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Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, which started on 6 August, has a new boss. This woman, Viktorien van Hulst, had a hard time even before the start of her first festival. Someone had suddenly found a tiny asbestos fibre in a drainpipe at the special new festival site on the Bossche Tramkade, a day before the opening, and so had to...
From today, it is not Leeuwarden, Amsterdam, Utrecht or The Hague that is our country's cultural capital, but Den Bosch. For eleven days during Theatre Festival Boulevard, there will be more to see in that city than all to follow. Lots of new and unique work for Den Bosch, but also some performances that have already played in other places. Herewith our five recommendations. Have...
Drie dagen klassieke muziek tussen de bomen en de koeien. Festival Wonderfeel presenteerde afgelopen weekend van 24 tot en met 26 juli, onder de rook van ’s-Graveland, een uniek klassiek muziekfestival. Topmusici uit binnen- en buitenland gaven tientallen concerten. Er werden lezingen gegeven en zoals dat hoort op een festival, viel er ook veel te eten, te drinken en te…
In the midst of all the Greek calamity, something beautiful has blossomed: a new inspired cinema that makes us blink.
Following the euro crisis, Culture Press focuses on Greece in a series of articles. In the first part, George Vermij looks at how film has influenced our image of the Mediterranean country. Is there not a more striking image of Greece than Antony Quinn as Zorba dancing the Sirtaki and finding resignation despite the harsh setbacks life offers? The...
There was an air of more expensive perfume in the foyers than at a Dutch gala premiere. The women were younger and smoother, or had a better botox doctor than usual. The jewellery looked very expensive, as did the dresses. Russian sounded everywhere. It seemed as if Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg had been moved for a while to PC Hooftstraat, a few hundred metres away....
Two choreographers exploring how a dancer and the eye of the audience interact. Dance makers who rattle common ideas about identity and sexuality. Artists who confront us with the dreams of perfection and glamour that advertising and marketing throw at us. The famous Cullberg Ballet made a striking choice by performing choreographies by the...
After an hour, I looked at my watch - barely 10 minutes had passed. On paper, the programme Baroque Revisited by Soloist Ensemble Kaleidoskop at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ on 18 June looked exciting. Works by Baroque composers are forged into one by German composer Sarah Nemtsov (b 1980), interwoven with modern sounds and...
Last night, Nazmiye Oral, together with a large group of Turkish colleagues, played the performance Niet Meer Zonder Jou for the third and, for now, last time. It is an intimate and overwhelming theatre production by Adelheid Roosen, Female Economy & Zina, co-produced by and performed during the Holland Festival at Broedplaats De Vlugt, far west in Amsterdam-Slotermeer. Tearing die Nazmiye Oral calls...
Got that. Do I get increasingly impressed during the National Ballet's evening Cool Britannia, turns out it's not that good at all. Because connoisseurs react lukewarmly afterwards. Am I that dumb, or are they that smart? There is actually very little British about Cool Britannia. Except that the choreographers are from there. An obvious...
Typical of a not entirely satisfactory evening around Samuel Beckett and French philosophy is the way it was announced. The Holland festival called the evening Beckett and Philosophy: Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze. Organiser Felix and Sofie called it Beckett in the crosshairs of French Philosophy. I wonder how much dialogue between the festival...
The new operas by Arnoud Noordegraaf and Guo Wenjing, presented by the Holland Festival shortly after each other, both thematise the loss of traditional values due to the meteoric developments in modern China. Both also feature a Chinese soprano in the lead role and draw on classical Chinese opera and folk music. The inner landscape of Guo Wenjing, which will be performed Tuesday, 16 June,...
Theatre maker Corinne Jaber received nothing from her father about his roots, except his passion for cooking and good food -she says in an interview. The outbreak of the Syrian civil war made her curious about her father's background. Together with Palestinian author Amir Nizar Zuabi, Jaber interviewed Syrian refugees in refugee camps. The result is this monologue, in which a fictional, half-Syrian-half...
