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Listen here to the podcast/work in progress by Jowi Schmitz who attended the event with chef Natasja Postma: Fantasising about 2020 in International Choice 2011 Liposuction fat. Blood. Vomit. 'You can look at it that way too!' says the Appetitheque's food designer excitedly. It doesn't bother her that her thin-walled jelly pudding, processed cola and her yellow-white lumps of beef salad are still...
It is the most frequently asked question to actresses: whether it is difficult, crying on command. And invariably Carice van Houten or Halina Reijn then replies to Matthijs van Nieuwkerk or Jeroen Pauw that there are all kinds of tricks for that. For crying. Just think of something nasty, tiger balm, onions, and Vaseline. Now, however, it turns out there is something where even...
Spain and God. The two have had something in common for a long time. And to outsiders, not always in a positive sense. Spaniards invented the Inquisition and converted the entire native population of South America to the eternal hunting grounds. When artists delve into the relationship between supreme being and Spaniard, it also quite often produces confrontational works. Take...
It takes guts: walking down Rotterdam's Kruiskade with a big wooden cross and shouting "Mason was a fish!" shouting. The drug-addicted residents of St Paul's Church, the dishwashers at Chinese restaurants and waiting passengers at the tram stop look on in bewilderment. Sandro Lima shouts lyrics about Mason the saviour like a possessed religious maniac. Moments before, we are at...
Far more people waved at the Queen on Princes Day than stood on Malieveld a day earlier to protest against austerity. Why are we unable to revolt? And what can we learn from the Tahrir Square uprising. These were some of the questions that came up during 'Lessons in revolt', the debate...
Opinion pollsters take note: "People give the moderate answer to most questions they are asked in life. The characters in 'This is not a love story' are very ordinary, very average. In that, it clicks between those two. It's an ending where you feel an enormous satisfaction." Enthusiasm prevails after the opening weekend of The International Choice of the...
What is your relationship with whales? A. Totally not interested in it. B. Somewhat interested. C. Very fond of whales.
You don't often hear such a question in everyday life. It appears in 'This is not a love story', a narrated, danced and musically performed 'Swedish road movie' by choreographer/filmmaker Gunilla Heilborn. A journey Heilborn took with dancers Johan Thelander and Kristiina Viala from Tromsö to Lisbon provided the material for this performance.
For the opening night of The International Choice, the Rotterdam Schouwburg was briefly transformed into Berlin's Volksbühne. The same black plastic rags on the walls, the same ugly yellow front curtain and - most strikingly - the seats in the auditorium have been replaced by white beanbags. Those beanbags, by the way, are widely despised and mocked in Berlin. They should...
Strange how quickly history detaches itself from your memory. We had gradually come to think here that the camping uprising in Cairo's Tahrir Square was a kind of summer of love. That everyone there was cramming roses into cannon shells singing together and that the whole world was just there to give each other love and hugs. Time for a lesson in rebellion....
Vaak roepen publiciteitstekstjes een niet passend beeld op van de voorstelling waarnaar ze verwijzen. “De vliegbasis als een niemandsland: een militaire staat die is uitgevaagd en waar de natuur het gebied heeft overgenomen,” is er zo een. De tekst hoort bij Welcome in the human zoo, een ervaringstheatervoorstelling gemaakt door Suze Milius en Bram Jansen. Zo’n zin roept associaties op…
"You are my sunshine," sings a woman very softly. Meanwhile, the audience sits in pitch darkness. We are trapped. Banished to a shelter that, it seems, suddenly has no exit. It is a real shelter in which theatre-maker Davy Pieters holds her performance Helium. Shelter 313 at Soesterberg Air Base once served as a refuge for personnel. Via...
Soesterberg Air Base is full of large hangars, hangars and other massive buildings. All dream locations for theatre-makers, it seems. Director Ilmer Rozendaal made a different choice for her performance Thousand Yard Stare. She placed the solo in a small, airy oak forest containing an old and dilapidated bunker. The timelessness of this place turns out to be ideal for her small and human...
