Because there should be no walls around cultural news. So you get the stories as a gift, because we have members who make that possible. Would you like to join that mission? That would be great! You support us best by becoming a member!
Bij het begrip ‘nieuwe muziek’ heb ik nooit gedacht aan lol. Je denkt eerder aan ernst, subtiliteit, te verwerven smaak en luisterervaringen die je misschien later wel gewoon gaat vinden. Maar nu nog niet. Dit jaar heb ik tijdens November Music dus wel heel veel gelachen. Niet schaterend (een enkele keer), maar gewoon, van geluk. Terwijl er in de wereld…
“Versterken van het verdienvermogen is een noodzakelijke voorwaarde om de arbeidsmarktpositie van werkenden in de sector te verbeteren. Martin Verboom deelt graag wat op dit vlak uit de evaluatie van de Arbeidsmarktagenda Culturele en Creatieve Sector kwam. Platform ACCT smeedt met partners in de sector een coalitie om de prioriteiten voor de komende jaren op te pakken.” Dit was waarom…
After a morning debate in the Lower House, Cabinet Schoof's tactics are clear. At least, when it comes to the controversial plan to selectively increase VAT on culture. In response to all questions from the House about why, Finance Minister Eelco Heinen replied that it should not be about details, but a "total package". Therefore, he wants...
A piece of music in which the vocal soloist is given a tattoo in the last fifteen minutes, live on stage. In Laura Bowler's Advert, performed by Laura herself together with the Hamburg-based Decoder Ensemble, you can experience just that. Not unexpected when you realise that Bowler trained not only as a composer, but also as a theatre maker. She studied after the conservatoire at the Royal...
The drum kit is pop music's most important instrument. German composer Enno Poppe, who grew up without pop music, has a fascination for percussion. A new work can be heard during November Music this year: Streik. Composed for 10 drums. I spoke to the 1969-born composer about this work and his inspiration. Listen to the podcast: What immediately...
Large spinning steel behemoths, mowing blades or relentless hands of a clock, which grind you as a human being if you don't duck, or jump, or roll away in time. There were two of them during Festival Circolo in Tilburg, this year, and it always impresses. It happened at Un Loup pour l'homme in the Spoorpark and at La Chute des Anges in...
I remember it well, it was during a meeting of the magazine industry, sometime in 2012 or 2013. There was a grave mood in the Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, because the circulation and turnover figures of the major magazine publishers (plural at the time) had just been announced. The downward trend that had started years back had nothing to do with the crisis, but...
It is mouse-still in the studio auditorium of Korzo in The Hague. A few dozen spectators in the stands, a tangle of bodies on stage, shuffling, sighing and exerting their utmost strength, sliding, climbing and balancing on, over and under each other. Impressive, sensual too, this continuous movement that does not run from applause moment to applause moment, but rather lets you breathlessly follow how it...
On Friday 20 September, Grammy-nominated composer Miho Hazama led the Royal Conservatory of Music's big band at the Conservatory Hall in Amare. And how. Dancer in nowhere A leap. A plié on one leg. A relevé on the toes. A plié on two legs. The head to the side and rhythmically to the other side and back like clockwork. A half arabesque...
It was a remarkable report, this morning. According to newspaper Tubantia, the new cabinet was still willing to make extra money available for regional museums in Twente. The amount would be 1.5 million euros, earmarked to set up a joint presentation of Twente's history by De Museumfabriek in Enschede and Techniekmuseum Oyfo in Hengelo. According to...
The cultural sector can breathe a sigh of relief. Apart from the damning increase in VAT on everything beautiful and fragile from 9 to 21 per cent, the Basic Cultural Infrastructure (BIS) has been secured for the next four years. With the inclement winds coming from the corner of PVV, VVD and BBB, this can be called a windfall. There is even a modest increase coming,...
