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The Netherlands is festivalised. And why that is a very good thing. Collaborating festivals come out with a pamphlet (and ask for money)

Grandpa tells. In 1989, a committee of experts chose a different theatre course in my city, Utrecht. The just-risen festival Theater aan de Werf would get more money, the marching theatre would disappear from 't Hoogt and the rest would have to take care of the newcomer with fewer days of programming. Then we took to the streets against the so-called 'festivalisation',... 

Read More "The Netherlands is festivalised. And why that is a very good thing. Collaborating festivals come out with a pamphlet (and ask for money)

Ruth Mackenzie's latest Holland Festival promises to be just one of the most exciting

Here it is. The one and only interactive Culture Press Holland Festival Special. A special that has already been deployed over the past few months, and will be added to in the coming month. During the festival, we have regular reviews and reports, and podcasts. A new edition of this Special will appear every week. On Mondays. And then you can also subscribe via... 

Read More "Ruth Mackenzie's latest Holland Festival promises to be just one of the most exciting

Arno Schuitemaker @hollandfestival: 'I want to find a new way, a new vocabulary, that has not yet been seen in my previous work.'

With 'The Way You Sound Tonight', which will have its world premiere at Holland Festival 2018, choreographer Arno Schuitemaker takes the next step in his creative development. He describes his performance as an 'acoustic ballroom'. I speak to the 1976-born dance maker, who once studied at Delft University of Technology, about his work and his motives. 'In the trilogy 'WHILE... 

Read More "Arno Schuitemaker @hollandfestival: 'I want to find a new way, a new vocabulary, that has not yet been seen in my previous work.'

Touching each other is taboo. Anne Nguyen brings breakdance and capoeira, vulnerable men and video games in Kata @hollandfestival

In Kata, the latest work by French breaker and choreographer Anne Nguyen, hip-hop men transcend the clichés of hip-hop. Toughness, untouchability and the usual frontal relationship with the audience are exchanged for indirect gestures, delayed effects, diagonals and laterals, double entendres and irony. Nguyen, herself an adept practitioner of capoeira, ming chun and breakdance, challenges her dancers to show their... 

Read More "Touching each other is taboo. Anne Nguyen brings breakdance and capoeira, vulnerable men and video games in Kata @hollandfestival

Poets with evergreens and hits make a poetry festival. But what about the table talk? #pifr

Alí Calderón has written quite a body of work, but I didn't hear much of it during my stay at Poetry International. However, the poem 'Democracia Mexicana' did come along three times. A formidable poem, as it ends with a rotting baby corpse, so not for the soft-hearted among us. Democracia Mexicana is Calderon's hit poem. Like pop singers can make a hit... 

Read More "Poets with evergreens and hits make a poetry festival. But what about the table talk? #pifr

Martin Crimp on Lessons in Love and Violence at the @hollandfestival: 'The past is a playground, in which I can escape from the rolling news.'

No love without power relations. And certainly not when that love takes place in a royal bedroom. That bedchamber is now the setting for a tragic love triangle between a king, his lover and his wife in Lessons in Love and Violence, the third opera by English composer Georges Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp. The Elizabethan drama Edward II... 

Read More "Martin Crimp on Lessons in Love and Violence at the @hollandfestival: 'The past is a playground, in which I can escape from the rolling news.'

'Fleshy, divinely bawdy at times.' - Buddingh Prize 2018 for Radna Fabias during sizzling Poetry International (#pifr)

Danez Smith is quite something. Or rather two, because the American poet likes to be addressed in the gender-neutral, or rather gender-plural plural form. A form of address not yet very common in Dutch, and thus avoided by everyone. Thursday night, 31 May at the former ro theatre, now Theater Rotterdam - Witte de With, fell around the... 

Read More "'Fleshy, divinely bawdy at times.' - Buddingh Prize 2018 for Radna Fabias during sizzling Poetry International (#pifr)

Four men were given the task: invent a festival you want to go to yourself. That became TREK, a mishmash of food trucks, mayor and pastor.

