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Art has been utterly politicised. It has been creeping, and faster than I thought. Artists now make political speeches, conduct public participation rounds in the service of lobbying organisations. They discuss identity instead of telling the stories that take us beyond the delusion of the day. That cultural funds are now gently starting to talk about social connection too,...
Especially for our regular readers and subscribers, temporarily available for everyone to view: the e-book with all the stories about Theatre Festival Boulevard 2017 listed. Members and subscribers can also download the book, and read it on their e-reader.
Wine tasting and listening to medieval music are usually things people only do with very serious faces. So it took five glasses, three drunken singers and a good hour before the mob in the sober Heilig Hart church in Den Bosch loosened up a bit. With a Frontignan to boot. You do start fantasising about the great dinner you had at...
Claron McFadden is a phenomenon. Josse de Pauw is a phenomenon. Arnon Grunberg is a phenomenon. LOD is a phenomenon. KVS is a phenomenon. Theatre Festival Boulevard is a phenomenon. I did not yet know pianist Kris Defoort, but he is also a phenomenon. As is Henry Purcell, but we've known that for a couple of centuries: also a phenomenon. After such an opening paragraph...
Anyone who is young, a little nicely educated and otherwise generally of good character does not go on a North Sea cruise. A cruise on the North Sea, that's what you do if you have no imagination, have bad legs or are too sick for anything else. Believes Wunderbaum. The theatre collective that likes to take care of the vulnerable of this planet is...
The most beautiful end of the world is in Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Floating poplars, a woolly planet eating us in a wave of atmospheric mist. I'd sign up for it. Anything better than the sloshing slabs of earth full of screaming puppets in the failed 2012 disaster movie. Then again, not as much fun as the end of times in The Hitchhikers Guide....
Industrial estates are weird. They lie souring on the outskirts of one city, only to seamlessly morph into the same site on the outskirts of another. Once they were A-locations, places of visibility and the incarnate dream of reconstruction. Now they are low-grade structures, halls with a front door, a visible office for the Dirk and a pathetic...
The prize for the longest and most artful kiss of 2017 has been given away and goes to Conny Janssen Danst. In a small tent on the square below Bossche Sint-Jan, this danced kiss forms the technical and dramatic highlight of Clarity. Two dancers, spinning pirouettes while keeping their lips connected, a video artist and the floating music performed live by iET were on Saturday ...
Heroes are not always the smartest people. Indeed, most acts that have gone down in history as heroes have been thoughtless actions. That happened to succeed. Pure luck. Against every heroic act, therefore, there is an unknown but not negligible number of senseless deaths of would-be heroes. The main character of the theatre play The Heroes, which I attended in Den Bosch on 4 August,...
Opening speeches. Every festival has one. Or two. You have to go through them. As a guest, but also as a host. Something should be found on it. Of course a point has to be made, a flag raised, a champagne bottle bang introduced. And also the sponsors should be thanked. In these times of a retreating government, there are more of them every year. And.
Would like your interpretation of the cover girl's look on the Theatre Festival Boulevard programme book. It may be projection, but I see a slightly overwhelmed desperation in those eyes, whose eyebrows have been replaced by two playfully placed arches of St John's, above: Den Bosch on my mind. Where to start, mostly. In the book, especially abundance. Glassily designed...
I held my heart. Patrick Nederkoorn and Oscar Kocken had been tempted by television to bring their brilliant gem 'Zomaargasten' over to the living room. NPO3 still. The channel targeting millennials. I had visions of channel managers, dramaturgs, audience specialists and gussied-up boys and girls well over forty that these two little artists would...
The advantage of being a subscriber to Culture Press is, of course, mainly that we can exist thanks to you. So our independent sound remains audible, so you get the interpretation of the news as you get it nowhere else. In June, a total of 14 authors hit the road for you to see as many Holland Festival performances as possible....
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...
Sometimes you don't need a lot of words for a great story. Often, few words also require more effort than many words. That idea Blaise Pascal once managed to coin. Yesterday, on the penultimate day of the seventieth Holland Festival, the statement was reinforced in another, unexpected way. Australia's Back to Back Theatre told the story of...
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...
Chances are not inconceivable that you have never heard of Fortunato Depero. Or maybe you are a lover of classic design and still have an old mini bottle of Campari somewhere. He created that. As a playwright, you might well have overlooked him. On 21 June, I went to see if you could find yourself with that...
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,...
Struggle is by far the word that falls the most in the video triptych 'The Tempest Society'. The struggle for a dignified existence, the struggle for papers, the struggle with a system that does not want to give you rights. Refugees struggle with these issues day in and day out, year in and year out. In this video triptych, Moroccan-French director Bouchra Khalili (Casablanca,...
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