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Ingo Metzmacher conducts Das Floss Der Medusa: 'Death is a very seductive woman'

On Tuesday 13 March, the Opera Forward Festival opens with Hans Werner Henze's Das Floss der Medusa. This 1968 oratorio fits seamlessly with the third edition's theme of Fate and Conscience. It was inspired by a true story from 1816, when the French frigate Méduse ran aground on the African coast. Those on board were left to their fate;... 

Our curiosity about sand has uncovered more stories than we ever imagined.

I want to travel with you. Taking you to the beach. Imagine sitting on the beach, as the sun's rays warm you, listening to the sound of the surf, with rising and falling waves. You sniff the salty scent. A bird flies by. The sun casts its rays on the clear blue water. A big wave slams down on the... 

Marijke Muoi alone is a reason to come to Leeuwarden. Why the Netherlands should have a new Capital of Culture every year.

Bouke Oldenhof. Where was he all this time? Writing, but mostly in Frisian (which also meant he had no time to work on his website). And so you can't get through to the rest of the Netherlands. The man who won countless hearts with the unique gem 'Rolbrug'. Mine too, and... 

Playwrights and cultural exploration (2) Sophie Kassies: 'A pool of plays that don't find an audience is an erosion of the profession'

The previous cultural exploration among playwrights gives cause for further exploration. From the earlier article, we take away that further privatisation only partially captures public money and objectives. See also from elevation ideals to efficiency thinking. We also take away that a public as all-important leads to one-sided popular culture, entertainment and false competition with the free circuit. It all has very little... 

Winternachten 2018 ended up being a beautiful ode to anger. #wu18

She is 14, heavily veiled and bespectacled, with a voice that can be heard in the farthest corners of The Hague. She wants to be a surgeon but first she wins the preliminary round of the school competition for young poets at Winternachten. What anger there is in that person. What maturity sounds from her cry... 

Symphony of Psalms Igor Stravinsky: away with romantic sentiment

On Wednesday 24 January, the Nederlands Kamerkoor presents an adventurous concert at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ to kick off a short tour. On the lecterns are rarely heard music by Lili Boulanger and Ton de Leeuw. The highlight is Igor Stravinsky's famous Psalm Symphony in a version for choir and piano four hands by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ralph van Raat and Bobby Mitchell sign... 

Is Emmanuel Macron's long arm sowing discord at a Hague Literature Festival? Just barely. (But should we all speak French again someday?) #wu18

Leïla Slimani, the Moroccan-French author whose novel A Soft Hand won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, has cancelled at the eleventh hour for Winternachten. The reason was not Thursday's storm. THE reason was personal. But could also be due to something else. The chief guest of the International Literary Festival in The Hague, Alain Mabanckou,... 

Opening Night at Winternachten celebrates the power of perseverance, and supports writers in captivity. (Why sometimes a cardboard TV can help)

'Writing and reading, like sex, are a form of fusion. Literature is the practice of impurity'. Pakistani-American author Mohsin Hamid can formulate. In his Free the Word speech at the opening of Winternachten in The Hague, the man, who wrote an international bestseller with The Fall of a Fundamentalist, made a case for impurity. 'Purity,' he told the... 

When words become weapons, listening is pointless. Frank Westerman at festival Winternachten on negotiating with terrorists.

In the 1970s, a wave of terror swept through Europe. A wave that claimed far more victims in our regions than the Islamic violence to date. During literature festival Winternachten, from 18 to 22 January in The Hague, it is about the struggle for freedom, about us against them. On Saturday afternoon 21 January, Frank Westerman and Mohsin Hamid will discuss the... 

Winternachten Festival offers the best chance to see great writers up close. And Francis Broekhuijsen.

From 18 January, The Hague will be all about Winternachten. We think this is the most fun literature festival in the west of the Netherlands. This year, it is about Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood, the motto of the French Revolution, among other things. But also about Karl Marx. Under the motto 'we the people', Winternachten is therefore about populism and secession,... 

New leaders in arts and culture: fourth generation of LinC graduates.

A new generation of leaders in culture rose in the Utrecht Academy Building on Thursday 9 November. The 39 leaders come from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to Schunck in Heerlen and from the VPRO in Hilversum to the Utrecht festival Le Guess Who. In a year and a half, they discovered new working methods and formulated new vistas for the arts. That could ... 

