The Night is back! Last year, unfortunately, we had to skip because of untidy corona developments, but this year the 38th edition of the illustrious Night will still take place. For now, still in a modified form, as there is no green light to sit in a full house again on 2 October at the moment. During this 'limited edition' in...
Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly didn't quite become clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode. The great hall of the building that I just don't...
Swart Gat/ Golden Age (Dunguu olo - katibo-ten) is a theatrical installation about Amsterdam's slavery past and Maroon culture from Suriname. The concept is by Tolin Erwin Alexander, Berith Danse and designer Bartel Meyburg. The theatrical installation, which has lost none of its urgency, has been further finished and will start again in summer 2021! From 17 June (19 June...
Theatre Festival Boulevard 's-Hertogenbosch will take place from Thursday 5 to Sunday 22 August 2021. The 37th festival edition features over 120 different performances, concerts, performances and installations in theatres, at unique locations and in the Zuiderpark. We also move into the night with Fomo Fatale, club nights with steaming sounds. The Zuiderpark serves as a new, spacious festival heart, including the...
Choreographer Ernst Meisner (1982) is artistic coordinator of the Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company and artistic director of the National Ballet Academy. As a former dancer, he knows that you have to get out of the rehearsal studio, onto the stage. That's why he makes sure his dancers and dancers-in-training keep dancing in front of an audience as much as possible, even if the performances are online because of corona. 'I...
The Amsterdam Museum will open its doors on Saturday 5 June after a closure of more than six months. From Saturday, visitors can revisit the museum at its primary location on Kalverstraat and the Amsterdam Museum wing of the Hermitage. On 1 July, Museum Willet-Holthuysen will also open after major maintenance. Visitors can visit the Amsterdam Museum in addition to its permanent offerings...
'Are we ready? Yes. Is everything ready? No, far from it, because it is all very complex. But in the end the jubilation now prevails, because until a week and a half ago we didn't even know if we were allowed.' In this Nerd podcast, Emily Ansenk, director of the Holland Festival for the second year, tells Marijn Lems and Wijbrand
Sometime in 2022, if you can again, please go to a theatre where you can see 'Sadness is the thing with feathers'. There you can watch and listen to Jesse Mensah's phenomenal talent - if he hasn't won the Song Contest before then - and experience the magic that sticks to Jacob Derwig. Forget, before then...
What does culture visit after corona look like? The topic came up regularly on this site in recent months. I myself wrote two personal contributions on it. Now that cultural institutions may almost reopen their doors, the crystal ball is giving way to reality. In my article on 'the promise of the empty hall', I noted a reluctance to...
With its closing chapter, the International Film Festival Rotterdam celebrates its 50th anniversary from 2 to 6 June. And the celebration of cinema. At least online. But whether audiences can experience the real festival feeling again in the theatres is far from certain. Opening film is The World to Come.
Arts '92 means business. The umbrella of all umbrella organisations in the arts sector, which kept on poldering when everyone had long since gone into business for themselves, is angry. And rightly so. Enough has happened this week to break down the last shred of trust between the art world and the government. To the point where there was even note-busting over whether the opening up of sex work and...
Jeroen Bartelse is not only director of TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the former director of the Council for Culture is also a prominent member of the Taskforce that lobbies for the cultural and creative sector to support culture in times of Corona. Marijn Lems and Wijbrand Schaap look back with him on the first corona year, summarised in...
Saturday 15 May 2021 marks exactly one year since Mayor Femke Halsema opened the Amsterdam Museum's digital exhibition Corona in de Stad. A digital exhibition about the effects of the corona virus on the city of Amsterdam and its inhabitants. To commemorate 1 year of Corona in the City, the Amsterdam Museum will be showing from 15...
Honourable members of the House of Representatives, It is with great concern that we look at the Temporary Test Act that will be voted on in your House on Tuesday 11 May. This new law means even more hurdles and restrictions for visiting culture. Restrictions that will be introduced but where the end date is not given. This new testing law could be a godsend for...
Today, both Koninklijke Horeca Nederland and the Cultural and Creative Sector Taskforce announced that testing to enter somewhere is controversial as far as they are concerned. The Taskforce wants to enforce testing for entry only in extreme cases, and not for cultural attractions that are already demonstrably safe. In fact, the hospitality industry finds testing completely unmentionable,...
Dutch museums, partly due to the recent digital Museum Week, have been able to retain a large part of their audience. There is - reports the Museum Association on its website - a slight turnover though. And the hitherto loyal public will not find their way to museums automatically and to the same extent. But the picture is that the...
TivoliVredenburg is a building like a festival. countless stages, bars, a café and a restaurant, hundreds of people at work, thousands inside on a night. I always came there too little. But when I did get there, it was a party. A building run by and attended by super-motivated people with only one goal: as much music as possible for as many people as possible. Until...
A night walk where, for once, it is not about talking to each other, or exercising the muscles, but about being very aware of where you are. Mindfulness as a theatre experience, then, and if all the coronagraph remains against us, the only part of the Holland Festival that can go on live because of sufficient distance and outside. It needs to be that bad...
Is the government generous and generous for once, it's no good again. You could say that after I received questions from various quarters about the corona grant for free productions announced by the Performing Arts Fund last week. The amount in question is €27 million, for a total of 251 producers, so an average of a tonne per application. With that...
'The task force is critical of the costs and the course of events surrounding the assignment to the Open Netherlands Foundation. Parliamentary questions have now been asked about this; we await the minister's answers to these.' So it is somewhere at the bottom of Kunsten'92's weekly update, but it is clear. That whole pilot with quick tests evokes rather mixed feelings. The interest group...
Last Friday, we reported on the rather mysterious and lacking in transparency surrounding the pilots to reopen theatres and museums. The questions we asked in that article have now been partly answered thanks to the efforts of 3 contributors to Follow The Money (FTM), and the answers they found are not reassuring. Just a recap:...
Rather unexpectedly, it was announced this week that cultural and entertainment venues will be test sites for reopening society next month. It came rather out of the blue, as everyone was still working on petitions and other pleas to reopen cultural buildings. After all, they have their corona protocols in place there better than the Albert Heijn on my corner....
Marion Koopmans, Cécile van Els, Maarten Keulemans et al on everything we now know about covid-19 What do we now know about the coronavirus? Are vaccines resistant to the prevailing mutations? What has the corona crisis done to Dutch trust in government and institutions? And what is the damage to the Dutch economy? In an interactive talk show on Monday 15...
Saturday, March 6, the annual Inkspotbattle took place at Concordia. The theme was "Elections (in Corona time)". 10 Dutch cartoonists participated. The only female participant, Renée van den Kerkhof, walked away with the prize. Online visitors could watch the participating cartoonists translate a topical subject into cartoons. An expert jury chose at the end of the...
A good friend calls me, sounding like he wants to share and check something important. He was talking to his sister this week about the Nieuwsuur headline: Black Lives Matter: Was it a turning point or a hype? His sister stumbles over the title and notices that important parties are left out of this item and that stings. On the...
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