Een open plek in het bos. Dat zou idyllisch kunnen zijn, maar uit het bos komen verdachte geluiden. Mannen zingen en halen trekkers over. De echo’s van explosies weerklinken. Het is allemaal maar nep. Het is maar theater – dat toch angst aanjaagt. Daria Bukvic, een pas afgestudeerde regisseur van de Toneelschool Maastricht, maakte een voorstelling over haar moeder. Die…
Art at Soesterberg airbase is almost by definition a paradox. So is the natural site that was a military base. And that is why visual art finds a perfect home here. For festival De Basis, artists from five countries were asked to enter into a dialogue with this absurd, until recently forbidden terrain. This results in beautiful contrasts. First of all in...
Het wordt met temperaturen boven de 25 graden een broeierige, maar ook unieke zomerdag, die 10e september. Het Cultureel Persbureau is die dag en zondag met 4 journalisten aanwezig op de voormalige Vliegbasis Soesterberg om verslag te doen van festival De Basis. Wanneer u daar komt, maakt u veel natuur, nog meer indrukwekkend oorlogsverleden en een stuk of wat theatervoorstellingen…
Het wordt met temperaturen boven de 25 graden een broeierige, maar ook unieke zomerdag, die 10e september. Het Cultureel Persbureau is die dag met 4 journalisten aanwezig op de voormalige Vliegbasis Soesterberg om verslag te doen van festival De Basis. Wanneer u daar komt, maakt u veel natuur, nog meer indrukwekkend oorlogsverleden en een stuk of wat theatervoorstellingen en beeldende…
Turntables and theatre have something in common. Especially in recent years, theatre-goers increasingly run the risk of facing a so-called rotating stage. After Johan Simons made use of this technical style figure in his direction of Hiob at the Munich Kammerspiele and Christoph Schlingensief made the stage turn spectacularly in his swan song Mea Culpa, it is now...
Last year, it was still about 'a sense of belonging': the ability to feel at home somewhere, to know you belong somewhere. This year, the motto of the quirky Rotterdam festival De Internationale Keuze is almost diametrically opposed to that: parallel reality. Instead of one place offering warmth, the festival now says that place is there...
With a few creative friends and a nice budget, romp around in a playground of many tens of acres of pristine nature. Surrounded by the remains of military might. It automatically makes you go roaring. But that's how it goes sometimes. With art. So, to get right to the point: cuts are not always bad. For instance, divesting the...
Holland Festival, Julidans, IT's, Over 't IJ. End-of-season theatre is always strewn across Amsterdam. Between April and September, international performance offerings migrate from Utrecht (Springdance and Festival aan de Werf) via Amsterdam to Rotterdam (Internationale Keuze). If you want to experience something of contemporary, international dance, Springdance, HF and Julidans are the places to be. [For...
In conclusion. The 2011 Holland Festival could well be historic. Not only was it the festival that attracted the most audiences for years, it was also the festival that took place while a minority government of populists, nationalists and materialists proclaimed the end of art subsidies. We therefore look back on a festival in which we had a great time with our new...
The Dodo was busy, this third week of the Holland Festival. Thankfully, again with an exciting mix of beautiful, weird and extraordinary. As it should be, really. What makes the Holland Festival all the more exciting is that such extremes can sometimes take place within one programme, as with the National Ballet, or even within one performance, as with The Russians...
At last: the opera The Cricket Recovers after the animal story The cure of the cricket by Toon Tellegen is in the Netherlands! More than six years after its world premiere in Aldeburgh, the Holland Festival presents Richard Ayres' work, performed by Asko|Schönberg and VocaalLAB conducted by Etienne Siebens. Pierre Audi signed on to direct: he made the performance layered and daring....
Could Prime Minister Rutte cum suis's anti-advertising by dismissing art as destined for leftist types and other idiots already be having an effect? You would almost think so when you see the rather poorly filled halls during the performances at the Holland Festival. There are more than ten people in the front row, yet it all doesn't hold...
The ark as the earth, as a spaceship carrying us through the chaos of the universe to a safe haven. The pole star as the apparent magnetic centre of the universe around which all the stars revolve. No, this is not woolly new age chatter, these are the starting points for Tevot and Polaris, two major orchestral works by Thomas Adès, which had their Dutch premiere under the direction of the composer himself.
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