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The Lower House has become youth art. This is how the first five million of the Culture Budget dissipates

A thousand schoolchildren a day in the House of Representatives. No less than that. That's what Culture Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven wants. Costs 4.8 million. Money that you will actually pay through your theatre ticket, the library book, the museum ticket. Because real art could have been made from that 4.8 million. It is a big question why the compulsory Second Chamber visit has to be paid for from... 

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'Stadium' at @hollandfestival: Meet the hardcore supporter core of Racing Club de Lens. But then for real.

Fifty-three 'ultras' from a football club in an art theatre. That might be asking for trouble. Especially if they were the hard core of, say, Ajax, FC Den Haag or FC Utrecht. But this is France. There are no hooligans in France. The 'ultra's' of Racing Club de Lens, for example: they are bound to throw a punch somewhere, but in... 

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'Nothing to Hide' in Nijmegen. A dragnet festival to objectively inform citizens

Apart from a lot of confusion, the advisory referendum law has also created a new category of festivals. The 'Ukraine referendum' spawned at least one festival (at Amsterdam's De Balie debating centre) and the dragnet referendum on 21 March 2018 prompted the 'Niks te Verbergen' dragnet festival in Nijmegen. Prominent member of the organising team is Viola van Alphen. With her foundation Violavirus... 

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Mirjam Koen, Adorno, why on earth theatre about Adorno!

Beethoven and Bach brought the true music. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen the future. The rest, from Beatles to hoempa, was 'jazz', commercially capitalist and therefore pernicious. Very briefly, this is what we should know Theodor Adorno from. Paul R. Kooij now plays this art-philosophical sharper in a performance by Mirjam Koen. Just when the division based partly on Adorno's thinking between... 

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Minister Ingid van Engelshoven (midden) superieur in eerste cultuurdebat (Foto: screenshot livestream Tweede Kamer)

House: 'Minister van Engelshoven has passed baptism of fire'. (Why the VVD needs to find a new culture spokesperson)

The debate on the 2017 culture budget on Monday 13 November was a breath of fresh air. Not because there was suddenly a lot more money coming out of any top hat, but because there was a minister with vision. And with room to express that vision. After seven years full of pushing and pulling and rejected motions, cash shift operations and bicycle bell trading, there was finally... 

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Art that is not about anything. Greek spectacle The Great Tamer was a delight on #HF17

During the first two weeks of this Holland Festival, almost all art was about something. The festival theme of 'democracy', conceived for the occasion, appears to have penetrated just about every hairline. Sometimes painful and highly topical, as in the National Theatre's phenomenal 'The Nation', sometimes downright embarrassing, as in Romeo's heavily overrated 'Democracy in America'... 

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Has Romeo Castellucci become accessible with Democracy in America? #HF17

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... 

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Rufus Norris makes theatre out of Brexit: 'Theatres are the echo chamber of the leftist bubble'

The wind blows harder there than elsewhere. The light is greyer there than further afield. London's south bank, for years 'the other side' of the English capital's posh city centre, has been the subject of several waves of renewal in the last century. It began in 1951 with the construction of concert hall 'Southbank Centre', followed in 1976, after years of wrangling, by the building in the same... 

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7 ways to make art out of US democracy. #HF17

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... 

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Baudet's art vision blamed for old battle between Rotterdam and Leiden

For those who like to be around art, politics has become a bit more fun again, since 15 March. Since the 2017 elections, Thierry Baudet has been in the House of Representatives. Thierry Baudet knows a lot about art, he thinks, and we will come to know it, too. In fact, Thierry Baudet is the best thing about art these days... 

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'William III is the greatest statesman the Netherlands has produced.' (Podcast)

Machiel Bosman is a historian and writes history disguised as literature. His book Elisabeth de Flines was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize and the Libris History Prize in 2008. This book De Roofkoning, prins Willem III en de invasie van Engeland was also nominated for the Libris History Prize. In this podcast, a conversation with the author who gave us... 

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7 reasons why you should invest in Holland Festival 2017 #hf17

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... 

