In the Netherlands, this Thursday afternoon is sunny. Clothes stick to bodies. Hotpants everywhere. Boys take off their shirts in parks. This afternoon, Queens of the Stone Age's new single plops onto YouTube. The Way You Used to Do is sweaty and hot. Pleasure settled Queens of the Stone Age don't surprise. There's no need to. The band is grand...
Later, when I grow up... Lawyer Susan van 't Hullenaar (1970) always dreamed of becoming a writer. As her 12.5-year work anniversary approached, she realised: I have to take the plunge now, otherwise it won't happen. She quit her job, became her own boss as a copywriter and picked up her pen - well, the computer. 'I gave...
The Shadow of Ideas (De Umbris Idearum ... The Acousmatic Memory Palace) is the title of one of the pieces played by electronica duo Mouse on Mars with Ensemble Musikfabrik. The shadows are indeed shooting against the scrap of the Muziekgebouw. Ideas, however, have not yet formed. Nudges to do so roar loosely through the space. Transported elsewhere Akoesmatic music...
Endless chatting at the kitchen table. While cooking. That's all they do, the brother, the sister, the ex, the two daughters-in-law and the mother of the Gabriel family. About recipes, about the old piano. About Thomas, the brother who died of parkinson's, about his wife, who due to informal care had no time to renew her doctor's degree. All very casually, without...
The Orphanage of Dutch Music presents monthly 'forgotten Dutch masterpieces' at Amsterdam's Splendor stage. 'To discover the finer points', these are performed twice, interrupted by 'a short commentary or interview with special table guests'. On paper, a golden formula. Rightly so, the Holland Festival adopted three episodes. With the music, during the opening concert on Thursday, it was all in...
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,...
Roaring programmers announce new compositions: "World premiere!" jubilate the posters. Superb, but in contemporary music practice, that primal performance is often immediately the last. The score goes into an archive folder. The notes fall silent; the roar falls silent. The Orphanage takes care of those forgotten works. Context David Dramm snatches such pieces from oblivion and presents them with context at the Orphanage
Do you write a review for people who are still going to the show, for people who have already been or for people who want to be informed? It is and remains an eternal dilemma. Vincent Macaigne's Holland Festival performance 'En Manque' will only be at the Compagnietheater on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 June. The chances of you, the reader,...
Rito de Primavera, on show at the Holland Festival early this week, is a group choreography for fifty young dancers. Choreographer José Vidal has loosely based himself on Sacre du printemps, Stravinsky and Nijinsky's 1913 piece for the Ballet Russes. Fragments of Stravinsky's music have been turned into 4-quarter beetz by DJ Jim Hast, while Vidal has minimised the ritual aspect of the sacrifice, essential to the many versions made throughout the 20th century (besides Nijinsky's primal version, Massine, Béjart and Bausch, among others).
What remains is an overwhelming visual experience of a gigantic mass of dancers looming out of the darkness. The coordination of the group, at times dancing wildly through each other, at other times circling the stage in long parade, is impressive. It produces a fascinating, eye-opening aesthetic, but the group dance in no way challenges the audience. You could call it a pile of kitsch, or opium for the people. Either way, it is a form of spectacle that I consider unworthy of the Holland Festival.
The performance begins like a school trip. Near the box office, spectators are prepared in groups for what is to come. They are kindly requested to take off their shoes upon entering the theatre, and then to walk barefoot, hand in hand with fellow spectators, through the dark. Regularly, someone calls loudly for silence, as the performance has already started. There is also something uncomfortable about the nervous manner in which the audience, which is supposed to line up in rows after the instructions, is marched away to the performance space two buildings away.
The initiation of the visitors continues in the Purification Hall, when they pass through the pitch darkness hand in hand with the cool sand at their feet. It provides one of the few ambiguous moments during Rito de Primavera. Where is this going? What fairy tale are we being led into here? From which tourist boat have we fallen off, to now attend the rituals of which people again?
At first, the total experience that so many contemporary theme parks are looking for really takes shape. For half an hour, I stare at a stage in the dark. I see and feel a lot of people there, I think naked because sometimes there is a clever flash of soft light, but the dominant darkness prevents me from getting a grip on it. Ethereal singing composed by Andrés Abarzúa - a single chord sounds gurgling from many throats - accompanies the entrance of all the other spectators for half an hour.
The bleachers surround the playing surface. It is only the red and white bicycle lights of the guides of the many groups of spectators that give you some orientation in the space. It has something of Tintin in Takatukaland. An audience paying to be at a miraculous, never-before-seen, spring nymphing ritual.
The artificiality of the setting gives a certain tension. In the darkness, as a spectator, you can imagine all sorts of things about what is to come. But at some point, the bicycle lights go out, a sign that all spectators are seated, and the dancers all put on trousers. The light increases and the first beetz cum stravinsky supplants the singing. When, after the uncertain introitus, the actual spectacle begins, its logic becomes all too clear. A perfectly organised group choreography takes over.
