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From insane Moroccan drum 'n bass to alienating dream sounds: Dakka al Marrakchia, Zoumana Diarra & Basile Maneka #WU12

It is incredible what an energy the men of Manar can generate. These six - dressed in djellabas - percussionists play Dekka al Marrakchia: an insanely rousing form of traditional Moroccan drum 'n bass party music and religious Gnawa. After a solemn, almost ritualistic beginning - in which the band comes jogging onto the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in a goose-step, accompanied by the menacing sounds of two huge horns - the drums erupt and the dance floor is full of swinging visitors.

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We will follow the world's writers into their hotel rooms

Writers Unlimited The Dodo is coming back to life. On 19 January already. That's when we plunge into The Hague writer's life. The four-day festival Writers Unlimited, formerly known as Winternachten, but thus changed its name because of the weather (not, but nice joke) will have a real dodo, but then again differently. We will LIVE BLOG. That means we will be there.... 

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"The city's leading free spirits have discovered and embraced classical music, but on their own terms"

An alternative scene for classical events outside the ice palaces of classical music is growing. Last month, you could 'classical clubbing' at the Yellow Lounge at the Westergasfabriek venue. The club was sold out, indeed with a large

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Elektra: only five singers worldwide who can handle this part. Linda Watson sings scathingly Nietzschean.

The Netherlands Opera's fourth revival of Elektra is over halfway through. In the final performances, two fresh dramatic sopranos take over. Why does an opera get revived, even as many as four times? With the sleep-inducing Don Giovanni in the previous season of De Nederlandse Opera - also a revival - this might have been a logical question. The decision turned out to be... 

Read More "Elektra: only five singers worldwide who can handle this part. Linda Watson sings scathingly Nietzschean.

"Battle of the Orchestras" kicks off with name change Orchestra of the East Netherlands Symphony Orchestra

The Netherlands has a new orchestra: the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. At least, new in name. The Orkest van het Oosten does not seem to be waiting for possible forced mergers, and is already claiming its position as the national orchestra outside the Randstad by means of this striking name change that was announced today before the start of a concert with the Jussen brothers.

Read More ""Battle of the Orchestras" kicks off with name change Orchestra of the East Netherlands Symphony Orchestra

Sculpted Ovation for 'ingenious' conductor Iván Fischer

"Programmatic ingenuity goes hand in hand with Fischer's ebullient and finely crafted performances". So when someone says that about you, you have earned a prize. So that is what the jury of formerly the Classical Music Prize thought of Iván Fischer, the Hungarian-born conductor who was therefore awarded the 'Ovation' on Monday 17 October 2011. And so then the 'Ovation'... 

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Director of Dance Days Maastricht: "I really feel supported by Mayor Onno Hoes."

The Dutch Dance Days are not yet a mad hive of dance, but for Maastricht they are increasingly a fun tourist attraction. Day trippers and weekend tourists come from all over the country to combine the delights of the South with those of the art of dance. For that matter, all of Maastricht seems to float on VVV leaflets. In this sphere of promotion, is there still room for... 

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With its back to the community?

This week, the Connecting Arts festival takes place in Utrecht. This festival, contrary to the expectation raised by the title, revolves entirely around the organ. The instrument is in a bottomless identity crisis. The solution lies in connecting with other art forms: connecting arts. The organist. One of those guys with a beard. Not a meticulously trimmed weekend shadow, but a wild... 

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Future food of nuisance beasts scrambled with talk on energy #dekeuze

Listen here to the podcast/work in progress by Jowi Schmitz who attended the event with chef Natasja Postma: Fantasising about 2020 in International Choice 2011 Liposuction fat. Blood. Vomit. 'You can look at it that way too!' says the Appetitheque's food designer excitedly. It doesn't bother her that her thin-walled jelly pudding, processed cola and her yellow-white lumps of beef salad are still... 

Read More "Future food of nuisance beasts scrambled with talk on energy #dekeuze

Rotterdam Theatre's International Choice has always been a personal choice

Last year, it was still about 'a sense of belonging': about the ability to feel at home somewhere, to know you belong somewhere. This year, the motto of the quirky Rotterdam festival De Internationale Keuze is almost diametrically opposed to that: parallel reality. Instead of one place offering warmth, the festival now says that place is there... 

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Cackling fresh location artists prepare for Festival DE BASIS

With a few creative friends and a nice budget, romp around in a playground of many tens of acres of pristine nature. Surrounded by the remains of military might. It automatically makes you talk riotously. But that's how it goes sometimes. With art. So, to get right to the point: cuts are not always bad. For instance, divesting the... 

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This is how pop music 'matures': British group Bitter Ruin reaches Opera charts US.

