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Writers Unlimited 2013: about writers and people with a story #wu13

Whether Tahmina Akefi is a good writer, I dare not say. The Afghan beauty can at least glue sentences together, and knows how to add an erotic layer on top. But whether this means she surpasses the average penny novel, or whether she has nothing to offer but oriental soft porn anyway? Tricky.

The fact is that she does have a story. After all, what she presented in terms of light erotica on the programme "Wanna Know A Secret?" on Writers Unlimited stemmed from ...

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Blogging vs demons #wu13

"We don't use social media because it's cool," says Tunisian internet activist Sami Ben Gharbia. "But in a dictatorship, it is the only way to inform people about what is really going on. To fight the demons in society. I am not a techny Became because it's fun. I just needed useful knowledge about internet codes, to improve my civic activism possible."

Really free poetry can be learned #wu13

We spoke briefly at Writers Unlimited 2013 with the woman who has been giving workshops in poetry to schoolchildren for a few years now. And we wondered again if rap wasn't enough for them, those kids. No. So it turns out. And she explains it clearly. ... You can now log in to continue reading! Welcome to the archive of... 

Hassnae Bouazza's Thousand Shades of Arabia on #wu13

John de Mol is doing good business in the Arab world. He acts rather dismissively about this, according to Hassnae Bouazza. According to her, the television producer talks publicly mainly about the many restrictions on his formats because of Islam and the sentimentalism of TV in the Middle East in general. That De Mol's success number The Voice of Arabia during the final in

'For me, only the text exists' - Alberto Manguel & Hans Goedkoop on black pages #wu13

With a jam-packed programme like Writers Unlimited 2013, it sometimes happens that, even as a professional journalist, despite everything, you end up dropping in somewhere too late, and then just catch a glimpse of something really great. In this case, after the tour de force by Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis, it was the spoken word performance by Kenyan Ngwatilo Mawiyoo. Mea culpa for that.

Mawiyoo introduced the Forget It! programme. A conversation with Hans Goedkoop (bek...

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Does it luckily still involve sex on #wu13

How many male genitals Yasmine Allas had weighed in her hand. For a while, that was the question during Writers Unlimited's most shameless programme to date. This latenight talk show addressed the question of how shameless writers actually dare to be these days. Kristien Hemmerechts, always good for a few firm statements, met her peers in

Presenters can make a Winternight. And break it. #wu13

And then, just like that, you can miss the highlight of the first Winternacht because you don't pull it together with a presenter. Flemish author Bart van Loo, according to many twitterers, seems to have uttered beautiful sentences in the programme 'Daar geef ik mijn leven voor' (I'll give my life for that), but that was well after midnight and I had given up by then. The presenter on duty, the in itself excellent storyteller and very amiable Anousha Nzume, was too eager to attach in-depth interviews to...

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A lot of Oz & a little Van Dis on impossible dreams and ideals #wu13

During the kick-off of Winternacht 1, publicist Bas Heijne brought the two literary giants Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis closer together. What remains of their former idealism? Oz's barrage of wonderful one-liners proved difficult to tame and made for a hilarious but somewhat unbalanced conversation.

A recalcitrant teenager, Israeli Amos Oz ran away from home at the age of 15 and joined a kibbutz. He lived there for years. Adriaan van Dis, too, once spent time as a ...

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Heartfelt plea against Arab shame culture #wu13

Lebanese writer Hanaan as-Sjaikh (Beirut, Lebanon, 1945) opened Wrtiters Unlimited on Thursday 17 January with a blazing argument against Arab shame culture. This, according to the writer whose books Het verhaal van Zahra, Vrouwen tussen hemel en zand, Beiroet blues and Alleen in Londen have been translated into Dutch, is so deeply embedded in society that family relationships and friendships are constantly strained by it. She gives an example:

...'my brother's friend...'

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'Readers need to be approached in a different way'

Writers Unlimited Special - One of the important guests at Writers Unlimited is Roland Colastica. This Curaçao writer made his debut in 2012 with the children's book 'Fireworks in my head'. The book was enthusiastically received, and has since grown into a modest bestseller. Great strength of the story is the colourful and rhythmic style, but at least as important is the description of the life of children on Curaçao, which we see for the first time from an Antillean perspective.

Cola...

