One of the benefits of advancing secularisation is that beautiful buildings are becoming vacant in more and more places. You can do things with those buildings. With art, for example. So this week, Studio Orka from Belgium did something beautiful in the Maria Church in Vught. They turned the empty neo-Romanesque building into, yes, an empty church....
You must be a Pole. That, as the Dutch premiere of 'Process' at the Holland Festival showed, is no laughing matter. This performance, an adaptation of Franz Kafka's famous novel of the same name, conveys that feeling very poignantly. Five hours long, interrupted only by two half-hour intermissions, during which a mackerel sandwich can be eaten. Or a bowl of mixed nuts. Observant...
The Cinéma Arabe festival is a platform for Arab cinema and aims to contribute to social debate. It celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, but is struggling with a tight budget.
'What we so often forget is to just talk about our love for theatre.' Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre, wants to talk about substance for once. And then with the entire performing arts sector. Soon there will be SPOT-Live, the renewed Congress of Performing Arts, and there he wants to talk about love. 'Quite by chance, it happened a month ago....
Moving. Before Significant Moments begins, the brisk Fernando Hernando Magadan presents himself as the new artistic director of NDT2. Applause in the auditorium. But the reason he stands behind a lectern with a huge flower arrangement is to pay tribute to the retiring artistic director: Gerald Tibbs. Gerald Tibbs. The peerless dancer everyone could walk away from
'Culture is about stimulating, fraternising, challenging. Then there is no difference between corso and ballet.' Says Thierry Aartsen on Friday 16 November in the Volkskrant. Thierry who? Thierry Aartsen, the one who will be speaking on culture at the VVD in the coming months. In the coming months? Yes, because VVD culture spokesmen are usually appointed for one or two debates, after which...
Would it happen after all? Would Liesbeth Coltof's dream really come true? For 36 years, she made theatre in which the age of the audience played no role. On Saturday 6 October, she received the Oeuvre Prize from the Association of Theatre Directors (VSCD) from the hands of Hedy d'Ancona. In doing so, she surpassed Ivo van Hove. The internationally breakthrough leader of the...
Three black men wash up on a small island. This threatens to throw a spanner in the works of the residents and their economic plans. So everyone prefers to pretend that nothing has happened. Archipelago of the Dog, Philippe Claudel's new novel, is a haunting book with lightness peeking through at times. The French bestselling author worries: 'Once, nuclear weapons constituted...
It started three years ago. Guilherme Miotto, working as a dance maker in Tilburg, was asked by a good friend of his. Whether he wanted to come and have a look in Noord. There, in that rather notorious slum, there were some fantastic freestyle footballers running around. YouTube runs with them, and the best one, Nasser El Jackson, is even world champion. A ball wizard. That is.
Steve McQueen is an artist who narrates big and difficult subjects in a physically tangible way. Hunger strike, sex addiction and our discomfort with male sexuality, slavery. These are the things we would rather not see anymore, not want to discuss and certainly not want to feel. In his feature films, McQueen manages to strike a balance between the aesthetic and the physical ...
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
'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...
'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...
On Thursday 19 April, composer Michel van der Aa takes centre stage at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Besides his own music, the adventurous Nieuw Amsterdams Peil will play pieces by kindred spirits chosen by him. Special guest is Wende Snijders, who composed a number of songs with Van der Aa. She will also solo in the world premiere of the integral cycle...
Platonov, Theater Utrecht's latest show, premiered on 2 March and is an instant hit: rave reviews in all major newspapers. Artistic director and director Thibaud Delpeut bases his version of this archetypal Chekhov play on the translation made by actor Jacob Derwig in 2000 for 't Barre Land. This equally legendary play fitted...
Although Estonia is almost 4,000 square kilometres larger than the Netherlands, it has barely more inhabitants than the province of Utrecht. For centuries, superpowers such as Denmark, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Poland disputed rule over this country on the Baltic Sea. Indeed, its geographical location made it an important link between East and West. It was not until 1918 that a state of its own was declared, but...
On Wednesday 24 January, the Nederlands Kamerkoor presents an adventurous concert at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ to kick off a short tour. On the lecterns are rarely heard music by Lili Boulanger and Ton de Leeuw. The highlight is Igor Stravinsky's famous Psalm Symphony in a version for choir and piano four hands by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ralph van Raat and Bobby Mitchell sign...
Poldowski re-imagined is the name of French Ensemble 1904's latest CD. Poldowski who? Well, like many of her colleagues, this Polish-British composer (1879-1932) is all but forgotten. Her name, too, is problematic. Born the youngest daughter of violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski, her official name was Irène Régine Wieniawski. However, she published her first compositions as Irène Wieniawska. After...
A collection of makers they are. A collection, but not a collective. What an 'f' can't already make up. So language is quite a thing. And crowdsourcing is quite a thing. These makers collect words from their audience, and give them back in a performance. That's 'BOG.', a still fairly young group trying to use language to make theatre to get us to...
Currently, the amount a performing arts company receives in subsidy depends on the number of times it plays. The Performing Arts Fund, which is responsible for that subsidy, has now investigated the effect of this. That research shows that companies are increasingly struggling to sell performances of a single production. This causes companies to...
The AVROTROS Friday Concert cherishes mainstream masterpieces as well as less heard and new repertoire. In the 2017-18 season, no fewer than five (world) premieres are on the programme, three of them composed by a woman. - Come and see that among the national orchestras. Friday 17 November will hear the brand new double concert Together Remember to Dance by British/Bulgarian Dobrinka Tabakova. She composed it on...
High up in a posh flat, Lavalu (stage name of Marielle Woltring, Cleveland, Ohio, 1979) recently gave a try-out of her new programme at Eindhoven's FlatFest festival. For the first time now, she will tour without a band, solo with piano, in small venues where there is a good grand piano. On that Sunday afternoon in Brabant, it soon became clear that somewhere, something was...
World-renowned Dutch drummer Han Bennink celebrates his 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his ICP Orchestra at Utrecht's Le Guess Who? Festival (LGW). Time for a conversation with a diligent worker. All over the world, Han Bennink is famous. And for him, that whole world is his playground, literally. Bennink started drumming at an early age. Pots...
The Rolling Stones will play in the Netherlands again on 30 September and 15 October. NRC on Friday gave five reasons to go to their concerts. I have been a big fan for decades; for years I collected obscure recordings, read books and queued up for tickets before dawn. Now I no longer go, and here's why. 1. Slow...
Speaking of diversity, within the dominantly white theatre audience, it is also full of bubbles. Over the past two weeks, for instance, I have just let it dawn on me how little overlap there is between the audiences of the two art theatres in my city, Utrecht. At least: for a while I sort of immersed myself in the world of...
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