You must be a serious misanthrope not to have a good time in Stadspark Maastricht that Friday. The sun is shining. It is subtropical warm with a light spring breeze. The location, next to a pond embraced by ramparts and turrets, is perfect. Under the ancient oaks, some 40 food trucks and bars with simmering kitchens await you. Oh... 

Read More "Four men were given the task: invent a festival you want to go to yourself. That became TREK, a mishmash of food trucks, mayor and pastor.

Hope for the Metropole Orchestra. Thanks to News Hour.

Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven will 'do something' for the Metropole Orchestra this autumn. She made this known in a letter to the House of Representatives today. Literally it says: 'I will include the solution to the Metropole Orchestra's problem in my consideration around the deployment of the 2019 coalition agreement funds tranche. My consideration in this regard is that in the coalition agreement,... 

Read More "Hope for the Metropole Orchestra. Thanks to News Hour.

Theatre boards want more money for 'difficult' offerings.

More operas and classical concerts are offered in Dutch theatres and concert halls. More theatre was also offered for young people. Nice developments, but the increase in supply (3 per cent) did not directly lead to a proportionate increase in audiences. That increased by only 1 per cent. The number of spectators for theatre and cabaret even fell. Therefore. 

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Maya Fridman: Prokofiev's Fire Angel with hard rock attitude

Russian-Dutch Maya Fridman (Moscow, 1989) plays classical and contemporary music as well as rock, jazz, folk and flamenco. Communication with the audience is now her main aim. So why limit yourself to a particular style or genre? The Cello Biennale website rightly describes her as a 'musical jack-of-all-trades'. She scored highly in 2016 at this... 

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Gesualdo project at @hollandfestival by De Warme Winkel: 'We want to anoint and flog the ears' #HF18

Say 'Carlo Gesualdo' and you say 'heavenly music', and 'cruel disposition'. This Renaissance composer's name is inextricably linked to the gruesome double murder he committed on his wife and lover when he found them in flagrante delicto. Who else but The Warm Shop could make an appealing performance of this thought Tido Visser, artistic director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir. So. 

Read More "Gesualdo project at @hollandfestival by De Warme Winkel: 'We want to anoint and flog the ears' #HF18

Film concert featuring West Side Story, Bernstein's indictment of discrimination

Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 this year. The AVROTROS Friday Concert puts his most popular piece, West Side Story, on the programme on Saturday (!) 26 May. The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will play the electrifying music full of ecstatic melodies and vital dances live at the integral screening of the original 1961 film. The whole thing is conducted by the young American conductor 

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Rainer Hofmann (SPRING): 'After the populist attack from the right, the performing arts now face an attack from the left.'

Thursday 17 May opens SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht with, among others, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi by Dries Verhoeven and to come (extended) by Mette Ingvartsen. Over ten days, over twenty-five international dance and theatre productions, installations and performance works will be on show in public spaces and urban environments. A week earlier, festival director Rainer Hofmann looks relaxed. 'Until now... 

Read More "Rainer Hofmann (SPRING): 'After the populist attack from the right, the performing arts now face an attack from the left.'

German Anna Karenina in @hollandfestival as seventies disco show: 'We were sometimes worried whether we were going too far. But then we always had the music.'

Germans and humour. I have a bad experience with that. Will largely be because I don't get the finer nuances of the language, especially if it is meant for laughter. So it's not that the German sense of humour is wrong. In fact, sometimes something can just happen in German theatre that makes you laugh. I want... 

Read More "German Anna Karenina in @hollandfestival as seventies disco show: 'We were sometimes worried whether we were going too far. But then we always had the music.'

Why Wierd Duk often does exactly what he fights himself.

Uproar. A widely recognised and by his own admission always attacked opinion maker with a slight preference for strong men in Russia and America has discovered that art is leftist and elitist. Indeed, Wierd Duk, Russia expert since he spent a few years running around Moscow for various media outlets, writes in the Telegraph that art is often left-wing kitsch[ref]N[ref][/ref]Wierd Duk has since revealed... 