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Culture Press ratings: thick 300,000 minutes of attention

With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000

'In STUT I process what I experience' Community Arts Lab is exciting as well as relaxing. #vvu

STUT is a household name. The neighbourhood theatre group has been putting on performances with and about ordinary people from ordinary Utrecht neighbourhoods since 1977. In 2010, the theatre group gave birth to the Stutkoor, which is now taking part in the exchange project of the community art lab for the Treaty of Utrecht celebrations in 2013.

It will be some time before the STUT choir will actually rehearse with Irish folk band The Henry Girls, but that it is going to be special seems certain in advance. "With the choir members doing the ...

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If you don't have Twitter in Egypt. Community Arts 'Mahatat' works from the bottom up. #vvu

The government has made little effort in recent decades to create a cultural scene  getting off the ground. There are no workspaces. No galleries. Only a very large library and a "cultural palace". Both of which opened only five years ago. There are also a few small independent initiatives. In public spaces.

Art: alternative to mistrust and violence in Guatemala. #vvu

Theatre-maker Anouk de Bruijn (32) has been to Guatemala seven times since 1999. For the Treaty of Utrecht, she entered into an exchange project with the Guatemalan group Caja Lúdica. Together, they are committed to giving people a positive experience through art. Their project 'Hidden War' is about the lives of young people in Guatemala. 

'I am here': talking about the now during film class with the ISK #vvu

Documentary filmmaker Femke Stroomer and Sanne Sprenger will make two films in the coming year with two classes of the International Switching Class (ISK) under the title I am here. Part two of a report on this Treaty of Utrecht Community Arts Project.

The footballing boys in the schoolyard do not shout "come on with that ball!", but with heavy accent "can I have a loaf of bread from you? The whole team doubles over that exclamation. At the Internationale Schakelklassen in Utrecht, Dutch is n...

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Strauss with muscle by Gustavo Dudamel, the sizzling South American. #hf12

The young conductor of Venezuelan descent brought his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra to the Concertgebouw for the final concert of the Holland Festival last night for the first time. While Hollanders braved the tropical weather in the corridors, Venezuelan beauties walked to the stage vivaciously on their stilettos. After Máxima and Willem-Alexander had also taken their seats on the balcony, Gustavo Dudamel came dancing down the stairs.

Of course the thunderstorm is not too bad. But follow developments here in case it does go wrong. #hf12

For the second time this month, the weather gods are threatening to throw a spanner in the works at the Holland Festival. While the storms announced on 21 June were not too bad, for tonight, 28 June, a 'code red' is currently (10:45) threatened to be issued by the emergency services.
According to the storm chasers on the meteo-service weather forum, things could go badly wrong tonight. Their language is as puzzling to the uninitiated as the texts of Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar, but if they have the ...

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Talk to our reporters. Exclusive: spot in the #hf12 hangout for our most loyal followers

There have been days when we had 1500 page views. You, 2500 of our most loyal visitors, came so far to provide 14000 views on dedodo.co.uk, and you stayed around for an average of three minutes. On average. We are proud of that. Apparently, we managed to attract and keep your attention. So those are good numbers for an online festival day newspaper like The Dodo, which has to make do with no screaming, no marketing budget but an overdose of enthusiasm and professional...

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The Second Detail

Shock and awe ballet in Bill & Mr. B overflows with quality on all sides; there is no stalling

In the production Bill & Mr B, the Dutch National Ballet dives thematically into history with reprises of works by George Balanchine and William Forsythe. Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements (1972) is considered the breeding ground for Forsythe, who then went 'the extra mile' with Steptext (1985) and The Second Detail (1991). From protocol to photocall: dance as a photo session. Movement - click,... 

2001 is a film you should see again every 10 years. The sf epic even stands up to live orchestra

Does live accompaniment with choir and orchestra make Kubrick's 2001 a different or better film? Not necessarily, but as an homage and event, it is a wonderful gesture. Even on the hard bucket seats in the Gashouder, it is once again a breathtaking experience. Last night, at the Gashouder on Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds, finally revisiting Kubrick's science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. This... 

Extremely imaginative Master and Margarita gets cheering reception on #HF12

Shakespeare had it, Oscar savage had it, Monty Python had it and Simon McBurney has trucks full of it. So it is British and it is called humour, or rather the ability to show the absurdity of life as simultaneously hilarious and deeply tragic. And let that also apply to Russian Mikhail Bulgakov. So his unfinished novel The Master and Margarita has now had to wait almost 75 years for a director like Simon McBurney to turn it into theatre.

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