The bad news is: most myths about Carthage are nonsense. The good news is, the reality is at least as fascinating. Until 10 May 2015, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) in Leiden is showing the multifaceted history of a port city in present-day Tunisia, and once formidable rival of the Roman Empire. It simultaneously offers a glimpse...
,,I put discomfort in my artworks. I get that feeling when I walk through the city and see all those big buildings. The postmodern architecture with its megalomaniac mentality, and its decay, those depress me." From 29 November to 4 January, visual artist Peter Zuur is one of the exhibitors at the Pulchri Graphic Biennial, The Hague. Notably, his works...
So I spent five minutes in singer-songwriter Patrick Watson's studio. He played a bit. Put his phone in the ashtray. Said something to his labrador. And I could look around quietly while he played. Behind me, in front of me. Below and above. Nothing like sitting at an artist's home while he plays. And he wasn't bothered...
Should the free market be curbed to save Dutch culture? The issue facing the Dutch government is quite a big one. On Tuesday, Dutch 'makers' (artists, photographers, actors, screenwriters, translators, directors, freelance journalists, etc.) presented a pamphlet. The pamphlet outlines the idiotic situation the Dutch cultural and creative sector is in. No other country disregards...
I published two articles in NRC Handelsblad last year. The first (6 July 2013) was critical of government policy. There was little reaction to this. The second article (7 December 2013) was critical of the arts sector: it needs to make its own sharp choices. That did cause a stir, although I am convinced that many colleagues largely agree with the content...
Flemish actors can speak. Flemish actors usually don't need microphones to make themselves understood over a storm, or from 100 metres away in the open air. Charlotte Caeckaert is one such actress who can do all that, and such technique is a joy to witness. She also writes lyrics, and that's where things go a little wrong....
In Rome, they have known what good food is for 20 centuries or so. Bloodletting is everything. Seneca, a Roman of the better sort, wrote plays in which bloodshed was elevated to an art. Audiences feasted on them, just as they feasted on Seneca's recipes in Shakespeare's time, 1,500 years later, and as we feast on Game of Thrones on TV now. It can't be gory, can't be cruel enough. We like that.
Saturday, June 14, went off in a flood of evening gowns, dinner jackets, Dutch celebrities and Gooische Tanks War Horse premiered. A play about a war in which the Netherlands was neutral, and of which there are memorial stones in every village in the rest of the world. You can go and see it. Or not. We have listed six arguments.
Breaking new ground in theatre is the aim of Canadian director Robert Lepage and his group Ex Machina. It seems like everything is unusual about 'Playing Cards: Spades': playing floor, lighting, seating around the stage, the stories, the acting and the surprising denouement.
The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.
Seizure of the instruments of the former Netherlands Symphony Orchestra is imminent. The orchestra, which, since a lost legal battle with Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra is no longer allowed to use the word 'Dutch', so is not allowed to sell instruments or take them abroad. Pending a countermove from the former Orchestra of the East, they changed the name there to ***** Symphony Orchestra.
Even if war breaks out today, fighter jets will no longer land there. 200,000 visitors a year is the minimum they need now, at Soesterberg. The former air base in the heart of the Netherlands, where until 2009 a squadron of F15 jet fighters stood ready to teach the then enemy, the communists, a lesson, is coming into the hands of the public. The developer is putting the finishing touches to the Military Aviation Museum there. Small parts of the five-kilometre-long runway are being ploughed over, and a few hangars are being put to use as repositories of art.
Contrary to what some expected a few years ago, 3D in artistic film is still a rarity. So then, when something pops up in this corner again, it immediately makes one curious. And so I don't mean Cathedrals of Culture, the 3D film project by Wim Wenders and five other filmmakers starring buildings. That Wenders is a 3D believer we already knew.
I mean that other 3D premiere at the Berlin festival: Above Us All of the Dutch
Culture debate 2013: Rutte and PVV shake hands. It was about Caro Emerald. About Zwarte Piet. And the classic: subsidy on opera tickets. And briefly about carnival. And it made all the news. Geenstijl. Radio 1,2,3 and 4. What else was the debate about? Um... no idea.
We kept a liveblog. Nice and old-fashioned, from the days when every month there was uproar somewhere about the government's handling of art. Now there is peace in the tent, as the PVV sardonically points out, because 'The Left' is now the bearer of policies devised by the PVV. The PVV predicts a black future for 'The Left' once the PVV comes to power.
Even before she graduated from mime school, Boukje Schweigman swore off language. She worked out a wordless philosophy in her performances. She seeks the mystery of life. However vast and elusive her starting points may be, her performances give the audience the most direct, immediate, skin-tight sensation imaginable in a theatre.
Jet Bussemaker is satisfied. For the next few years, there will be little whining about the subsidies under her regime. She states this in her letter this weekend. After all, the basis of the system is fixed: there are great museums, symphony orchestras, opera and theatre clubs whose subsidies are cast in concrete. Or rather carved from classical marble, because money gets you
"Children are the best judges of what makes a good children's film," a member of the Cinekid children's jury spoke confidently. There may be room for improvement on that, but the fact is that at the awards ceremony on the festive closing night of the Cinekid festival, there was remarkable agreement with the adult jury.
Not only did both juries nominate the same film twice
I see a lot, but an exhibition that gives access to that contemporary art for outsiders is rarely among them. You have the Rijksmuseum with a nice overview of culture through the ages, but from 1900 onwards, the space for it becomes very small. So you don't know what's going on now. For that, you can go to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which shows the world's best. However, if you want a handy overview of what Dutch artists have created, it's best to go to Schiedam.
"I am very curious about the audience's reactions. People always have an image at a festival. They come, expecting to experience all sorts of things. What you get here is the terrain, an exploration and a story that emerges as a result. The main energy that exists on and around this terrain is, "I get to go on it, and what's there? On that energy, I want to build on."
Is the kingdom of the dead in the opera Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa a 3D garden full of brilliant colour, director Peter Sellars chooses in Desdemona by Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré for sober black and white. On the stage of a sold-out Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ are glass bottles and jars, sometimes lit from below, sometimes from above, with hanging light bulbs like flickering candles. On the left are a number of ngonis (Malian lute) and two koras (Malian harp lute), played by black musicians.
Thirty-eight singing Slovenian girls. We might expect something with colourful costumes against a backdrop of a sunny village scene. Instead
The Dutch system of art subsidies was set up in 1942 by NSB leader Tobie Goedewaagen, who also founded the Kultuurkamer. Typical of a fact that
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