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That was him then. The March of Civilisation. And so was the chamber's Culture Committee debate on Halbe Zijlstra's letter.

With a small break for much-needed sleep, we were active for over 27 hours with a liveblog on the March of Civilisation. Hard work, and at first we suffered from some start-up problems. After all: setting up such a liveblog requires some structure in the approach. We had introduced a few so-called #hashtags, such as #marsderbeschaving, which on twitter allow people to share their... 

Thousands of runners, thousands of website visitors during Civilisation March 2011

Of course there are 'trolls'. Opponents of 'leftist hobbies' and supporters of the thesis that good art will survive on its own. Our liveblog on the March of Civilisation, which we had filled partly by following Twitter hashtags, turned a bit sour. We cleaned that up a bit, took out the loudest screamers (also pro, incidentally) and a few striking political... 

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... 

Going into the market without denying yourself - that's the issue

Sponsorship repels audiences. That could be a conclusion of the research carried out at Oerol by Inholland's professorships Media, Culture and Citizenship and Media and Entertainment. With the central question "How can Oerol survive without government funding?", they are exploring the audience's reaction to commercial expressions. "The question is how to apply marketing strategies without... 

#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... 

Photo: Jochem Jurgens

The Kiss and DUS in final stage award nominations

The Utrecht Games (DUS), with its successful production August Oklahoma, immediately wins three nominations for the theatre awards to be handed out in September: Ria Eimers for best female lead, and Peter Bolhuis and Tjitsjke Reidinga compete for the prizes for best supporting actress. Percentage-wise, however, much more successful than DUS is De Kus, a production by Hummelinck Stuurman, because there the... 

That could well be a big event next weekend

We are not big on copying press releases directly, but this one accidentally slipped in. For those who didn't know it yet, but tout art is going loopy on Sunday and Monday for the preservation of sanity in the Netherlands. Although that will have no effect on the architect of the cut, PVV member Martin Bosma. Even the cultural sector in Limburg (Geert... 

Stage pollster provides useful figures on the performing arts

Gerard Marlet is becoming a veritable numbers guru for the Dutch arts sector. His latest publication concerns the "Podiumpeiler". We have embedded it for you. Worth reading, not only for number and art freaks. After all, many discussions about whether or not money goes to art, whether or not full theatres, they can now all be equally well based on the facts. Useful,... 

Cultural policy Rutte cabinet advised against by patrons and entrepreneurs; PVV absent from hearing on future of Dutch culture

Actually, there was only one compliment for the cabinet, which is in the process of cutting an average 30% from a sector that employs tens of thousands of Dutch people. At the hearing convened by the second chamber on Monday 20 June, only cultural sociologist Arjo Klamer was positive about the decisiveness shown by State Secretary Zijlstra. That he did subsequently think that... 

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... 

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

Eindelijk: de opera The Cricket Recovers naar het dierenverhaal De genezing van de krekel van Toon Tellegen is in Nederland! Het Holland Festival presenteert ruim zes jaar na de wereldpremière in Aldeburgh het werk van Richard Ayres, uitgevoerd door Asko|Schönberg en VocaalLAB onder leiding van Etienne Siebens. Pierre Audi tekende voor de regie: hij maakte de voorstelling gelaagd en gewaagd.… 

#HF11 'The select' is neat and well behaved and on stage lacks the raw emotion of Hemingway's novel

Zou de anti-reclame van premier Rutte cum suis door kunst weg te zetten als bestemd voor linkse types en andere idioten al effect sorteren? Je zou het bijna denken als je de tamelijk slecht gevulde zalen ziet tijdens de voorstellingen op het Holland Festival. Er zitten meer dan tien mensen op de eerste rij, maar toch houdt het allemaal niet… 

#HF11 Thomas Adès sails his own ship and steers across familiar waters with new compositions

The ark as the earth, as a spaceship carrying us through the chaos of the universe to a safe haven. The pole star as the apparent magnetic centre of the universe around which all the stars revolve. No, this is not woolly new age chatter, these are the starting points for Tevot and Polaris, two major orchestral works by Thomas Adès, which had their Dutch premiere under the composer's own direction.

