Peter the Great: the curious tsar is back in Amsterdam
The Netherlands-Russia year is kicking off and what better way to start than with an exhibition dedicated to the most famous Russian of all time? At
The Netherlands-Russia year is kicking off and what better way to start than with an exhibition dedicated to the most famous Russian of all time? At
Rokia Traoré, Dieudonné Niangouna, Brett Bailey, Compagnie La Baraka by choreographer Abou Lagraa, El Gusto with Kashba Blues: there is a lot of Africa in the Holland Festival 2013. Performances that
What makes an opera a success? The eccentrics, airheads, comedians, lyricists and tragicists think they know, proclaiming their point of view at the craziest times and not even bothering to intervene in the action. Welcome to the wonderful world of Prokofiev's L'amour des trois oranges, back on stage this month at the Amsterdam musical theatre.
Fransien van der Putt, dance expert from Culture Press, and Helen Westerik, film expert, attended the opening of Film Festival Cinedans and were amused, but not always by the programme.
In 2005, director Laurent Pelly and conductor Stéphane Denève enchanted Dutch audiences with their vision of L'amour des trois oranges By Sergei Prokofiev.
''You would think: women are emancipated. But people long for the clichés and prejudices about women from the 1950s again. If you dress super-feminine, you get whistled at like a dog. But how should
After more than four hours, it happens: emotion. Free Switzerland is bathed in golden sunlight and the choir swells over the most beautiful orchestral sounds Rossini composed. Unworldly sounds, which have little to do with the best-known sounds from Guillaume Tell - The canter from the overture.
Once upon a time, subsidised theatre was a left-wing hobby. Now, two years on, subsidised theatre has effortlessly conformed to the prevailing, much more right-wing trend.
As the government has killed the entire circuit of production houses and further education, seven theatres have jumped into the gap. They are joining forces to enable a number of 'young' makers to develop their work after all. By offering a number of performances in advance
Einstein on the beach: a five-hour minimalist opera with no plot, no intermission. An opera with an almost mythical status, with images that have become theatre icons, but which hardly anyone has actually seen.
We are just reporting the press release in full. For your information. Every now and then, more news like this comes along. We don't post them all, because that would make the world very bleak. The world as many people knew it, and thought it was the pride of the Netherlands, is coming to a squeaking halt to make room for. Well. We will report on that in the years to come. Of what comes in its place.
A sound engineer making deafening sounds on stage with wads of paper. Puppetry that flows seamlessly into film projections and singers dubbed by actors. A primitive stage on stage that is, however, high tech. A performance in one of the largest halls in our country, but reminiscent of a flat-floor performance. A flat floor that can move in all directions, though, and could just as easily be a slope or a ceiling, that is.
Amsterdam, 10-12-2012 - Last weekend the Babelfestival began at the Ostade Theatre, an initiative of the Diamond factory. Founded two years ago, this production group offers young creators the chance to develop small-scale musical theatre. This weekend sees the premiere of Black Perfume, by Russian composer Anna Mikhailova and the Dutch director Annechien Koerselman, to the story Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Developing new models on the internet takes time. We have found that out with the Cultural Press Agency by now. With more than 7,500 followers on Twitter and 400 visitors a day to our website, we have now become a factor of importance in cultural journalism. But we are also very happy that four years after the first plans took shape and one year after the start-up subsidy from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science ended, our first publication can be read on the sites of De Persgroep, publisher of Trouw, Volkskrant and Parool.
Nice of course that Amour by Michael Haneke was not only crowned best film at the European Film Awards ceremony in Malta last night, but also received the director's prize and prizes for best actor and actress. But a bit boring is starting to become this paean to Haneke's latest. Enough of this, then.
Dance fans can submit their nominations for the most outstanding dance performance of 2012 online from 1 December. The winner will then be able to receive the Dans Publieksprijs early next year. New this year is
Amsterdam, 26-11-2012 - Last Saturday died Moniek Toebosch (1948-2012), the sparkling multi-artist who startled our country from the 1970s onwards with contrary performances. Some of you may remember her scandalous performance in the 1983 Holland Festival. Toebosch presented the programme 'Attacks of Extremes' live for VPRO television from Theater Carré. After half the Broadcasting Orchestra had quit in protest,...
The music of Eefje de Visser comes in. In the silence of the theatre even more so than in clubs, where enthusiastic fans sing along to her words out loud. One spotlight and her guitar, that's all this 26-year-old singer-songwriter needs to touch the room. I see tears, gazes of love and attempts at seated dancing during the official premiere of her theatre tour in the Melkweg.
Anyway: while Amsterdam's city newspaper Parool was embarking on a campaign against the Dutch capital's city company at the behest of the Flemish publishing board, the same Toneelgroep Amsterdam was winning the hearts of New York audiences with a production of the already years-old 'Roman Tragedies', which a few here did not even like overall: http://www.wijbrandschaap.nl/2007/06/romeinse-tragedies-hf2007ta/
They were almost thrown away: George Tsypin's immense sets for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Not because his staging was unsuccessful or would have become obsolete by now, but simply because the storage was too hefty a cost for the Netherlands Opera.
's Hertogenbosch 9-11-2012 - November Music was successfully kicked off last Wednesday and also focuses on multimedia in its twentieth edition. The duo Strijbos & Van Merwijk was a frequent guest there and that afternoon received the Prince Bernhardcultuurprijs Noord-Brabant, presented by former Concertgebouw director Martijn Sanders. In the evening, their pulled for the American string quartet ETHEL multimedia spectacle made Cross Avenue many audiences, the two performances of Cloud-Messenger By Fred Momotenko were even completely sold out.
Dance and music belong together. Yet there is always something new to discover in this combination. The Amsterdam Cello Biennale invited dance group LeineRoebana to create a dance and music performance with cellist Jakob Koranyi and CvA Percussion to music by composer Tan Dun: 'Snow in June'. In recent years, LeineRoebana has shown like no other group how enriching unconventional combinations between dance and music can be.
The Netherlands' most striking company when it comes to handling grant money has been saved. The Theatre newspaper reports that the central government has agreed to the new adjusted budget, which had to be prepared after earlier this year a loss of over 2 million euros had arisen. So the company keeps the one and a half million euros and artistic director Jos Thie and his business partner Jelle Snijder are chased out of the city with pitch and feathers, where they can join the Supervisory Board that had already turned a little too blind eye. After all, putting in an overpriced production to make up for the deficit from an earlier run of that same overpriced production: no entrepreneur would ever allow that.
The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.
PUNCH! is a fantastic festival. It shows how much beauty, news and surprise emerge when the line between dance and performance is dissolved. PUNCH! promotes a refreshing view of the world and shakes loose entrenched interpretations. The young dance makers and performers show tremendous originality and creativity that you will not only enjoy watching, you will go...
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