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

"The city's leading free spirits have discovered and embraced classical music, but on their own terms"

An alternative scene for classical events outside the ice palaces of classical music is growing. Last month, you could 'classical clubbing' at the Yellow Lounge at the Westergasfabriek venue. The club was sold out, indeed with a large

Neutral Hero: Like a steam locomotive tugging slowly over you #dekeuze

'I will never go to anything undergrounds again,' sighs a lady as she leaves the auditorium. She looks pained, after more than an hour and a half of Neutral Hero by director Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players. The paper description of the show may therefore lead a potential visitor astray. A 'country opera' sounds far too... 

Sarah Moeremans camps out at the theatre and shows young actors all over it during #dekeuze

Director, actress and theatre designer Sarah Moeremans is holding office in the lobby of the Rotterdam Schouwburg for a year. Titled "My First Camp", she has moved into the front hall to be more in touch with the various users and visitors in the building and the world around it. Has the public space become a wilderness, which... 

Can a piece of plastic be sad? Well in the theatre by Lotte van den Berg #dekeuze

Can a plastic rag be sad? It does in the hands of a puppeteer in a performance by Lotte van den Berg. With a few pieces of tape and a lot of well-aimed buttons, the plastic rag has been transformed into something with four limbs and a head. And the plastic rag mourns in its performer's hands dozens of similarly knotted... 

The International Choice does, what The International Choice has been doing for years: divide opinion and loosen tongues.

"We are blind to the big changes in the world and meanwhile we are arguing with one-liners on Radio One." These words, penned by reporter Robbert van Heuven from the mouth of writer Abdelkader Benali during the Choice Debate on Tuesday 20 September perhaps best captures what The International Choice was all about. Artistic director Annemie Vanackere... 

Seeing, building and tasting the future during an exciting bike ride through Rotterdam with Parfum de BoemBoem #dekeuze

Een stoet felrode en groene fietsen slingert langs de Maas, bereden door mensen die nieuwsgierig om zich heen kijken, met elkaar overleggen en zich elk moment afvragen of ‘dit er nou bij hoort’. Het toegangskaartje van Parfum de BoemBoem in hun zak is het bewijs: het gaat hier niet om een gewone fietstocht, maar om een met theatrale verrassingen. Gids Sereh geniet van de vragende blikken en leidt de groep naar de eerste locatie: de afvalverbrandingsinstallatie in Rotterdam-Zuid.

Future food of nuisance beasts scrambled with talk on energy #dekeuze

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... 

We talk endlessly about climate change and then the lights go out. #decision

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... 

15,000 burger buns set a fitting stage for typically Spanish Golgotha Picnic #International Choice

  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... 

Irony and purity want to stand side by side in 'Free Mason' by Tjon Rockon #International Choice

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... 

Rebellion and resignation hand in hand during beautiful opening weekend The International Choice at Rotterdam Theatre #hechoice

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... 

'This is not a love story' is intimate and simple, but takes you on a journey for which the globe is not big enough #International Choice

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.

Pollesch and Hinrichs turn opening night The Choice into a theatrical philosophical happening #The International Choice

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... 

Festival 'The International Choice' opens as it should: abrasive, confrontational and tad disturbing #thechoice

Vreemd hoe snel de geschiedenis zich losmaakt van je herinnering. We waren hier zo langzamerhand gaan denken dat de campingopstand op het Tahrirplein in Cairo een soort summer of love was. Dat iedereen er samenzingend rozen in kanonslopen propte en dat de hele wereld slechts bedoeld was om elkaar liefde en hugs te geven. Tijd voor een lesje in opstand.… 

Welcome to the human zoo is an exciting and sometimes oppressive game with real and unreal #DeBasis

Often, publicity texts conjure up an inappropriate image of the performance they refer to. "The air base as a no man's land: a military state wiped out and where nature has taken over the area," is one such. The text belongs to Welcome in the human zoo, an experiential theatre performance created by Suze Milius and Bram Jansen. Such a sentence evokes associations.... 

There is crying, screaming and dancing frenziedly in Helium by Davy Pieters on #debasis

  "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... 

An unfathomable well of sadness in Thousand Yard Stare at #DeBasis

Soesterberg Air Base is full of large hangars, sheds 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... 

Wonderful combination of stillness and slowing makes one long for more of Daria Bukvic' ' Devastated' on #DeBasis

A clearing in the forest. It could be idyllic, but from the forest come suspicious noises. Men are singing and pulling tractors. The echoes of explosions echo. It's all just fake. It's just theatre - which nevertheless inspires fear. Daria Bukvic, a newly graduated director from the Maastricht Drama School, created a play about her mother. Who... 

Artists bring paradoxes of Soesterberg Air Base to light at Festival #DeBasis

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... 

Hot and sunny weekend at Soesterberg airbase: time for new experiment with The Dodo

With temperatures above 25 degrees, it will be a sweltering but also unique summer day, that 10th September. The Cultural Press Agency will be present that day and Sunday with four journalists at the former Soesterberg Air Base to report on festival De Basis. When you get there, you will make lots of nature, even more impressive war history and a theatre performance or two... 

The hottest day of this summer is dedicated to Festival De Basis at Soesterberg. Be there. #thebasis

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… 

Argentine lives inexorably turn to destruction at Mariano Pensotti's hands

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... 

Rotterdam Theatre's International Choice has always been a personal choice

Vorig jaar ging het nog om ‘a sense of belonging’: om het vermogen je ergens thuis te voelen, je ergens bij weten te horen. Dit jaar staat het motto van het eigenzinnige Rotterdamse festival De Internationale Keuze daar bijna lijnrecht tegenover: de parallelle werkelijkheid. In plaats van één plek die warmte biedt, zegt het festival nu dat die plek er… 

Cackling fresh location artists prepare for Festival DE BASIS

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 talk riotously. 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... 

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