#HF11 Dreamy cult pop and visual feast from The Irrepressibles

Op verzoek van het Holland Festival maakte Jamie McDermott van The Irrepressibles een nieuw programma: Human Music Box. De tienkoppige Britse band begint zijn wereldtournee in Amsterdam. De première op vrijdag 17 juni in het Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ werd een ingetogen, muzikale avond die vooral visueel aantrekkelijk was. In het midden van de Grote Zaal stond een groot, ronddraaiend… 

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

‘Labyrinth’ heet de choreografie van Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Doolhoven intrigeren omdat je er in kunt verdwalen en dan per se de uitgang wilt vinden. Onderweg doet een mens dan allerlei onthullende ervaringen op omtrent zichzelf. Maar Cherkaoui komt niet toe aan deze gang. Hij begint meteen met symboliek. Een danseres houdt een brede band vast die vanuit het toneelhuis naar… 

#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 

#HF11 Special performance Jagden und Formen by Waltz and Rihm does not produce an ideal exchange, but it does raise interesting questions about the fusion of dance and music

Componist Wolfgang Rihm en choreograaf Sasha Waltz, twee bekende gezichten op het Holland Festival en grote namen in de Europese podiumkunsten, brachten in 2008 samen een voorstelling uit die dit jaar niet mocht ontbreken in een Holland festival-programma. Het festival heeft niet alleen aandacht heeft voor een aantal grote, hedendaagse componisten (Xenakis, Rihm), maar timmert ook behoorlijk aan de weg op het… 

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

”Alifib” van de Britseprogrocker Robert Wyatt (1945) is een liedje dat onder de huid kruipt. De bijnabrekende stem van Wyatt klinkt zo oprecht triest dat het je de adem beneemt. Het lijkt een onmogelijke opgave om ”Alifib” overtuigend te brengen zonder de meester zelf. Toch krijgt het Franse Orchestre National de Jazz het voor elkaar. Waar Wyatt in het origineel… 

Week two of the Holland Festival (#HF11) brings a nice mix of highlights and questionable choices.

Dat de Off Broadway-musical Fela! Een succes was, konden we eigenlijk wel verwachten. Voor De Dodo hebben we er daarom ook niemand heen gestuurd: er zijn al genoeg kranten en andere bloggers die graag bij de New Yorkse publiekslievelingen op de eerste rang willen zitten. Dat ze een goede tijd hadden, leest u elders op deze site, via de blogstream… 

#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... 

#HF11: There is an old crippled servant haunting the Zuidas

Firs is his name. And he always arrives late. Because of the gout. Poor houseboy. Firs was created by Anton Chekhov. His masterpiece The Cherry Garden is about the boredom and lameness of the old rich, and Firs is the house servant who sees it all happening. Chekhov lets him die, at the end, when the departing house owners totally forget about him... 

"We still spend hundreds of millions on culture"

Stronger than ever in recent years, the influence of spin doctors on politics has been noticeable. While at first it was only the PVV, in the person of Martin Bosma, who introduced the American methods of 'framing', it is now also standing Cabinet policy. We all know the Henk and Ingrids, the hardworking Dutch and the head rag tax. And now there is the... 

#HF11 Unadorned, austere and powerful "Flûte Enchantée" by Peter Brook

Papageno showed off without his feathers last night. Indeed, the entire direction of Une flûte enchantée was an unadorned pleasure. Sober. Integral. You can't get a Dutch audience wilder than with such an approach. Compliments, then, to Peter Brook. At the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ was the Dutch premiere of Brook's adaptation of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. The production turned... 

#HF11 Playing with Nietzsche's moustache in opera fantasy by Wolfgang Rihm

An opera based on texts by Nietzsche, and then start with loud laughter and main character N trying to catch two water nymphs. Wait a minute, that's Wagner! Well, at Wagner's Rheingold involves three Rhine daughters, but the similarity is too great to be coincidental. And neither is this one, but in the first minutes of Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos is much more going on. Here is a composer at work who not only plays with text and music, but also with centuries of cultural history and knows how to add jokes to it. It is to get intoxicated.

#HF11 Young Hungarians in Leonce and Lena deserve our sympathy

Actors wearing sort of harem trousers and bamboo sticks on a nondescript playing surface. Some of you may think back nostalgically or with trepidation to the days when there were 'Akademies voor Ekspressie' in the Netherlands. Summits of socio-art. Sometime deep in the 1970s, that is. Maladype Theatre, from Hungary, fits seamlessly into that picture, which... 

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