Read More "Why Wierd Duk often does exactly what he fights himself.

Everyone is welcome at Pitfest. 'Bands playing at our place should be especially hard, or dirty and grimy.'

The Drenthe village of Erica was rocked on the last weekend of April by the cosy noise festival Pitfest. And that attracted a motley mix of people. I walked around there for a day. A golf cart zooms across the roundabout of the 4-star resort in the outskirts of the Drenthe town of Erica. To the right of the tarmac are tightly mowed golf courses, to the left is a plot of land... 

Read More "Everyone is welcome at Pitfest. 'Bands playing at our place should be especially hard, or dirty and grimy.'

Daria Bukvić holds up a mirror to theatres and companies on SPOT Live: 'I don't shy away from new forms of marketing.'

'With my performances, I always try to make people feel that they are really going to miss a happening. 'The first performance with personal stories of four Moroccan-Dutch actresses in the big theatres of the Netherlands, the newest this, the most surprising that.' Daria Bukvić is one of the most exciting creators to enter the theatre world in recent years. She is not only... 

Read More "Daria Bukvić holds up a mirror to theatres and companies on SPOT Live: 'I don't shy away from new forms of marketing.'

'Saigon' director (@hollandfestival) seeks extreme emotions: 'I don't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

'Never, never would I make a performance about my mother, or about myself. Jamais.' Caroline Guiela Nguyen, child of 'a marriage between a Vietnamese mother and a 'pied-noir' (Algerian colonial) is not into personal stories. The theatre-maker captured audiences' hearts at last year's Avignon Festival with the play Saigon. This moving, deeply human play... 

Read More "'Saigon' director (@hollandfestival) seeks extreme emotions: 'I don't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

Merlijn Twaalfhoven on SPOT-Live: 'Outside the Randstad lies a huge source of inspiration'

'I have knocked on the door of the Congress of Performing Arts a few times in recent years on my own initiative, really from the idea that we can do a lot more as venues in the Netherlands. But yes, every time I was there, people got enthusiastic, but does it stick?' Composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven is happy that he now serves as 'curator' of SPOT Live, the new... 

Read More "Merlijn Twaalfhoven on SPOT-Live: 'Outside the Randstad lies a huge source of inspiration'

Who pays the artist? Lower House hears about shocking reality in the arts in roundtable discussion

Whether the artists performing on DWDD got paid for their performance. Esther Ouwehand of the PvdD did not know. She was not the only one, at the roundtable session on Wednesday 25 April on the labour market in the cultural sector. None of the MPs, fund managers, trade unionists present knew. So we asked on facebook and twitter how it was even done.... 

Read More "Who pays the artist? Lower House hears about shocking reality in the arts in roundtable discussion

A fertile repertoire landscape.

Performing arts policy greatly determines what can be seen and heard on Dutch stages. It underpins government funding of theatre and music. This policy pays a lot of attention to the quality of performances, but it hardly discusses the choice of pieces played, let alone what kind of repertoire landscape... 

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Annelies van Parys: 'No more beautiful symbol of love than a flower'

In 2014, Annelies van Parys (1975) composed her first opera, Private View, for Asko|Schönberg and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart. It was awarded the FEDORA - Rolf Liebermann Prize for Opera shortly afterwards. The Stuttgart singers submissively asked her to compose a new piece for them. Songs of Love and War/An Archive of Love will premiere 20 May at Operadagen... 

Read More "Annelies van Parys: 'No more beautiful symbol of love than a flower'

Cellist Maya Fridman: 'The best thing about making music is communicating with my audience.'

Cellist Maya Fridman was born in Moscow in 1989, where she emerged as a child prodigy. Even while still studying at Schnittke College, she won first prize at the International Festival of Slavic Music. In 2010, she came to the Netherlands, where six years later she graduated Cum Laude from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Fridman naturally places contemporary... 

Read More "Cellist Maya Fridman: 'The best thing about making music is communicating with my audience.'

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