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....
But then. A day before Christmas, the prime minister experiences a sleepless night. He has no appetite for the Glühwein provided by the housekeeping service. The Christmas pastry, delivered by a friendly VVD baker, remains untouched. The security guards see their object sitting upright in his bed... Read and shudder That summer evening, Michelle de Kat sits smugly in a corner of the blood-hot studio
Tight and razor-sharp? No. But that's not what this afternoon is about at all. Here the feast of singing together is celebrated, the end result being a performance of Handel's oratorio that you wouldn't want on CD, but which is of a surprisingly high standard and, above all, one you wouldn't have wanted to miss for the world. Much has been written about the problems...
Since the financial crisis and subsequent cuts, the cultural sector has been forced to legitimise itself. Scientific research has to demonstrate the social outcome of art and culture. To assist the cultural sector in this, the Landelijk Kennisinstituut voor Cultuureducatie en Amateurkunst (LKCA) therefore started the so-called 'fact factory', a numerical overview of key data and developments in the...
Update 4-12-15: During the plenary discussion of the culture budget on 3 December, Messrs Monasch (PvdA) and Van Veen (VVD) withdrew the controversial amendment. Instead, an amendment was adopted in which a one-off 10 million was released from the additional proceeds of the tax on polluting companies. From this contribution, festivals will be supported, talent development facilitated and...
From Dutch Symphony Orchestra with international ambitions back to provincial orchestra with as yet nothing at all. Now, except for the ironclad original name. It could be a commercial for Telfort. In between are many lost lawsuits, the grotesque protest name *****Symphony Orchestra and the equally garish HET Symphony Orchestra. It is the ultimate capitulation of the once by just about everything and everyone...
With one day to go, it's time to look at what stood out about the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. The picture of the whole festival is diffuse, as befits a fest whose programme booklet is almost three hundred pages thick. There was, as always, a sea of films about abuses and current political issues, but there were...
It doesn't often happen to me that just under 30 years after seeing a film, I still remember in what state I left the theatre. Supreme confusion it was. Was all this real? As a filmmaker, were you allowed to hit your interviewees? Was it staged? It was too horrifying to imagine everything really happening
A damning report by organisational consultancy Berenschot, the voluntary or involuntary departure of director Harm Mannak, repeated bickering in the State Assembly and panting reports of high salaries for directors and artistic directors, all the way to the national newspapers. It marks the chaos at HET Symfonieorkest and the lack of any form of direction, not only at the orchestra itself,...
IDFA 2015 opens strongly with intriguing family history A Family Affair, but the main programme feature is Benjamin Barber: Jihad vs. McWorld.
Failing directors stay put, the Supervisory Board disqualifies itself. No other conclusion is possible after reading the counter-expertise commissioned by the province of Overijssel and carried out by Berenschot. The provincial millions intended to make the orchestra subsidy-independent have not only evaporated, but show a negative balance in every area. Every estimate was too optimistic,...
Unemployment is rife in Tunisia. Young men there now clean plastic from the streets and beaches, as a heavily underpaid job. It led theatre-maker Meher Debbich to a surprising insight: 'Old ideas are like plastic. They don't decay. They have to be disposed of, for recycling. Otherwise we will perish in them.' He tells me about this in the interview below
Next week sees the start of festival Dancing on the Edge. Unlike its name suggests, this festival, with performances in The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam, is not only about dance, but also about film, theatre and politics. The 'Edge' it is about, the festival looks for in its theme: an urgent artistic dialogue with the Middle East. More needed now than...
Some think dance has nothing to do with politics. German theatre maker Helena Waldmann clearly thinks otherwise. Waldmann makes socially engaged dance theatre and uses her work to point out the 'social sore spots' of different cultures and sees transcultural similarities in them. Made in Bangladesh is a haunting and poignant performance that draws a parallel between the poor working conditions...
While in the Netherlands hate blog GeenStijl swayed the votes of 400,000 concerned Dutch people to its own anti-European tune, Flanders came up with something new: the citizens' cabinet. A thousand ordinary Flemings spent three months working online and offline on recommendations for culture minister Sven Gatz's cultural policy. In the end, a group of one hundred and fifty citizens was chosen to come up with a text. These were submitted yesterday to the...
It is only a few months until Sinterklaas, so you would expect the Dutch people's rhyming muscles to be on edge again by now. But nothing could be further from the truth. During the Drongo Festival, an event on multilingualism in the Utrecht Jaarbeurs, MC Akwasi demonstrated this flawlessly. With his Dutch-language raps, he fits well into the current wave of...
Ola Mafaalani and relatability. They don't go together. On Thursday 3 September 2015, the artistic director of the Noord Nederlands Toneel was allowed to open the theatre season with a speech, the State of the Theatre. She did so in a way we could have actually expected from her, but which nevertheless struck like a bomb. It will hopefully be talked about for years to come...
Just after the end of the Early Music Festival, the Gaudeamus Music Week, the Mecca of cutting-edge notes for seventy years, starts in Utrecht. Five nominated composers under thirty compete for the coveted Gaudeamus Award, previously won by now established composers such as Unsuk Chin, Yannis Kyriakides and Michel van der Aa. For the second year, the...
Robbert Dijkgraaf, the exact scientist with the flux-de-bouche of a great orator, kicked off the traditional Paradiso debate on Sunday 30 August in an extremely cool Paradiso. The Amsterdam pop temple was packed with guests and press, and expectations were high: could the debate really become a conversation this time, instead of the now somewhat threadbare...
On Tuesday afternoon, 25 August, Hans van Beers (Eindhoven, 1941) passed away. He was an important figure in our cultural life, his curriculum is seemingly endless. Among other things, he was alderman of culture in Den Bosch, co-founder of Pinkpop, chairman of the Mondriaan Fund, interim director of the Stedelijk Museum, director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the VPRO and the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, board member...
How next for boards in the cultural sector? Supervisory boards are under considerable pressure following publications about possible failed supervision at Rotterdam's Wereldmuseum, Grand Theatre in Groningen and recently again from Rotterdam's Het Nieuwe Instituut. Previously, similar reports appeared about De Utrecht Games and the Groninger Museum, among others. In practically all cases, the cases involved a Council...
If anyone can give a good picture of cultural development in Albania, it is Vincent van Gerven Oei. This Dutch philosopher and artist has lived in the country for five years and, as an insider and outsider, therefore has a strong opinion. I meet him at café Bukowski in a hip entertainment district of Tirana. When the embassy told me about Van Gerven Oei...
Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, which started on 6 August, has a new boss. This woman, Viktorien van Hulst, had a hard time even before the start of her first festival. Someone had suddenly found a tiny asbestos fibre in a drainpipe at the special new festival site on the Bossche Tramkade, a day before the opening, and so had to...
It is a lovely summer book: Harem, the new novel by Ronald Giphart. And for the first time in years, a good dose of sex appears in a book by the Utrecht-based writer. 'Just the other day at a reading I was announced by a librarian: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the man who knows all about sex!" Interview so with...
In the midst of all the Greek calamity, something beautiful has blossomed: a new inspired cinema that makes us blink.
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