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Gaudeamus Music Week: the squeak-grunt definitively over?

The Gaudeamus Music Week seems to have definitely left behind the stage of thorough but audience-unfriendly 'bleep-grunt'. The renowned festival of new music will present 129 compositions from 32 countries over five days. Asko|Schönberg and Cappella Amsterdam kicked off Wednesday 6 September with a motley variety of styles. Thus, the opening concert was a measure of what modern music lovers could expect up to... 

Ten days of theatre with bollocks in Kikker Kiest (At once up to date)

'When Paul moves his little finger something happens. They have a scene where Jochem draws a picture of Paul. Paul is posing naked. And that lasts. That takes a long time. You and I, as amateurs, would fill that with all sorts of poses and movements, but Paul doesn't do anything. You think. And all sorts of things happen. HIj is doing something, then, but.... 

What happens when you take someone's head off? (not what you think)

What happens when you take someone's head off? Little, you will say, since the accompanying body dies. But then you are wrong. Because at the first GRIP evening at Utrecht's Theater Kikker, Steven Michel showed that the rest of the body then just takes over. Fascinating to notice how you go from a bare back to... 

Modern dance only allowed with clothes on Facebook now

The first bare female breast I consciously observed in my life was the happily swishing boob of the girl in the Fa advertisement. It must have been sometime deep in the 1970s. The same time the Pacifisties Socialistiese Partij also did something similar with a cow in the background. Now, a good forty years later, the... 

Jan Martens in Utrecht: bravado, unintended honesty and unabashed desire

While Jan Martens' latest work, The Common People (2016), was at Amsterdam's Stadschouwburg last weekend, Utrecht's Theater Kikker is showing two older hits this week: Sweat Baby Sweat (2011) and The dog days are over (2014). Sweat and Dogdays are blockbusters and have already toured the world. At Kikker, they can now be seen as part of a... 

Reasons to do go to theatre Kikker (1: The Men's Night Out)

Despite the crisis in the performing arts, there is still a lot of young talent roaming the Netherlands and beyond. So much that keeping track is impossible. After all, who can visit all the festivals, from Festival Boulevard to Noorderzon, from the Café Theatre Festival to Festival Cement and from the Amsterdam Fringe Festival to the Zeeland Nazomerfestival? And then also exactly those four or five performances from the... 

5 reasons to avoid (or not) Theatre Kikker's Winter Collection

From 6 December, theatre Kikker will show a week-long anthology of talented and diverse young theatre makers. We looked ahead to this Winter Collection. Hannah Roelofs, herself just over 30, issues five warnings for people over 29. 1. Twenty-somethings! 'This is the generation that's losing his or her... 

The family vibe of 'Le Guess Who?': As if an older cousin has you in tow

Festival Le Guess Who? in Utrecht is on the eve of its tenth edition. From 10 to 13 November, more than a hundred artists will take possession of every conceivable place in the city of Dom where you can perform with good grace. They come from far and wide, just like the visitors. Expect the unexpected, with the whole family? Is that... 

Anthony Vine wins Gaudeamus Award #Gaud16

The 70th audition of the Gaudeamus Music Week ended Sunday 11 September in TivoliVredenburg with the presentation of the Gaudeamus Award. Director Henk Heuvelmans presented the prize for composers under thirty to American Anthony Vine (1988). The prize money of five thousand euros is intended for a new composition, to be performed during a subsequent edition. The jury, consisting of... 

Tefer, Itamar Serussi, Balletto di Roma, photo: Matteo Carratoni

Julidans double bill with Levi and Serussi mostly raises questions

It is a new and important trend within the programming of international dance and performance festivals in the Netherlands: not only showing relevant work by international choreographers, but also paying explicit attention to dance makers connected to Dutch dance practice. Spring Utrecht opened in May with Nicole Beutler and closed with Jan Martens, while during Julidans Pere Faura was allowed to kick off with sin baile no hay paraíso (no dance, no paradise).

