Festival

Future of opera or soporific experience?

Revolt against art partly caused by museum-less era?
More than a decade without national pride does a lot to a country. Could it be true that the simultaneous closure of Stedelijk Museum and Rijksmuseum contributed to the

Writer Kier-La Janisse at Imagine symposium on women and madness
Het symposium over gestoorde vrouwen in horrorfilms dat deze zondagmiddag tijdens het Imagine Festival werd gehouden was eigenlijk wel een geruststellende bijeenkomst. Je hoeft zelf niet gestoord te zijn om een fascinatie voor horror te hebben. Dat mocht je in ieder geval afleiden uit

Michel van der Aa achieves double
In one year the AKO and Libris prizes? The front pages of newspapers would be full of it, not to mention the dozens of pages in book supplements. Composer Michel van der Aa has to make do with small announcements, tucked away in newspapers, while receiving the Grawemeyer Award and the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize is a never-before-seen double.

Fiction in dance films, (how) does it work? Good question at festival Cinedans
Fransien van der Putt, together with choreographer and dance filmmaker Angelika Oei, saw five new Dutch dance films during Cinedans. Some of the results were promising. The films all transcended the level of visual gimmick. In its place is a struggle with fiction and physical credibility.

Which Africa will the Holland Festival bring to our country?
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

Cinedans festival: de beelden bewegen. Dus.
Fransien van der Putt, dansdeskundige van Cultuurpers, en Helen Westerik, filmkenner, bezochten de opening van Filmfestival Cinedans en waren geamuseerd, maar niet altijd door het programma.

Dutch dance audience chooses Belgian dance
The Dutch Dance Audience Award 2012 was awarded on Saturday 9 February 2013 to the Belgian performance Et Après By Isabelle Beernaert. During the festive ceremony on the closing night of The Hague CaDance Festival, awards were also presented to

Writers Unlimited successful thanks to tight direction
Writers like to talk, and people like to talk about, with and through writers. As much as that may be reason to organise a literature festival, it is also why

'Oh, it's being torn apart a bit' #wu13
At 1 strip or 1,000 words blogger and columnist Peter Breedveld spoke with three influential illustrators, Barbara Stok, Peter van Dongen and Thé Tjong-Khing using projected images from their beautiful work. The relaxed conversation was a breath of fresh air among the other ferocious debating violence at the festival.

Culture Press ratings: thick 300,000 minutes of attention
With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000

Disbanded Tilburg dance innovators go into fitness for parkinson's patients
Sat another note in the post. One of many, these weeks. About a club that had only just been set up by the government. With the accompanying millions, which because of the PVV's vindictiveness have now been dumped in the local ditch. Its creators have already found a new purpose for themselves a few months ago: to improve the well-being of Parkinson's patients. But Dance House Station South is now thus a thing of the past. We quote:

Moniek Toebosch no longer beams
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,...

Wry-poetic Alzheimer's doc First Cousin Once Removed best of IDFA
Two opposites had emerged. Would the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary go to a personally coloured auteur's film, or to a thoughtful account of a major issue? To Alan Berliner's remarkable portrait of Alzheimer's-affected poet Edwin Honig, or to Dror Moreh's fascinating insight into the Israeli secret service?

Wrong Time Wrong Place opens IDFA - documentary as dance with chance
In John Appel's new documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place features survivors of the shooting on the Norwegian island of Utoya and the preceding bombing, which killed 77 people.
Subtle and playful Ernest et Célestine big winner of Cinekid
It is rare for the same film to receive both jury and (children's) audience awards at the Cinekid festival. But about the subtle and sparkling French animated film Ernest et Célestine everyone agreed this time. This story based on picture books by Belgian illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, who died in 2000, won a double award, making it this year's big winner. Ernest and Célestine are a bear and a mouse who have to face the fact that their friendship is poorly understood in the bear and mouse world.