After a successful premiere at the Holland Festival, Asko|Schönberg will bring Australian composer Mary Finsterer's opera Antarctica to the internationally renowned Sydney Festival in Australia. Antarctica will play during the opening night on 5 January 2023 and three more times after. Asko|Schönberg will also play a concert at the Sydney Opera House during the festival on 9 January, with Dutch composers...
A sensitive novel about being allowed to be yourself, that is Arthur Japin's new book What silence wants. He tells the tragic life story of Anna Witsen, whose career as a singer was broken in bud. Who remembers them, the nineteenth-century writers and artists who became known as the Tachtigers? Poets like Willem Kloos, Albert Verwey, Frederik van Eeden,...
Seven years after her acclaimed debut novel Muidhond, Inge Schilperoord's new book is published. She delved into the experiences of a young Dutch girl attracted to the Islamic faith. When Inge Schilperoord (49) was a forensic psychologist in 2017, she spent time providing psychological examinations at the terrorist ward of a prison, where people suspected of having ties...
After international premieres in Lugano (Switzerland) and recently as the opening of the Romaeuropa festival in Italy, We Want it All can now be seen at the 5th edition of the ICK-Fest at Meervaart theatre. On Saturday 29 October | 21.00h, We Want it All will have its Dutch premiere during the festival. WE WANT IT ALL In a festive...
Nick van der Heyden, queer circus performer, garnered approving laughter from a room full of circus students in Tilburg. He just explained that he had found a new lease of life by doing his performances as an acrobat from now on as a drag queen. 'They thought something of that here at school. There, the new circus was mainly a matter of making it as simple as possible...
When, at the end of his performance, he stands on top of a five-metre high pole, struggling to keep his balance, the audience holds its breath. As does Jesse himself, but he does not do so voluntarily. We watched him struggle for a performance with oxygen hoses and blood meters, pausing regularly to get air again. What if...
We die too late. Most of the time. After all, nobody wants to spend the last years of life leaking in a nursing home, cared for by ever-changing staff who do their stinking best but are incapable of the love that children, or close friends for want of it, could give. Better a pill than dementia, we say, but then you have to say 'Yes!
From 21 to 30 October, the number of open mouths, gaped eyes and squeezed buttocks in the heart of Tilburg increases dramatically. The Netherlands' largest circus festival will then descend on Spoorpark Tilburg for ten days of top-quality contemporary circus. The 10th edition of Festival Circolo presents an accessible and universal programme where the stories of circus artists responding to current...
Gianfranco Calligarich's second novel translated into Dutch is as impressive as his well-received previous one. In the embrace of the river is a thrilling story that grips the main characters and the reader until the last page. Only two years ago, the first Dutch translation of one of the novels by...
In his new novel When I Come Back, Italian writer Marco Balzano reveals a hidden world: that of female migrants hired by prosperous Westerners to care for their demented elderly, children and household. In Eastern Europe, there is a word for the burnout affecting millions of Eastern European domestic and care workers: 'the Italian disease'. Migration is often portrayed as...
Argentine writer Aurora Venturini was 85 when she received the Premio Nueva Novela for The Cousins, which she had submitted anonymously. She finally got the recognition she craved, with this eccentric, fascinating story with equally eccentric and fascinating characters. In The Cousins, Yuna tells of her monstrous family of 'misfits'. Yuna herself is retarded and her younger...
One might, when visiting the Venice Arte Biennale 2022, immediately shout 'woke' or 'wokism'. It's not that difficult, since the curator's choices emphasise female and non-Western artists.1 But I would find that too easy and ultimately unjustified. When you try to look fresh - forgetting all the reflections beforehand - it falls...
Framer Framed presents To those who have no time to play, Amsterdam-based artist Gluklya's (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) largest solo exhibition to date, curated by Charles Esche. The artist develops her work with numerous others, including Kyrgyz textile workers, newcomers, musicians and writers. The exhibition includes four objects in space, each with...
On Friday 4 November, ROUW, the latest work by theatre-maker Marte Boneschansker, will premiere at Plein Theater in Amsterdam-Oost. ROUW is a walk along places of loss. With headphones on, you follow a carefully mapped out route through the neighbourhood to listen to stories of mourning that correspond to the locations in question. ROUW is about loss. About that...
The associate artist for the 2023 Holland Festival is singer, composer and visual artist ANOHNI. The festival will feature new and existing work by her. Among other things, ANOHNI and the festival are working on a new, large-scale project involving multimedia and movement in the Gashouder in Amsterdam. About her role as associate artist herself taking the stage
Festival Circolo presents a special performance at four special locations in Tilburg in the run-up to the largest festival for contemporary circus in the Netherlands. 'Circus is my way of dreaming and giving hope. To live fully, whatever the conditions'. Jesse Huygh is a circus performer and suffers from cystic fibrosis, or cystic fibrosis, a genetic lung disease. Despite his illness,...
The night of the sweet-soft child's voice of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, of course; but also the night of Joke van Leeuwen; of Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis; of 'illusory poet' Hans Klok even; and of the families of Nisrine Mbarki and Ivo de Wijs. I will try to explain the latter in a moment, in my unpoetic style, forgive me. On my...
Fourteen years after the death of her Jewish mother, presenter Dieuwertje Blok found her war diary. With her debut Dragging Lightness, Blok pays a warm tribute to the woman who gave her life. A profession in the spotlight - Dieuwertje Blok is no stranger to it. Her grandmother Saartje, who as the daughter of fishmongers grew up in the Joden Houttuinen...
In Brengschuld, Jan Siebelink returns to his familiar Sievez family, adding a new chapter to the story of the downfall of their nursery. Ever since his biggest success novel Knielen op een bed violen, writer Jan Siebelink has regularly returned to his characters Hans and Margje Sievez, their son Ruben, and especially to their nursery in Velp. Also...
For her new novel The Taxman, Ariëlla Kornmehl did not have to look far for her inspiration. From one day to the next, she herself became a protagonist in a story, as it turned out that her tax consultant harboured a silent obsession for her. "When I read all those observations about myself, I was in shock," she says. After the publication
On 8 October 2022, ILFU will organise the Night of Poetry in Utrecht for the 39th time already. It is almost sold out which means that two-thirds of the cost is borne by visitors. "The night costs roughly 100,000 euros. If we sell out, the vast majority of the revenue already comes from tickets and about a third...
Mountains and Molehills is the name of the exhibition EYE has dedicated to Fiona Tan. A video artist who often works with archive footage. From EYE's image bank came the raw material for Footsteps: a personal document and also a look back at the Netherlands as we rarely see it.
Light design central in new performance by the NUT | Di 4 October 2022 - Utrecht In collaboration with SHIFFT, the NUT presents the visual theatre spectacle Light, in which light design is central. Light is the extraordinary story of lighting designer Uri Rapaport who goes through life blind for a fortnight after surgery on a tumour on his eye. Theatre-maker Greg Nottrot takes him...
Stop or keep going until you drop dead? And can you build on the other? Serious life questions that the occasional duo Peter Blok and Bas Hoeflaak will answer from a trapeze on the ridge of their circus, joking and snarking. The dry humour and mugshots of Peter Blok (experienced stage, film and TV actor) and actor-cabaret artist Bas Hoeflaak (Snipers) are...
Saying sorry seems to be difficult, if the songs about it are to be believed, and if we measure the time it takes Dutch governments to do it. But sorry is also very easy, if you consider how often you are not pushed aside in the queue for something or other, after the word 'sorry' has sounded behind you, or -...
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