Moisio's choreography 'Mum's the Word' makes you yearn for peace and freedom

Mothers and daughters: is there a closer bond? Their lives are an extension of each other. Mother treads the same path her daughter will later follow. She is a friend, to whom one can always fall back. But under the skin, a suffocating power struggle rages in which they hold and attack each other. Jealousy and competition gnaw at the domestic idyll. Escape is impossible. It is a... 

Berlin plays Tagfish, poetic documentary theatre about emptiness, and more emptiness

From today, the documentary performance Tagfish tours the Netherlands. The Belgian theatre collective Berlin has been making finely crafted theatre installations since 2004, playing on the border of documentary and fiction, television and theatre, current affairs and eternity. Tagfish is ostensibly about the perils surrounding the redevelopment of a piece of wasteland near Essen. Die Zeche Zollverein already had a monumental... 

Castellum culture park in Leidsche Rijn opens doors

It was world news in 1997. In one of the first building sites of Vinex district Leidsche Rijn, archaeologists found remains of a Roman boundary line, walls of forts, a cargo ship and all kinds of utensils. Digging it up and building houses was no longer an option. In 2007, it was decided to build a cultural park: a castellum. A modern version of a Roman fort bringing together various functions.... 

Greg Nottrot, Floor Leene and Christina Coridou in The Secret at Castellum Hoge Woerd

Unique Secret to be seen in Leidsche Rijn, but be quick

The fastest, and most beautiful, way to cycle through Leidsche Rijn is along the Groenedijk, and then all the way to the end. Pedalling 20 minutes from Utrecht Central Station, there recently, and for 2000 years, lies Castellum Hoge Woerd. It is a newly built idea of a Roman fort that guarded the ancient border of the Roman Empire here, along... 

Radical vulnerability and listening with eyes open - Vanrunxt stages Morton Feldman

Festival Rumor 80, an irregular regular in Utrecht at three different locations each time, will show choreographer Marc Vanrunxt's new work Real, So Real this Friday at Theater Kikker. Starting point is Three Voices, a 1982 composition by Morton Feldman. A wonderful Flemish collaboration by Kunst/Werk and ChampdAction. Dancer Marie De Corte and singer Els Mondelaers shine in Real, So Real. The... 

Lesson 1 for 2015: don't make your annual lists too early

Last weekend, we thought we were on the safe side with our list of best-read stories on Culture Press. True to old media laws, we thought the days between Christmas and New Year's would be quiet. Aber nein. It turned out there was another list on the way, which turned the whole thing upside down. Instead of 235 thousand interested readers... 

Three reasons to go to Medea

For the second consecutive year, the Festival of Early Music is organising a Laboratory, in which young creators can learn about their craft. This year's programme features Medea by Czech composer Georg Benda. This 'melodrama', an alternation of spoken text with music, was a resounding success at its premiere in 1775. Musicologist Jed Wentz and scholar Mary Helen Dupree revived it... 

Boukje Schweigman's wordless philosophy

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.

Rare and exceptional performance "Lang" by Kat Válastur knocks you out with wonder and sucks you into maelstrom

Kat Válastur claimed that it is almost impossible to describe the dynamics of her performance with words. She is right. It is rare skill how with only two dancers in one place, so much can be depicted and the audience is sucked into a maelstrom. In the small hall of Theatre Kikker, mechanical thuds sound and two giants appear in the middle of the stage. They turn out to be dancers:... 

Portuguese Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz make language move and their movements speak

You have those performances that remarkably simply and unobtrusively drag you into a world completely your own. Performances in which everything is recognisable. Words, movement, scenery. Everything equally familiar and homely. But then there is a tap against it. Patterns blur. Language is at odds. Everything rattles and drifts. And yet it makes sense. To your eyes and ears... 

Even hushed Ivo Dimchev makes raging impression with "I-on" during opening night Springdance Festival

As a performer, Ivo Dimchev is so fast and ferocious in his shifts between blunt bravado, childish fun, erotic impertinence and cutting loneliness that as a spectator, you normally can't get between them. Once Dimchev has his audience in his clutches, they can only follow him in bewilderment. "I-on" is again a seemingly loose collection of actions. Everything takes place around a... 

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