2014 was the year of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, award-winning stage adaptation by Ivo van Hove. This year, that performance has been outstripped by 'Passions Humaines', written by Erwin Mortier, magisterially designed by Guy Cassiers. Again at the Holland Festival, confirming its place as a stage for the great debate on art. Two plays in which architecture, artistry and...
Power and leadership, can one exist without the other? Toneelgroep Amsterdam presented a sampling of three types of leaders on Sunday 14 June at the Holland Festival with 'Kings of War'. Three historical plays by Shakespeare about the struggle for power between the Houses of Lancaster and York together provided the fuel for this performance. With large black letters on a white...
Had Anton Chekhov lived now, he would have written for television. Not drama, and certainly not film. Indeed, innovative as the great Russian playwright was during his short life (1860-1904), he would now have done something with selfie sticks and contact microphones. The result would probably have been something like what Brazilian artist Christiane Jatahy has now created. She took the text...
Eye organised a Lulu Marathon as part of the William Kentridge exhibition at the Holland Festival. Kentridge directed Alban Berg's opera Lulu. As part of that, Eye screened the two main Lulu films that inspired him. The first was Leopold Jessner's Erdgeist (1923) and the second was G.W. Pabst's Die Büchse der Pandora (1929). Two iconic Weimar...
Over 70% of the talking heads on TV are men, Simone van Saarloos told us in the introduction to her own talk show. Niña Weijers and she thought that surely something like this could be done better, without talking about glass ceilings and other women's topics. And so, in October 2013, they launched their sexist talk show series with guests from the arts, literature, politics and...
There is something crushing about the massiveness. Choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have brought the dancers of the Ballet National de Marseille and of ICK Amsterdam to the stage in Extremalism, thirty in all. A huge 'corps de ballet'. Greco and Scholten and the dancers take root in classical ballet, but also break away from it. The classical footwork with...
Der Untergang der Nibelungen - The Beauty of Revenge at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theatre on Wednesday, 10 June, with its duration of 2.5 hours - without intermission - did quite an assault on the sitting flesh. Granted, Wagner spared four complete operas for his version of the medieval Nibelungenlied and director Peter Jackson devoted three full-length films to the also...
It was a touching moment when director Cherry Duyns drove a frail Misha Mengelberg onto the stage on Tuesday 9 June, after the premiere of his opera Koeien (Cows). Dressed in a bright orange windbreaker and wearing a cap with an oversized visor, the recently turned eighty improviser and rudderless disruptor looked around uncomfortably: is this applause for me? Yet he visibly enjoyed himself and...
For the first time in years, Robert Wilson is back on stage by himself and he proves what a sublime performer he is. In Samuel Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, he plays an old man looking back at his younger self. His older self is almost without language, but with cries, grimaces and gestures. Wilson manages to take the play to its bitter...
'Urbo Kune' is esperanto for 'common city'. Klangforum Wien presents 24 hours of contemporary music and ideas today at the Muziekgebouw, focusing on the future of Europe and ideas about the ideal capital of the United States of Europe. https://vimeo.com/129976101 At 12:12 today afternoon, the event started with an incomprehensible statement from the roof. Mayor Van der Laan, Arnon Grunberg, Francine Houben exchange...
The new format of the Holland festival puts the spectator first. Plenty of visible events, free performances and being in the middle of the city. It's director Ruth McKenzie's trademark. It is therefore not surprising that she does not shy away from the digital universe. After all, what better way to share than digital art? But what then is digital art...
Manger, de nieuwe voorstelling van Boris Charmatz en Musée de la Danse, geeft toeschouwers alle ruimte. Waar je je opstelt om te kijken of juist om te luisteren, naar wie of wat je kijkt en voor hoe lang, maak je zelf uit. De Zuiveringshal op het Westergasfabriekterrein, majesteitelijk leeg en galmend, zorgt voor een wonderlijke sfeer in deze voor Charmatz’…
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