In what follows, nothing is left to chance. And that is no luxury with so many dancers in semi-darkness, especially as half of them are also new to the work, because from the Modern Theatre Dance Department of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The group makes pulsating movements, dialogues with a neighbour, runs in groups, starts singing again, postures and occasionally lifts a single person in the air.
But just as the darkness gets used, so does the group. They are all very young people, fairly relaxed dancing together. The uninhibited attitude with which the complicated group choreographies are performed is touching. A naive kind of surrender or faith speaks from it.
But gradually the effects, of the group choreography, of the light that creates the photographic vistas, the repetitive singing and beetz get boring. The repetition of moves is effect-laden, rhetorical, self-affirming. Nowhere a moment of debacle, of faltering. No one who has a question, can't keep up, is wrong
At last. The Nation, the hyperactual theatrical serial with which the revamped Nationale Toneel, sorry Theatre, presents itself to the country, feels like a refreshing splash of water on a soggy day. Newly appointed boss Eric de Vroedt lives up to his reputation by delivering a work that will no doubt draw new audiences into the theatres. An audience spoiled by...
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...
It is just about the most beautiful music written. Claudio Monteverdi's Marian Vespers have enchanted even the most untrained listener since their premiere in 1610. Raphael Pichon is a young French conductor acclaimed for his shimmering yet refined musicality and more than absolute hearing. Everything director Pierre Audi touches usually turns to gold
In the dark Middle Ages, an artist was still sometimes quartered for being out of line. In the 19th century, those lines were no longer important. In the early 20th century, artists started deciding for themselves where the lines were and punished those who did not stick to them. It was the time of artists' manifestos. Cate Blanchett, the...
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...
We are real Holland Festival specialists by now. We go and see performances beforehand, interview makers, actors and walk around the halls, in the foyers, just about every day. We hear a lot, we see a lot and we share it here. Cultural journalism as it should be, in short. Cultural journalism that should also be there. And it totally succeeds if you take out a subscription. Then you get...
It is dark. Basses thump. An intoxicatingly sweet female perfume hangs in the air, a child cries. AquaSonic has just started, and I already want to leave. What possesses a musician to go head-to-head? Our Danish correspondent went to find out. AquaSonic is an ode to water, played by Between Music, a collective of five Danish musicians. They make...
He finds himself lazy and under-ambitious, and struggles with acceptance - of himself, of others, of the world. Because his grandparents had lived through the Holocaust, there was a taboo on being unhappy in his youth. Eight life questions to Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer. 'Between what I could do and actually do, there is a big gap.' 1....
Wondrous story: Utrecht had a famous jazz club between 1957 and 1967. It was founded - including egg cartons on the vault - by jazz-loving teenagers. Not only the fine fleur of Dutch jazz performed there, but also many an international big name. As part of Utrecht's Cultural Sundays, last Sunday (23 April), a wharf cellar on the...
A tip for Good Friday. Viola player Saskia Meijs first made the necessary mileage in the 'classical' classical music world. She decided to leave it and look for a less formal and convention-laden career. Solo and with her group the Barockpuppies, she now undertakes the nicest things, at beautiful locations such as Frankendael and the Concertgemaal. Blessed...
Joop van Caldenborgh, founder of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, has commissioned a classical museum that builds on existing conventions about presenting art. The art should be central and the building does not matter, so to speak. Yet the design plays an important role. Architecture critic Tim de Boer dives deeper into the thoughts behind the building,...
It is not easy to visit an opera presented as a stunning piece of contemporary social criticism without fear. Especially when it evokes such totally different reactions. Some call The New Prince 'an opera on the vein of our own time' (Mischa Spel, NRC), while others give it 'a fat fail' (Erik Voermans, Het Parool). Another needs more...
Interview with Martijn Maria Smits about his new film Waldstille, which he shot in his native village in Brabant. A drama full of subcutaneous menace from a Dutch filmmaker with a signature of his own.
Adultery, lustful sex and desperately dating forty-somethings - these are the spicy ingredients of caSINO, Frieda Mulisch's debut novel. On their quest for true love, her protagonists Polly and Sam scour dating app caSINO, a kind of Tinder. We talk to her about her book, literary aspirations and, of course, her father Harry Mulisch. 'If Tinder had been around fifty years ago,...
Initiated by Pierre Audi in 2016, the Opera Forward Festival questions the future of musical theatre. The 13-day festival offers (young) creators and singers a chance to explore new avenues. For the second edition, Audi himself directed And You Must Suffer, a music-theatrical version of Bach's St John Passion. This production by Muziektheater Transparant and the early music ensemble B'Roque experienced its Tuesday 28 March...
We have to perform, from an early age. If you don't go along with that, you will be left out. It is the thrust of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, now to be seen at De Nationale Opera directed by Krzystof Warlikowski. The Polish theatre innovator has turned one of the most dramatic operas in music history into a fascinating musical...
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