'Nothing can make up for the past. But the real, enduring power of the past lies in how it affects our present and our future. What we can do is shape a future history in which we consciously and determinedly carry with us only the best of our past.' Not keep rooting, but cognitive behavioural therapy for the whole of Europe, you might...
Following Denmark, the Netherlands now has its own Dogma manifesto. A modest but also ambitious statement from two young filmmakers who present a surprisingly clear plan after a season full of noise and concerns about Dutch cinema. Whether it is a pebble or a big pebble in the pond remains to be seen. In any case, they are going to do something,...
In 1988, Calliope Tsoupaki (1963) came to the Netherlands from Greece to study composition with Louis Andriessen. Exactly 30 years later, she was appointed 'Composer of the Fatherland'. In that capacity, she has already composed some highly topical pieces. When Notre Dame de Paris caught fire on 15 April, Tsoupaki immediately climbed into the pen. Five days later...
Members of the States General, This year about 72 years ago we had the first Holland Festival. After years of enslavement and tyranny, hope for a better future literally came from above, in the form of Maria Callas. Eyewitnesses who saw the lights in the Stadsschouwburg turn red that day would never forget that image. 72 years later, it seems...
Exactly 200 years ago, on 13 September 1819, Clara Schumann was born in Leipzig as Clara Wieck. She is among one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. Against her father's wishes, she married Robert Schumann, whose work she fervently promoted. She also wrote well-received compositions of her own and was more famous than Robert. Yet after her...
The puppets will dance, the turnips are cooked and the shit has hit the fan. The Amsterdam Museum is replacing 'Golden Age' with the neutral '17th century'. A typical example of oikophobic repopulation and politically correct language purification, or a useful adaptation to a changing zeitgeist? Time will tell, but explosive it is. For me, it raises questions. That...
Police sirens sound less frequently in Groningen than in a city like Amsterdam. When they sounded last Wednesday night, it was because residents of the premises behind the local art academy, Minerva, raised the alarm. Standing on the roof was not an owl, but an almost naked man shouting that he was going to rob the Coop. Mads Wittermans, the actor in question, had forgotten the...
Dragan Bakema will play the lead role of Newton in David Bowie's Lazarus. Gijs Naber has been forced to hand back the role after coming to the conclusion that he has made too much hay in recent times. Gijs Naber: "In the run-up to the rehearsal period, I came to the conclusion that I have been making too much hay in recent years...
Bossche Theatre Artemis is, after International Theatre Amsterdam, the best theatre company in the Netherlands. The company owes this to an illustrious past (Pauline Mol!!) and to Jetse Batelaan. This director recently received the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for his disruptive oeuvre. This consists largely of performances in which children take power, without...
Good news for anyone who has so far missed If you grow up later, Max Baggerman's double award-winning graduation film. This documentary look at working people, as poetic as it is socially critical, can be seen again on 1 August as part of New Lights. This evening is the second instalment of a new bi-monthly event that introduces us to...
Canadian Emily Molnar is the new artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1) from season 2020/2021. Looking at her track record, she has everything going for her: a loyal ten years as artistic director of Canadian BC (British Columbia) Ballet, a good reputation as a choreographer, acclaimed as a visionary, innovator and coach and she has a...
It is, so in his normal clothes, a cheerful, spontaneous guy who walks up to me in the hotel lobby where we have arranged to meet. Jeremy Dutcher the Canadian singer who is one of the main guests at this year's Amsterdam Roots festival, hardly shows any traces of the jet lag he must have undoubtedly sustained from his flight, which took off a few hours earlier...
'As programmers, we are more often in Ghent than in Amsterdam,' says Viktorien van Hulst, director of Theatre Festival Boulevard. The Bossche arts festival, which this year takes place from 1 to 11 August under the Sint Jan and at unexpected locations around the North Brabant capital, has for years stood out for its close ties with our southern neighbours. 'The Dionysian artists are sitting...
Amsterdam is once again spoilt for choice with Julidans, an international festival packed with impressive dance. The second festival night features Child by Peeping Tom. The work of this Brussels-based company is a phenomenon and I am a fan of it. Ever since its dance trilogy at NDT1: The missing door (2013), The lost room (2015), The hidden floor (2017) (reviews under...
Wim Hupperetz, director of Amsterdam's Allard Pierson, has resigned his position as chairman of the museums and heritage advisory committee to the Council for Culture. In protest, he says, against the irresponsible way in which the minister is now implementing the Culture Council's advice. 'If this continues, we will soon be giving millions of euros to a few...
28-year-old Jeremy Dutcher is a sensation. With his reinterpretation of native songs by Canadian Indians, he won the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy last year; names like Arcade Fire, Feist and Kaytranada preceded him. Amsterdam Roots Festival is now bringing award-winning Canadian musician Jeremy Dutcher to the Netherlands for a performance at the Bimhuis on 10 July 2019. When...
A black man sits on the edge of the stage of Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, pardon ITA. He observes us with intense gaze as we walk into the auditorium. - As the incarnate subtitle of the performance Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe. Behind a gauze screen are the instruments of Asko|Schönberg, which, together with Roomful of Teeth, signs for...
The peak of the festivalisation of the Netherlands seems to be behind us. The number of festivals has declined by over 10% in two years. This is according to research by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam into the festival landscape in the Netherlands. Responsible lecturer Harry van Vliet (Crossmedia): "The decline in the number of music festivals was already visible in 2017, but the decline is the...
It must have started with a big plan in Simon McBurney's head. The Brit, a master of mathematically precise text theatre full of technical gadgets, saw the amazing floor of the Rabozaal of Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg and his brain started working. Something about a backcloth covering the full width of the hall, something about a doll's house, something about...
If a Nobel Prize for brilliant innovative festival ideas is established, the first may be awarded to whoever came up with the solution to 'the festival conversation' yesterday. You know, that ever-necessary conversation with the important guest or guests. At a table. On chairs. On television, such a setting is already problematic, live in a theatre usually lethal. A currently anonymous...
Why do we actually want to see blood so much? That's what I wondered during the performance Roughhouse. This American-German piece is showing in the Holland Festival (Wednesday 12 June still) and in it there is no blood. That's also what it's about. That blood no longer flows anywhere, in the media, in art. That everyone always gets up again, that...
Music critics were unabatedly enthusiastic. And even opera lovers came, saw and were pleased. Of course, there was the chorus of monuments, led by a Flemish antiquity, who liked Maria Calllas better seventy years ago, but its members are only the necessary minority needed for something as unprecedented as AUS LICHT, the Magnum opus of the 72nd Holland Festival. Beforehand, it seemed...
Antonio Mancini, Lorenzo Delleani and Fillippo Palizzi, who does not know these influential Italian painters? Apparently a lot of people don't. Don't feel guilty, even for many art historians the names don't ring a bell. This is in contrast to Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Bernini and Titian. These artists need little introduction: Italian art, culture and identity are usually drawn from...
The Bijlmermeerpolder is still known as a district where you don't go unless something or someone forces you to. A stigma the apartment neighbourhood acquired in the 1980s when it served as a drain on society. And still its reputation is bad. A single incident of violence repeatedly damages the entire district, though that is...
Anthony and Cleopatra is exactly the kind of repertory piece that people look forward to during the Holland Festival, or any other prestigious stage. Director and writer Tiago Rodrigues manages not so much to deflate that grandiose expectation as to reduce it to the intimacy of a duet and a play with extremely basic theatrical gestures. His two actors are dancers, an experienced choreographer duo
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