The Holland Festival is the Netherlands' leading festival, showcasing the best of what is being made internationally and nationally on the bigger stages.
The Russian soul. So there is something about that. And you get something from that when you see a Chekhov play (if done well), or read one of his short stories. Or when you read the works of Tolstoi, Dostoevsky or any other inhabitant of that vast nothingness east of Poland. Or seeing the paintings, which a few...
Above, fun audio from the Holland Festival. We went to watch and listen at this performance. Afterwards, we talked to actor Sabri Saad el Hamus and reviewer Martin Schouten. They had their own views on this play, which was announced as follows: Cairo is the city with thirty thousand minarets. Here you can hear five times a day above the...
The Marathon Effect is well known: put spectators together in a theatre for half a day or more, preferably on uncomfortable seats, and hand them over to a couple of actors with a play. Success seems assured, and the ancient Greeks already knew that. So that there would be no discord surrounding the monster project I Demoni, the Dostoevsky adaptation of Peter...
After a 12-hour theatre marathon, what can be said? That it was good? Good. It can. That it was rare? Also true. That it takes a director in his 70s to stage a Russian novel with such calmness, and that it takes such phenomenal actors to keep the audience hooked for 11 hours to the not-very...
Image report: Ellen Segeren A few years ago, Greek-Dutch composer Calliope Tsoupaki wrote songs with piano accompaniment for Greek singer Nena Venetsanou. Some of these Tsoupaki arranged for the four brass players of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Brass Soloists and the four singers of the Egidius Quartet, whose tenor part is filled in for this occasion by Marcel Beekman. For him, Tsoupaki also wrote...
Fortunately, there is a considerable time difference between Santa Monica and Amsterdam, but for a while there was a threat of considerable confusion when the organisers of the three-day Harmony Festival thought they could reserve the hashtag #hf10 for themselves. However, since the first twitters, yesterday, things have been quiet in California, as they have discovered that Holland Rulez where trending topics are concerned....
Image by Andrew B47 via Flickr Photo: Chris Vanderburght It was time for a real theatrical hit at the Holland festival, after the rather lukewarmly received British-American Shakespeares of Sam Mendes' Bridge Project. And clap it did with Rechnitz by Elfriede Jelinek dooor the best actors of the Münchener Kammerspiele. Karin Veraart of De Volkskrant was deeply impressed: ...Not...
Not all was negative around Sam Mendes' Bridge Project, which was received rather sparingly by us at The Dodo, and a few other media outlets. Apart from a few positive Twitter reactions, the performance of The Tempest also garnered a pretty nice review from Volkskrant reviewer Karin Veraart, who admired music, directorial discoveries and acting performances by Stephen Dillane in particular and the fresh couple...
By Wijbrand Schaap (photo Arno Declair) Since Wednesday 9 June 2010, the Netherlands has been looking a bit more like Austria again, although with us the mountains are in the southeast, instead of the west. And there's another difference: we are still allowed to see the stage work of Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, while the stern writer's work in her...
Loek Zonneveld is furious about The Bridge Project, but overjoyed with De Keersemaeker's The Song and Wijbrand Schaap still enjoys Amal Maher in the broadcast of Clash der Recensenten on Amsterdam FM, Tuesday 8 June, between 15:00 and 16:00. Also featuring a clear explanation of what The Dodo is, and what it is for...
Martijn Padding has done something special with Beethoven's 10th. He turned the piece that the deaf composer never really wrote in its entirety into an experience that, as Volkskrant reviewer Frits van der Waa put it, made you feel what it sounded like between Beethoven's ears. According to the NRC, it sounded Impressive: the sphere of creation stripped of all heroism, as if you were passing through two centuries of...
Sometimes we are not at a concert or performance ourselves, but there is a spectator who dedicates a beautiful or critical reflection on a performance in more than a few sentences. You may submit those pieces, and if they are deemed good enough, we will repost them on The Dodo. With our heartfelt thanks, of course. Mail your pieces to: dedodo@cultureelpersbureau.nl...
By Maarten Baanders (photo by Herman Sorgeloos) Where were we? In the previous performance, Keeping Still, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker gave us an empty space as the final image. Now we walk into the hall of the Muziektheater for part 2 of the triptych, The Song and once again an explicitly bare stage stretches before us. The hall light is still on...
Curlew River Photo: Bertrand Stofleth For every independent journalist in the Netherlands, there are about 15 information officers. It is therefore obvious that these spokespeople largely determine the image in the media. Could that be why in the newspapers and television programmes surrounding the Holland Festival, the announcements are far more numerous than the critical reviews? A look at the...
By Wijbrand Schaap (photo by Joan Marcus) You can have Bach's St Matthew Passion performed by 15 canaries, an electric guitar, a drum kit, a ukulele and a accordion, and it will still be beautiful, because it is Bach. Similarly, you can have Shakespeare's up-and-coming British plays performed by a group of Americans, and it will...
We at the press do it for free, but people with really big money can buy it: the right to unsolicited advice to the Holland Festival. Today, the festival announced the appointment of a Board of Governors. People with money who like to put it into top culture. A novelty for the Netherlands. We have the names: G.J. van den Bergh and...
Wilfred Takken muses today on the character Jacques in the Shakespeare comedy As You Like It. The actor Stephen Dillane turns it into a wonderful Bob Dylan in The Bridge Project, says NRC reviewer Takken: When Dylan was once asked if he considered himself the "voice of a generation", he replied, "I'm just a song and dance man. Everyone laughed, but...
By Wijbrand Schaap, Photo Joan Marcus So we don't have that. In the Netherlands. So many good actors of name and fame to fill an entire Shakespeare comedy with top actors, right down to the smallest edelfiguration. Ok, we come a long way with our Pierre Bokma's, our Gijs Scholten van Aschats, a Lineke Rijxman, Mariek Heebink and Ariane Schluter, and flat Elsie de...
By Maarten Baanders (photo by Herman Sorgeloos) Calmly we stand at the door of the venue. A bit like the Holland Festival is a drag. No one suspects that in a few minutes, existence will be reduced to almost nothing. It starts with darkness. Silence. For minutes. Softly, footsteps sound. The ears are tuned to it in detail. There is singing. Mahler's...
Wereldjournalisten.nl, a site with journalistic productions by and about the multicultural society was also present at the opening concert and did understand the many cries from the audience. At one point, for instance, there was an incident where Amal Maher apologetically pointed at her - otherwise extraordinarily chic - watch. For a moment, we thought it was about that, but it was about...
State visits are hard to adjust to the cultural agenda, and when the Queen then misses her opening of the Holland Festival due to a visit to Norway planned years before, it is force majeure. And not anything else, though of course in these politically confused times it remains delightful to speculate on other reasons why the Majesty was absent from Amal...
Valhalla. Someone called it, and indeed: Valhalla. I don't mean the Teutonic version of the Eternal Hunting Fields then, but Miss Asterix and Obelix. Egyptian style. You may colour in the picture yourself with dark curls, unimaginably flawless skin made of very creamy milk chocolate, and that then set on a pair of hidden heels and strapped into a corset that accentuates everything of value. So Amal Maher is one of those women for whom a man is happy to put his chimes at the disposal of science, if it gives him the privilege of being around her for a few moments.
Beatrix does not tweet, she informed the world in her 2009 Christmas speech. A pity, because...
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