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The Vikings have landed. With ships full of culture

Sustainability, diversity and democracy. These are the core values of the European Capital of Culture, which Aarhus aspires to be this year. Mayor Jacob Bundsgaard says it. Rebecca Matthews, the CEO of Aarhus 2017 says it. If those values are also reflected in the programme, Juliana Engberg, programme director for Aarhus 2017, has done her job well. Other speakers' speeches follow 

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Does anyone know what Hollywood did to his balls?

Before I started studying, I had oceans of time to read. Besides high literature like The World of Sofie by Jostein Gaarder, I also read books from the Bruna Top Ten. This included Dan Brown's Angels & Demons series, the fourth part of which was recently filmed. Director Ron Howard, however, addressed the ethical issue with which the book ends... 

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Down with that leftist art elite

Yesterday, the chamber made €10 million available for the arts. This brings the tally of government cuts to at least €190,000,000 still. This hard-won extra is the last thing that could be asked for. Everyone agrees, the new system has been definitively embraced. The protest has made itself redundant now that the compromise has been made. And what have we got... 

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Wunderbaum sends you into the night with a smile #HF16

This year's Holland Festival spotlights Rotterdam-based theatre collective Wunderbaum with the revival of 'The Coming of Xia', premieres of 'Privacy' and 'The Future of Sex' and the film 'Stop acting now'. With this film, Wunderbaum concludes their four-year project 'The New Forest', a 'Platform for social change', according to Wunderbaum, "The New Forest depicts transition and casts a... 

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Joel Pommerat: 'History does not repeat itself. Instead, we can learn from it.' (HF16)

One of the special performances at this year's Holland Festival is 'Ça Ira (1): Fin de Louis' by French company Compagnie Louis Brouillard. I visited the performance earlier in Luxembourg and spoke to the director and writer of this over four-hour marathon about the French Revolution. It seems quite something: 40 actors on stage... 

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José Eduardo Agualusa: 'I will not be silenced'

Writing cost him his marriage, he is being shadowed by the secret service and risks being arrested in Angola. But José Eduardo Agualusa, who has a chance of winning the 2016 Man Booker International Prize with his new novel A General Theory of Forgetting, does not hesitate to put down his pen. 'I won't let myself... 

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something raw logo

This was Something Raw 2016: less rebellious, more social

The raw in Something Raw can mean all sorts of things. The first thought might be something rough, as in the effect of sandpaper on skin or the havoc left by an elephant in the china shop. But rough is a derivative meaning. Raw first of all means unprocessed and fresh. There is a certain hope in the combination of rough and raw: artists who like... 

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What to do with the VVD?

Those working in the cultural sector should not expect much from the VVD. Lately, however, the party has been trying to show a different face. Indeed, only recently, the new culture spokesperson of the right-wing liberals tabled a motion in which the VVD actually gave back 10 million of the more than 250 million the national government took from the arts.... 

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Greek special (1): Our Greek is still called Zorba

Following the euro crisis, Culture Press focuses on Greece in a series of articles. In the first part, George Vermij looks at how film has influenced our image of the Mediterranean country. Is there not a more striking image of Greece than Antony Quinn as Zorba dancing the Sirtaki and finding resignation despite the harsh setbacks life offers? The... 

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VVD strikes: Amsterdam art world put on the block

Hatred of dependents runs deep in the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. The political game the party plays nationally and locally cannot be explained otherwise. Amsterdam is now experiencing the latest example of how the party has launched its publicity attack on dependents: while the cut in cultural subsidies of four years ago... 

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Crisis at The Symphony Orchestra only gets worse thanks to fact-free politics

HET Symfonieorkest's financial problems have not gone unnoticed. Regional newspaper Tubantia reported last Monday that PvdA MP Jacques Monasch had minister Jet Bussemaker (also PvdA) summoned to the Lower House. In that report, Monasch passes with seven-mile boots advice, applications and decisions that have already been made or are yet to come, and immediately reports that a symphony orchestra will continue to be... 

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Do you still love me? Sanja Mitrovic

Football fans on stage? Sanja Mitrovic is a theatre-maker with a secret

Sanja Mitrović is a theatre maker with a theme and a secret. She builds on the theme with each performance. And the secret is right on the heels of her work. Her theme is the collective: how it grows, what it is based on, how deep the mutual love can be, how the euphoria can turn into rage, how it comes from within... 

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