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Every festival begs for volunteers, and in the early days of Springdance, there were not even any paid staff at all. That's also saying something. As Springdance merges with Festival aan de Werf after 30 years, the theme of this latest edition is 'scupltured bodies & body sculptures'. At SYLPHIDES, this aptly applies. "How people move doesn't interest me, I want...
The Young Makers Marathon For Your Eyes Only at Springdance features performances by students from the influential dance academies School for New Dance Development (The Netherlands) and P.A.R.T.S. (Belgium). I had the pleaure to see two of them. Cow's Theory by Cecila Lisa Eliceche (P.A.R.T.S.) is a hyperintense piece of contact dance. Three female performers move at super slow pace,...
A little tent allowed to play for sea anemone on dry land, its four legs perky in the air. Actors having a cup of tea and a game of cards. It all looks very innocent. What begins as a wonderful picture novel gradually grows into a rebus of considerable length. "My private Himalaya" is akin to a walking exhibition, with a wind machine....
You think you are buying a ticket for Springdance, but actually you are making an appointment at the office, at the Central Museum. Once let inside the waiting room, staff walk busily past you and the doorman takes one call after another. You obediently fill in a form. As usual, you have to reveal all sorts of personal details. And then that question: what...
This Tuesday was all about daily acts that became art, or art that became daily acts. We are not quite there yet. Daniel Bertina, Fransien van der Putt and Maarten Baanders discuss Field Works: Office by Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki, A gesture that is nothing but a threat by Dias and Roriz,...
No festival without a debate, and on Sunday 22 April it was. In English and led by Dodo reporter Daniel Bertina, it was about festival themes and marketing, and audiences. We have listed some highlights for you.
Europe in Motion is a travelling talent development programme and acts as a battleground and meeting place for young choreographers. What is urgent in dance is discussed for a week to encourage dance makers in their artistic development. This second edition, with partners Dance4 (Nottingham), iDans (Istanbul) and Imagetanz (Vienna), ends in Utrecht. Springdance previously featured dance from high-tech laboratories in Israel (Batsheva Dance...
With two performances, "The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act" and "House", Batsheva Dance Company shows impressive, sublime dance mastery and fresh dynamics. But also restlessness, searching and confusion. The era of happy, harmonious dance is over. A lecture on dance, prior to the performance, emphasises that contemporary dance need not compulsively oppose other dance movements. This artistic...
Upon entering, Wild Life Take Away Station has been going on for four hours. Two performers - Diego Agulló and Ria Higler, a young man and an old woman - stroll through the Central Museum's project studio like drowsy zombies. They are pale and muscle-naked, except for their weird slippers and wigs. The two lie sprawled across the sofa,...
Our team agrees: Springdance really took off on Saturday. With Ibrahim Quraishi's installation 'Wildlife Take Away Station' for sure. Reviewer Daniel Bertina made his own recordings, which will appear in his review. And it was even more tasty for him at '(M)imosa. Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M)....
"I love it when movement moves people," says British choreographer Russel Maliphant in this interview after the performance of The Rodin Project. In the Hekman foyer of Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg, our colleague from Danspubliek.nl put the creator ven the Rodin Project through his paces. It is interesting what Maliphant has to say about the first part of...
As a performer, Ivo Dimchev is so fast and ferocious in his shifts between blunt bravado, childish fun, erotic impertinence and cutting loneliness that as a spectator, you normally can't get between them. Once Dimchev has his audience in his clutches, they can only follow him in bewilderment. "I-on" is again a seemingly loose collection of actions. Everything takes place around a...
Experts in particular were upset with the official opening performance of Springdance 2012. "The Rodin Project" by Russel Maliphant was special for that reason alone. Rarely has there been so much talk about an opening performance, especially since it is also Springdance's last opening performance. The 30-year-old festival of innovative dance and performance is ceasing to exist. Partly due to pressure from subsidy cuts from...
The festival opens disappointingly with 'The Rodin Project'. The sculptor Rodin may be a challenging choice, but unfortunately choreographer Russell Maliphant is limited to imitating atmosphere and external pictures. Rodin worked from a distinct idea about matter. He was looking for how forms and movements detach themselves from matter. With his human figures and their gestures, he showed...
It may be a crisis and the cultural winds may also be blowing from the wrong right corner, but that doesn't stop The Dodo from flying. The festival day newspaper we launched two years ago as a new commercial product is ready for another 10 days of Springdance. We're going to review a lot of performances, and compare even more. And we're going to make a journal. It...
"What the fuck should I do with this?" was choreographer and performance artist Ivo Dimchev's (1976) first thought when confronted with the artworks of Austrian artist Franz West. After Dimchev's solo performance Some Faves (2010) in Vienna, West, a multi-awarded creator of bizarre sculptures and objects, sought contact with the choreographer. He asked him to make an improvised video based on his...
The last opportunities for grant applications for 2013 and beyond closed today. Numerous mergers have been announced, new collaborations, high-profile relocations (Amsterdam in particular is emptying out). Many arts media now also carry news about those plans. News that is often presented as fact, while in almost all cases these are wishes. Applications are even fewer than ever...
They were great days, the four days we reported on Writers Unlimited (v/h Winternachten) in The Hague. We saw a new self-aware generation of writers from Africa, experienced debates and played - in the foyer of The Hague's Theater a/h Spui - for VJ during the salsa dancing class. Daniël Bertina and Wijbrand Schaap did their best to attend as many...
On 28 February, Pierre Audi will present the programme of the 2012 Holland Festival at the City Theatre. As in 2010 and 2011, we will follow that festival closely with our online festival daily newspaper at www.dedodo.nl. That daily newspaper has now proven its right to exist, as more and more festivals want to collaborate with the Cultural Press Agency on this unique initiative. To the 'product-range'...
A website is nice, but often less suitable for quiet reading. And although our mobile themes now seem to work well, it is often still a lot of clicking and searching before you can read everything in sequence. We have now found a solution: ebooks. A handy way to read all kinds of related articles: on...
It is remarkable how a writer's sentences, once highlighted, can be given echoing interpretations after his death. Gustaaf Peek in particular, if he really wants to do justice to Haasse, must do something about his rather chest-thumping piety, but even a seasoned artist like Kees 't Hart may moderate the tone while quoting.
It is incredible what an energy the men of Manar can generate. These six - dressed in djellabas - percussionists play Dekka al Marrakchia: an insanely rousing form of traditional Moroccan drum 'n bass party music and religious Gnawa. After a solemn, almost ritualistic beginning - in which the band comes jogging onto the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in a goose-step, accompanied by the menacing sounds of two huge horns - the drums erupt and the dance floor is full of swinging visitors.
There is something special about Africa. The new generation of writers from Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa walking around Writers Unlimited is different from their parents in the world. Or, indeed, the fact that they interact with it in a completely different way, with those ancestors, defines them as something completely new. They present themselves as confident, modern global citizens.
In the late 1980s, John N. Gray (South Shields, 1948) adviser to Margaret Thatcher - Gray: "I was just a small mote of dust in her administration" - now he is a fierce critic of all things neoconservative. On Writers Unlimited, publicist Bas Heijne felt him out.
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