"That's what I'm going to tell Nina first, that afterwards the young women were the first to stand up and applaud and yell with enthusiasm for our Coriolanus." Remco van Rijn, dramaturge at The National Theatre, speaking after a try-out, just before the premiere of Coriolanus on 18 February. And Nina = Nina Spijkers, the original director of the play What...
In Joy, the sequel to Manuel Vila's bestseller Ordesa, the protagonist is searching for himself and for little sparks of joy. In his rather barren and difficult existence, this is not yet easy. It must have been a double feeling. With his personal novel Ordesa (published in 2018, a story about the death of his parents and the existential emptiness...
Whether I was on champagne. Just a question from an acquaintance in the dance world. The occasion was Nederlands Dans Theater's announcement that it does not want to continue with top choreographer Marco Goecke until he really apologises for his assault on dance critic Wiebke Hüster of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. After all, the company had previously taken up the mantle of...
Do we really dare to question our prejudices? Or have we become too politically correct? What can we learn from the silent voice? Framen Yara's Wedding is an interdisciplinary (almost) musical directed by Guy Weizman, with lyrics by Antigone Akgün, Rasit Elibol, Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini and Rik van den Bos. Together, this unique group of writers, inspired by the...
On Tuesday 21 February, Italy launches FuturoPresente, a year-long international programme that puts the spotlight on contemporary Dutch youth arts. This programme is an initiative of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the Performing Arts Fund, See NL, the Cultural Participation Fund together with the Dutch embassy and consulate general in Italy. A selection of Dutch theatre makers, writers, illustrators, choreographers and...
The Academy of Arts gets six new members. They are leading artists from a variety of arts disciplines, including visual arts, theatre, dance and literature. On 23 March 2023, they will be officially installed as members during a festive meeting at the Trippenhuis of the KNAW in Amsterdam. The new members are choreographer Roni Haver and director Guy Weizman, visual artist Iris Kensmil,...
So it wasn't really that long ago that a world-famous composer could tell his 20-year-old lover to stop composing because he couldn't stand competition. And for her to do just that. It is a detail in the history of Gustav and Alma Mahler, long known to insiders, but which...
After the successful show 'You can tell me a secret' about the different sides of dementia, MATZER Theatre Productions now presents a new production: Broos. A musical and moving performance with Lottie Hellingman about how you can lose yourself in caring for someone else. The show, written and directed by Madeleine Matzer, will premiere on Friday 31 March....
QUEERING PUPPETS FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 28 March to 2 April 2023 Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam has provided a stage for genre-transcending forms of visual theatre and puppetry since 2022. A fusion of craft and technology, dissolving traditional categories before the eye of the beholder. Plein Theater and Puppetry Workspace defy the norm with this festival full of garish visual excesses from...
Someday, the diversity of theatre and the audiences it attracts will be fine. On Thursday, 16 February, I sat in The Hague's Theater aan het Spui in an auditorium that was on average 50 years younger than the average theatre audience and also had all the colours of the rainbow. You guessed it: youth theatre. The theatre where...
It was announced at a press conference at the Hanover State Opera this afternoon that the contract with choreographer Marco Goecke has been 'permanently terminated'. In addition, he has been denied access to the Opera's premises. This sanction follows a serious incident last Saturday at the premiere of a choreography by Goecke in Hanover, where he is ballet director. Because he behaved ...
The Hannoversche Allgemeine, a local Hanover newspaper, has just announced that Marco Goecke, the dog-eared top choreographer, has probably already been fired by the prestigious Hannover Staatsoper company. An announcement on website T-Online reads: 'The dismissal of Hannover's ballet director Marco Goecke at the Hannover State Theatre may already be a done deal. According to the newspaper "Hannoversche Allgemeine...
'If an NDT dancer had done this, they would have been thrown out on the street immediately.' Much anger and incomprehension on the Instagram account of leading Nederlands Dans Theater, after the company announced it was continuing its collaboration with Marco Goecke. Goecke, an associate choreographer with the The Hague company for many years, was discredited for leaving a reviewer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung...
'We all shouldn't make it too big a deal.' Dixit musical producer Albert Verlinde, this afternoon (14 February) in the Max programme Villa VdB on Radio 1. He is referring to the commotion in Germany - and the Netherlands - over the mistreatment of a dance critic by star choreographer Marco Goecke. Verlinde: 'I actually liked it.' With this...
Renée Steenbergen has made a name for herself through her expertise of private cultural finance and art collections1 . She recently received a lot of space in the NRC and attention from Culture Press for her latest publication The Art of Different. It made me curious. In her booklet, she makes some good proposals and offers useful suggestions for a healthier art business. For example: that both...
'In "In the Dutch Mountains", Marco Goecke's new ballet evening with the virtuoso Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, the audience is alternately driven mad and killed by boredom.' Dixit Wiebke Hüster, dance critic of the Frankfürter Algemeine, one of Germany's largest quality newspapers. The critic did not have a good word to say about the premiere, last Thursday, in The Hague. Marco Goecke,...
Last May, I expressed my concerns about the restructuring at IFFR and wondered whether the festival would remain as quirky as it always was. The dismissal of a number of programmers and the departure of other staff members laid a grey veil over the past edition beforehand. Was that justified? Had the festival lost its luster? Or did...
Thanks to Bas Hoeflaak, the recorder is back in the spotlight for a while. The laugh-out-loud scene is now going around the world, partly due to the far from virtuoso flute playing of the steel-faced amateur flautist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIkVov28ePo Thanks to an equally funny twist of fate, on Wednesday afternoon I was at a 'friends' rehearsal' of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, busy with the upcoming tour with...
Margaret Atwood, the success author of The Handmaid's Tale, among others, is coming to Utrecht on the last day of book week, Sunday 19 March 2023, for an exclusive performance at ILFU in TivoliVredenburg's pop venue Ronda. There, she will present her new book Old Babes in the Wood in a conversation with Janine Abbring. Ticket sales start Friday 10 February, 10:00...
There is quite a stir among mostly people of certain (white) colour and age about a documentary now playing in movie houses. In White Balls on Walls, maker Sarah Vos shows how the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has to get used to a new era in which old self-evidences are shaking to their foundations. The uproar revolves mainly around the artworks created by established...
Dear members, dear colleagues, The Authors' Union is standing behind our endangered colleague Pim Lammers and signing a broad statement of support from the book trade. You can also join this individually. The sign-up address info@algemene-uitgevers.nl is open until Thursday 9 February, 10am. This is what it's about Full of horror, we followed the news surrounding our colleague Pim Lammers. Pim received death threats following a...
The original and committed Iranian drama No Bears has its Dutch premiere, while the director has just been released again. Jafar Panahi continues to film against the odds.
At the end of the premiere at Haarlem's Stadsschouwburg, actor Huub Stapel (68) fills up several times as he talks about his parents. Silence falls. The performance Only Family is mainly a tribute to Stapel's parents from memories and reflections, but also personal confessions. The most prominent being his urinary problem due to a too-small bladder; many...
What would the world be like if art had had the power that book burners and iconoclasts have attributed to it over the centuries? In the fascinating documentary series 'Our Man with the Taliban', Thomas Erdbrink takes a rather perilous journey through an Afghanistan abandoned by the 'civilised' West. We see a world where book burners and iconoclasts...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: training as a learning process for a sector. Driving licences and absenteeism policy The youth theatre company was a collective of actors. They were jointly responsible and they kept as much control as possible over everything, including transport to their performances. So an actor with a driving licence was then...
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