Dobrinka Tabakova writes double concerto for Lucas and Arthur Jussen: 'It shimmers with energy'

The AVROTROS Friday Concert cherishes mainstream masterpieces as well as less heard and new repertoire. In the 2017-18 season, no fewer than five (world) premieres are on the programme, three of them composed by a woman. - Come and see that among the national orchestras. Friday 17 November will hear the brand new double concert Together Remember to Dance by British/Bulgarian Dobrinka Tabakova. She composed it on... 

Jan Fabre's Exciting Friends vs the Curators (part 2): At breakneck gallop through Ostend

Jan Fabre is a bit like the Jan Cremer of Flanders but younger, five times more talented, multidisciplinary and eight times more social. 'It is quite an honour to succeed Jan Hoet,' says Jan Fabre. Together with art historian Joanna De Vos, he is the curator of HET VLOT. Art is (not) lonely. The exhibition is intended to highlight the Mu.ZEE and Belgian... 

Tourbus Beatles (replica) Foto: Chris Samson CC.BY 2.0

You had one chance to sustainably improve arts subsidies

The decision will be official in mid-September, but behind the scenes it has already been made. The Netherlands will have a very small basic cultural infrastructure for the performing arts, and a very large fund that anyone who wants to make theatre, dance, mime or music must apply to. I asked around a bit recently, and so that's what it's going to be. That way, politicians can't... 

Bert Verhoeff in the other side fototentoonstelling

Crying bus driver visits photo exhibition. What's wrong?

The photography exhibition The Other Side opened in Tirana last week. There is a side to that that was not actually intended. Tourist in Tirana In the pool on a rooftop terrace in Tirana, a bald man leans against the wall in the water. He appears to be a tourist but is in Albania for work. As soon as I ask him if it is nice work... 

ELIA

Artists are averse to entrepreneurship. 3 reasons why that is wrong

Most young artists only find out after their studies that they lack important entrepreneurial skills. That is why ELIA, the network organisation for colleges of arts in Europe, is organising the conference: Making a Living From the Arts. On 14 and 15 September, academics, cultural entrepreneurs and artists from different countries will gather in Amsterdam. Together, they will discuss creative solutions for... 

Reinbert de Leeuw conducts Kurtág on historic CD box set

The three-part CD box set of choral and ensemble works by György Kurtág is, in a word, overwhelming. His soul-transcending sounds are sublimely interpreted by Reinbert de Leeuw et al. The recording, too, is impeccable. This box set is already historic, a monument to the Hungarian grandmaster, who turned 91 last February. Kurtág's existentialist music was played in our country as early as the mid-1970s,... 

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'... 

Robert Lepage pulls out all the stops in '887'. (Because we forget so much.) #HF17

Twenty-five Canadians are listed for design and production of sound, video, music, lighting and stage technology. Nine Canadians are working behind the scenes for two hours. During those two hours, one Canadian is on stage. In front of six hundred spectators. What those 35 people have all managed to pull off tickles your imagination and tells... 

The Tempest Society: Too bad Jesse Klaver wasn't in the audience #HF17

Struggle is by far the word that falls the most in the video triptych 'The Tempest Society'. The struggle for a dignified existence, the struggle for papers, the struggle with a system that does not want to give you rights. Refugees struggle with these issues day in and day out, year in and year out. In this video triptych, Moroccan-French director Bouchra Khalili (Casablanca,... 

danse de nuit, Boris Charmatz / Musée de la danse. Foto: Boris Brussey.

danse de nuit, on cartoons and other violence in our lives, #HF17

On Anton de Komplein, it is less cosy than on the roof of Parking 58 in Brussels, where I saw danse de nuit earlier. Above South-East, the moon is hidden behind a thick haze, the square feels big and empty so without the market. The performance by choreographer Boris Charmatz/Musée de la Danse, also today and tomorrow,... 

Boris Charmatz

Danse de Nuit in the Bijlmer: 'Of course we want to influence public space' #HF17

Boris Charmatz has been a guest at many editions of the Holland Festival with impressive, provocative, socially engaged, finely composed and conceptually strong dance performances: Aatt enen tionon and Con forts fleuve (both in 2001); 50 years of dance (2010), Enfant (2011) and Manger (2015). His latest choreography, danse de nuit, premiered in Geneva last September. During the Holland Festival... 

Hooligans, but good hooligans. Viking drama on the edge of comic and laughable

Roaring warriors, pomp and circumstance, a tough drama set against the historical background of the Viking era. That goes down like cake (or beer) with the Danes who see themselves as direct heirs of the Vikings, the organisers must have thought. And that is why the play Røde Orm is being presented as one of the highlights in... 

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