Last week, they reached the US top lists. Nice for a British pop group looking to emerge from anonymity via a targeted Facebook campaign. Remarkably though, the pop group is not reaching the 'ordinary' top. In fact, with the song 'Trust', Bitter Ruin is on the opera list. But it is less surprising than it seems. At Amazon, the band falls... 

Read More "This is how pop music 'matures': British group Bitter Ruin reaches Opera charts US.

Ingmar Bergman becomes opera at Grachtenfestival

Amsterdam, 1999. Studying Theatre Science, first-year theatre analysis class. I sit with notepad and pen clutched in fingers, making indecipherable notes. Halfway through the lecture, Sjaron Minailo (Tel Aviv, 1979) saunters in, dressed in a huge fur coat, with big Gucci sunglasses and dreadlocks. With a sigh, he plops into the back lecture bench, hears three sentences of the disrupted lecturer's speech 

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Successful Holland Festival closes record edition amid uncertainty over future

Photo: Pierre Nydegger To conclude. The 2011 Holland Festival could well be historic. Not only was it the festival that attracted the most audiences for years, it was also the festival that took place while a minority government of populists, nationalists and materialists proclaimed the end of art subsidies. We therefore look back on a festival in which we were able to meet with... 

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#HF11: We chat with Jeroen Stout, Daniël Bertina, Fransien vd Putt and Wijbrand Schaap.

  In conclusion. The 2011 Holland Festival could well be historic. Not only was it the festival that attracted the most audiences for years, it was also the festival that took place while a minority government of populists, nationalists and materialists proclaimed the end of art subsidies. We therefore look back on a festival in which we had a great time with our new... 

Read More "#HF11: We chat with Jeroen Stout, Daniël Bertina, Fransien vd Putt and Wijbrand Schaap.

A few solid misses, interspersed with plenty of indispensable beauty in week 3 of the Holland Festival #hf11

The Dodo was busy, this third week of the Holland Festival. Thankfully, again with an exciting mix of beautiful, weird and extraordinary. As it should be, really. What makes the Holland Festival all the more exciting is that such extremes can sometimes take place within one programme, as with the National Ballet, or even within one performance, as with The Russians... 

Read More "A few solid misses, interspersed with plenty of indispensable beauty in week 3 of the Holland Festival #hf11

#HF11 Audi makes Ayres' funny-grim animal opera 'The cricket recovers' layered and edgy

At last: the opera The Cricket Recovers after the animal story The cure of the cricket by Toon Tellegen is in the Netherlands! More than six years after its world premiere in Aldeburgh, the Holland Festival presents Richard Ayres' work, performed by Asko|Schönberg and VocaalLAB conducted by Etienne Siebens. Pierre Audi signed on to direct: he made the performance layered and daring.... 

Read More "#HF11 Audi makes Ayres' funny-grim animal opera 'The cricket recovers' layered and edgy

#HF11 The National Ballet opts for aesthetic wandering and exotic pictures

'Labyrinth' is the name of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's choreography. Mazes intrigue because you can get lost in them and then insist on finding the exit. Along the way, a person then has all kinds of revealing experiences about himself. But Cherkaoui does not get to this passage. He immediately starts with symbolism. A dancer holds a wide band that goes from the stage house to... 

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#HF11: They're going to make another big cut to the Russians at Toneelgroep Amsterdam

Cologne and Paris may not have been built in a day, but it took less than three days to fly to the moon. A warped comparison to say that a show that rattles three days before its premiere can turn out to be an unimaginable hit on the premiere itself. So something like that could happen with The Russians, the latest show 

Read More "#HF11: They're going to make another big cut to the Russians at Toneelgroep Amsterdam

#HF11 Messy set-up of Around Robert Wyatt gets in the way of magical moments

"Alifib" by British progrocker Robert Wyatt (b. 1945) is a song that gets under the skin. Wyatt's near-breaking voice sounds so genuinely sad that it takes your breath away. It seems an impossible task to perform "Alifib" convincingly without the master himself. Yet the French Orchestre National de Jazz gets it right. Where Wyatt in the original... 

Read More "#HF11 Messy set-up of Around Robert Wyatt gets in the way of magical moments

#HF11: Japanese company canteen leads to hallucinatory tragedy of incapacity

In very different places, people can sometimes have the same idea. And even more sometimes, those similar ideas both lead to something wonderful. A couple of years ago, thanks to Brabant theatre Bis, mime company Kassys performed the beautifully sad tragedy 'Kommer', in which colleagues spent pointless time in a mourning room full of lease plants. Every gratuitous phrase was magnified by powerfully helpless gestures to the... 

Read More "#HF11: Japanese company canteen leads to hallucinatory tragedy of incapacity

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