The New York Times reports that the Metropolitan Opera in New York has brought in record donations this fiscal year. The tally stands at $182 million. This is 50 per cent more than the previous year. However, revenue from ticket sales has been declining for a few years. In addition, since general manager Peter Gelb took office, spending patterns are soaring....
"If 1 person can prove that by collaborating with Red Bull, a sixteenth-century painting thins out or falls off the wall, I will stop working on it immediately." Edwin Jacobs, director of Centraal Museum Utrecht, opened his doors to the soft drink manufacturer. Under the title 'Art of Can', the museum is exhibiting artworks made from Red Bull cans. "Red Bull gives you wings,...
On Sunday evening 11 September, the VSCD Drama Awards, the VSCD Mime Prize, the VSCD Youth Theatre Awards and the AVRO Toneel Publieksprijs 2011 were presented at the Gala van het Nederlands Theater. And that you then know that VSCD stands for the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors and AVRO for General Free Radio Broadcasting. The award for the best male lead of the past...
Arts organisations are subsidy-addicted and so we are withdrawing subsidies. The VVD's approach is clear. On the exact how, they appear to need to think longer about that, now that there is so much opposition from the country. Cold Turkey, the treatment proposed by tolerance partner (nice word in this context) PVV, could well result in deaths. To...
Nice, that secretary of state of hard rock and Tom Clancy. Mr Halbe Zijlstra-san has once again lived up to his change manager name in China. But in a slightly different way. In the land of eternally sealed mouths, he opened the Dutch stand at the book fair there, with a speech that once again rammed Dutch values into the Chinese. Anyway...
'And why do all these art institutions have to open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and even Thursdays? I don't understand that. I'm far too busy working on those days.' Just a question during the Paradiso debate,
"I can fire anyone here. Except the actors." Sam Walters, artistic director of London production house the Orange Tree Theatre does not mince words. "Everyone in the office could leave. The directors too. But without actors no performance." The actor is unequivocally central to this theatre. As a director, you only prove yourself here when you get top performances out of your...
The ANP brought it and all newspapers typed it up: 'Amsterdam gets a City playwright'. Big news, of course. After all: the theatre is rather under pressure as an expensive leftist hobby, so it would be nice if the Amsterdam city council had decided, together with the theatre world, to establish a city playwright, alongside the city poet and the poet of the fatherland, An honorary title, would...
It's so simple that you think: why didn't we think of this before? After all, expensive inner-city restaurants already park your car in front of you and hang up your coat. So why just also arrange a babysitter for the stay-at-home kids? For now, Amsterdam's Theater Bellevue has the scoop. When ordering a kart (on pre-sale, of course), you can take the theatre...
For another 15 years, the Delft Chamber Music Festival, so named to reflect its international character, has encompassed 15 years. Violinist Isabelle van Keulen handled the chamber music festival's programming for the first ten years, Lisa Ferschtmann - also a violinist - took over from her five years ago. But even this already successful festival fears the upcoming budget cuts. A pity, because what...
Rain, rain, rain. That looks bad for the festivals. Right? "Weather has less of an impact on a festival than people think," says Noorderzon's Mark Hospers. And they should know. Last year they had a lot of rain, and at the same time sold a record number of tickets. How is it that bad weather seems to bother the festivals little?....
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
Holland Festival, Julidans, IT's, Over 't IJ. End-of-season theatre is always strewn across Amsterdam. Between April and September, international performance offerings migrate from Utrecht (Springdance and Festival aan de Werf) via Amsterdam to Rotterdam (Internationale Keuze). If you want to experience something of contemporary, international dance, Springdance, HF and Julidans are the places to be. [For...
Clever, of course, but also perilous. Although - hanging over the abyss - there will be little else to do, but turn the TIN (Theatre Institute of the Netherlands) into a Performing Arts Museum. From 2013, because then the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's money tap will close. In doing so, the institute will implement a rescue plan that will at least save the collection. Whether this will also save the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
At the request of the Holland Festival, Jamie McDermott of The Irrepressibles created a new programme: Human Music Box. The ten-member British band will start its world tour in Amsterdam. The premiere on Friday 17 June at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ became a subdued, musical evening that was especially visually appealing. In the middle of the Grote Zaal was a large, rotating...
'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...
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
"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...
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...
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