cinedans has been around since 2003. Back then, it was a single evening, part of Amsterdam's Julidans festival. Pretty soon, it grew into something bigger. According to Martine Dekker, involved with the festival since the 2011 edition, this was due to the overwhelming supply of dance films: 'From the second edition, filmmakers were invited to submit films,... 

Read More "Martine Dekker (Cinedans): 'The new generation does not respect the demarcation between the arts at all. That's very fun and interesting for a festival like Cinedans.'

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