Chances are not inconceivable that you have never heard of Fortunato Depero. Or maybe you are a lover of classic design and still have an old mini bottle of Campari somewhere. He made that. As a playwright, you might well have overlooked him. On 21 June, I went to see if you could find yourself with that...
American composer Julia Wolfe (1958) has a thing for the social history of her homeland. Steel Hammer reflects on the unequal struggle of man versus machine, as described in the folk ballad John Henry. Anthracite Fields zooms in on the hard life of miners in Pennsylvania. She won a Pulitzer Prize with it in 2015. The full-length oratorio is experiencing two July...
Among classical music-loving audiences, the two young pianists Lucas (1993) and Arthur (1996) Jussen need little introduction. For many years, the talented piano brothers have been filling halls like the Concertgebouw with four-handed or otherwise, interpretations of classics such as Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert. With the avant-garde piece Mantra by Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), to be performed as part of the Holland Festival,...
Flexing is a street dance style from Brooklyn, New York. Thirteen men, three women strong is the formation that has caused a furore in America in various guises (HyperActive, MainEventt, Ringmasters), from the local talent show Flex in Brooklyn to America's Best Dance Crew. Now the crew, led by pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, is on a world tour with a show, which they will perform with the...
With Cinema Erotica, EYE is celebrating lust. In doing so, Jennifer Lyon Bell, maker of erotic films, presents a programme in which she connects porn and art. What fascinates her so much in this sensual genre?
A prologue, two dialogues and a long interlude. All clearly connected. In a performance by Romeo Castellucci - it doesn't have to get any crazier. Italian theatre maker Castellucci prefers to make theatre that is not easily or even misunderstood. He does not shy away from shock effects. Visually overwhelming, but a clear line is often hardly recognisable. So that promises...
You have punk. You have performance art. Best Gaap, because often little remains of that ferocious wildness that dominated the European scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Marina Abramovic we now see mainly as that silent lady on that chair opposite her long-lost lover. We have forgotten that she once offered her audience razors to cut her...
The 57th Venice Biennale brings the world together and the art world to Venice. This year, the biennial art event is bigger than ever. Here you will find out what is 'trending' in contemporary art. Everyone thinks something of this event and we live in a time when everything and everyone is held up to the yardstick: 'Have you been there?....
Whereas at last year's IlFU you were tucked away airtight in the hermetic halls of the former post office on Utrecht's Neude, the expansive view of Tivoli/Vredenburg is a breath of fresh air. It seems to loosen everyone up a bit. The result is more humour and better conversations on the roof of the world. Voskuil's Office does not birthday....
Dutch, ladies and gentlemen, is just about the most difficult language in the world, and any committee that wants to improve it only makes it worse. As a professional language user, I have thought so for years, and it has now been happily confirmed by people who really know about it: translators. The first day of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU)...
Bark Skins Annie Proulx We had to gather some courage to start Annie Proulx's Bark Skins. After all, the book is 800 pages long, so you have to make some time for it. But this novel is well worth that. As a reader, you are unceremoniously planted in the wild forest of North America, still called New France in the late seventeenth century....
The play La Democrazia in America (to be seen at the Holland Festival on 4, 5 and 6 June) is of course about democracy in America, but actually more about The Democracy in America. And the two should not be confused. For The Democracy in America is a 1,200-page book by French jurist De Tocqueville. This...
He finds himself lazy and under-ambitious, and struggles with acceptance - of himself, of others, of the world. Because his grandparents had lived through the Holocaust, there was a taboo on being unhappy in his youth. Eight life questions to Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer. 'Between what I could do and actually do, there is a big gap.' 1....
The SER report published on Friday 21 April rubs it in nicely: the cultural sector is on the verge of collapse. It is even worse than a year ago. This shows that the patience of a PvdA culture minister over the past four years has not helped. Indeed: Halbe Zijlstra's multiplier of misery is doing its job entirely as expected....
Earlier this year, Mircea Cărtărescu, Romania's greatest writer, was a guest at the Winternachten festival. Writer Mira Feticu, who was born and grew up in Romania and even received lectures from Cărtărescu as a student, interviewed her former compatriot and professor for A Quattro Mani. A beautiful conversation about their homeland, truth, literature and poetry. 'My books are...
In the documentary Life. Animated, Roger Ross Williams tells the equally amazing and infectious story of how Disney films were the key to the world for autistic Owen. "It's about the power of stories," he says.
It was announced today that the North Sea Jazz Club at Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds is bankrupt. This is never good news, for anyone. Not even for those sourpusses who like to complain about North Sea Jazz, the club's namesake. Five years ago, it was big news: the Rotterdam-based North Sea Jazz Festival was going to open a club in Amsterdam. That was...
The nearly five-hour documentary 'Combat au bout de la nuit' reveals how ordinary Greek people experience the crisis. A true immersion experience.
My father died in 1997. He came from a family of 10 children, five of whom have since died. My aunt Minke wrote a book about it: Broederziel alleen? The book stirred up a lot of emotions and had eight reprints in a short time. Grief for a deceased sibling turned out to be forgotten grief. In English, mourners are forgotten...
Ruth Mackenzie has achieved an enormous amount in the short time she has been boss of Holland Festival. I've experienced the festival now since the late 1990s and watched it evolve from something very personal and sometimes obscure (under Ivo van Hove), to an ethereal feast of sizzling aesthetics (with Pierre Audi), to what it...
Choreographer Arthur Rosenfeld bid farewell (for now) to a long dance career on 5 February 2017. One that relies mostly on his wife, dancer Ana Teixido. Such a farewell does not go without a fight with Rosenfeld. Leaving the field for another, who really wants that? Exit pursued by a bear, based on an eccentric directorial cue from Shakespeare, continues until the...
On Friday 10 February in Utrecht, the Nederlands Kamerkoor will kick off its concert series Sacred and Profane, based on Benjamin Britten's choral work of the same name. The programme also includes his popular cycle Hymn to St Cecilia, which he composed during World War II. The score was confiscated by the US Customs Service in 1942 because it allegedly contained codes that were dangerous to the state. The American fear of a...
Barry Jenkins, the fast-up director of the Oscar-nominated discovery Moonlight gave a master class in Rotterdam. On finding your voice and an intuitive way of filmmaking.
Parallax Views is the overarching theme of the 46th Rotterdam Film Festival. Be persuaded to look with new eyes. Director Bero Beyer, who took office in 2015, on his second festival.
Whether the end of communism and beginning of capitalism influenced his writing? Mircea Cartarescu, one of Romania's greatest writers, parried the question with a joke. 'That is far too small an event to change my style and novels.' Is this the real life? That is the theme of the literary festival Winternachten this...
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