Thirty-five euros an hour for a space that can barely hold a piano or a drum kit. That is the rent charged by the municipality of Utrecht to music teachers who wanted to continue their practice on Utrecht's Domplein after their cooperative went bankrupt. For many of the teachers who thus became victims of their board's mismanagement, that means a cost increase
At 1 hour and 50 minutes, it happens. That's when Nicolien van Vroonhoven, culture spokesperson for the ruling NSC party, makes it clear how things stand. "The cultural sector should also take a look at itself, because there are whole groups in society that have nothing to do with culture." Venue: pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam; the occasion: a church early...
'Plattenbau,' the driver says with some horror as we pass some boarded-up concrete porch flats. The GDR-built flats are in Alt Schöndorf, two kilometres outside Weimar's historic centre. Nailed shut for years, and squatters didn't look after them either. A hated legacy, but more by the West than the East. The...
The management of ITA (International Theatre Amsterdam) is terminating its collaboration with Ivo van Hove with immediate effect. The world-famous director of high-profile, often rather serious performances, had become discredited. An unsafe working climate had developed under his management. Not only the strict leadership by van Hove himself, but also the transgressive behaviour of his life partner and regular designer Jan Versweyveld was...
Going over the edge, exploring and pushing boundaries, pushing the limits of bystanders' comprehension, performing feats no one expects. And seeing gnomes walking through a forest. Or reading things in water. Seeing half a boy save the world. The first 11 days of August 2024 were legendary, never to be forgotten. And all in the...
The nice thing about festivals like Boulevard in Den Bosch is that after a few days, you automatically make connections between everything you experience. Not that everything starts to look alike, like in sport. There, a single chromosome or hundredth of a second determines the difference between world peace or the apocalypse. There, everything has to be so similar that over...
Right by St John's, next to the Tower Stage where Theatre Festival Boulevard holds its talk shows and free live concerts, is 'Tent Purple'. That tent is different, this year. Outside, kids in baggy trainers are doing break moves, inside it is steaming hot. For ten days, Tent Purple is Cypher HQ, the home of Bossche hip-hop and street culture, also known as...
Yesterday, someone from Amsterdam told me that he had long thought Boulevard was a provincial version of an Amsterdam rosé party: lots of conviviality, food, drink and mediocre art. Fortunately, after just one visit he was convinced that something has grown in Den Bosch over the past forty years that cannot be compared to other Dutch festivals. There...
"Regarding the victims, it was mainly employees with managerial duties who experienced the cross-border behaviour. This seemingly contradictory result with the discussed hierarchy is explicable from the fact that the perpetrator of the transgressive behaviour in the majority of these cases is (a) board member(s) or other manager(s)." Ivo van Hove suddenly left as director last year
With the new far-right cabinet, a new reality has also arrived for the arts. As before in Brabant, where the provincial councils no longer placed arts and culture under science and education, Schoof-1, despite an NSC minister on Education, Culture and Science, puts culture under the heading 'Culture, Sports and Leisure'. This is evident from the new classification of the...
On Friday 28 June, the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam closed the season festively with a gala. In it, the company of some 80 dancers takes a particular look at relationships. Of the 12 works, you will see no fewer than nine duets. A love letter, a relationship in troubled waters, a truce, an anticlimax, a conflict, a wedding dance party, a life journey, an unattainable happiness, a...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: from noise around the Fonds Scheppende Toonkunst to laurel wreath for the Dutch Composer The adagissimo of windmills Like two bedraggled schoolboys, we sat In the meeting room opposite Reinbert de Leeuw, chairman of the Society of Dutch Composers (GeNeCo). We, Cas Smithuijsen...
"I didn't hear a song I didn't know." Over white wine after Trajal Harrell's The Romeo, the lady was quite grumpy. I might add that I hadn't seen a move I couldn't have made myself. And yet that did not make me cranky. On the contrary: rarely have I been so happy and relaxed...
Probably the most famous murder of a woman for what she is is that of the fictional Carmen, a free-spirited young Spanish woman with a fear of commitment. Opera composer Georges Bizet immortalised this character from a French story by Prosper de Merimée, making the crime of passionel a common term for what is none other than femicide. That habit of men killing women...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.