The show Holy F opens with an audition. Two young women present themselves to a director - a man. They pronounce their phrases impeccably simultaneous, with the sweet tone men like to hear. Their confusion grows. Do they really understand what the director wants from them? Can they handle the role they aspire to? Playing a strong woman: is...
Om maar meteen met de deur in huis te vallen: de nieuwe productie van het oratorium Jephta van Händel bij De Nationale Opera is prachtig. Decors, kostuums, enscenering en uitvoering: allemaal top. Na afloop van de première woensdag 9 november kregen uitvoerders en productieteam dan ook een welverdiende ovatie van een uitverkochte Stopera. Het is geen sinecure de geringe dramatische…
Magic cannot be grasped. Certainly not such a short and fabulous moment as twilight, when the day turns into evening so quickly and the lights go back on. It is precisely this elusive, short 'magic hour' that photographer Jan van der Horn (1951) tries to capture in his staged photographs. The magic pictures he takes light up from 11 November (St Martin's Day) until...
Het veelbesproken The Birth of a Nation over een Amerikaanse slavenopstand krijgt een preview op twee Nederlandse festivals. Debuterend regisseur Nate Parker leende brutaalweg de titel van beroemde en omstreden klassieker.
This week saw the publication of Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller's autobiography, My Homeland, an Apple Pit. A few years ago, A Quattro Mani had an exclusive interview with the Romanian writer, when her first collection of poetry collages was published, The Skirt-chaser and its sly aunt. We spoke to her at her home in Berlin, she revealed how her poetry collages are created, and the making...
Naar een idee van Marieke Stordiau, fagottiste in het Hexagon Ensemble, schrijft Joost Galema, journalist en programmeur, teksten die over boomdromen, muziek en tijd gaan. Zo ontstaat het Dagboek van een cello, een stuk dat de luisteraar uitdaagt tot nadenken over de verbanden tussen natuur en muziek. De première van Dagboek van een cello vond plaats in het Amesfoortse theater De…
The Greek-Dutch Calliope Tsoupaki (1963) strings one magnificent piece together with another. In 2008, she broke through for good with her impressive Lucas Passion, in which she organically incorporates Greek Orthodox chant into an otherwise modern idiom. Six years later, she scored equally high with the oratorio Oidipus at Kolonos, composed for the Nederlandse Bachvereniging. And recently she released the CD Triptychon on the...
While things are rumbling in the Amsterdam dance and performance world due to a total lack of solid support for development and experimentation (see Alarm Letter), choreographer Ola Maciejewska is showing the impressive Bombyx Mori at Veem House of Performance this weekend. Maciejewska is a fine example of a talented maker who has taken refuge elsewhere because of the crumbling art climate in the Netherlands. After...
'What is the relevance of dance?' Since the conference The Relevance of Dance in March 2016, this question has been haunting my mind. That weekend, the main topic of discussion was the relevance of dance as a performing art to watch. An approach that left me unsatisfied, because my main interest myself is to know what the relevance of dance as an activity...
The opening day of the National Film Conference at the Netherlands Film Festival offered the prospect of 'urgent' developments, but flames were not yet willing. Despite Issaka Sawadogo's engaging outpouring on the subject of diversity.
The jury of the ECI Literature Prize has brought criticism upon itself with an idiosyncratic choice for the shortlist. In choosing Connie Palmen with Jij zegt het [You say it], Bert Natter with Golberg, Marja Pruis with Zachte riten [Gentle rites], Tonnus Oosterhoff with Op de rok van het universum [On the skirt of the universe], Arnon Grunberg with Moedervlekken [Mother stains] and Martin Michael Driessen with Rivieren [Rivers], the jury ignored...
De grote zaal van het Enschedese Wilminktheater is leeg, net als de orkestbak. Op het immense podium het decor voor de proloog van Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Theatertechnici bespreken licht- en boventitelingscues, iedereen oogt ontspannen. Ook regisseur Laurence Dale. Het is vier uur vrijdagmiddag, twee weken voor de première op 10 september. Eerder die vrijdag is de proloog – die…
One of the most beautiful museums in the Netherlands can be found in Tilburg, a city still seen by some as the frayed edge of the Netherlands. This central part of Brabantstad also receives relatively little funding from the government. So how can one of the best museums in the world be located here? Museum De Pont, like Huis...
A major retrospective of the work of Fernando Botero (1932) is on show at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, entitled Botero: Celebrate Life! The rush of opening such an exhibition takes energy out of him, but strangely enough painting never exhausts him, he says in his studio in Monaco. 'I have never experienced anything more fulfilling than painting or sculpting. Painting takes you out of everyday reality. You forget your body - even your existence. It's intense, but while painting I don't feel any fatigue, even after working for seven or eight hours. Whereas at a cocktail party, I am exhausted after only half an hour.'
In King's Landing, the dust is still slowly settling. And in my head, too. Now that most Game of Thrones nerds, freaks and enthusiasts the imposing season finale of the sixth season, it is high time to take stock and look ahead. It seems almost needless to mention that this entire article is riddled with SPOILERS. Those who have not been binge-watching the infamous series in recent years: read along, and sympathise with the nerds.
Vijand van het Volk is de zomervoorstelling van Theatergroep Suburbia, in de regie van Albert Lubbers. Het stuk haakt aan bij de actualiteit van corrupte bankiers, milieuschandalen en overheidsdienaren die klokkenluiderkwesties in de doofpot stoppen. Deze sterke voorstelling is scherp van toon, polemisch en met vileine humor. Beter dan in eerdere Suburbia-voorstellingen past het vertrouwde dynamische acteerwerk mooi in de theatrale ruimte. Dit keer is dat de grote open schuur op Stadslandgoed de Kemphaan.
A big band, a ticking clock, conspiracy theories and twelve-tonality. Mix that in a theatrical setting and it can go whooping out of control. Yet composer Darcy James Argue manages to make it a propulsive and energising whole, with help from director Isaac Butler and cinematographer Peter Nigrihi.
Calm has returned to the North Brabant Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch. After more than 400,000 people saw the successful and widely acclaimed Hieronymus Bosch exhibition, the halls are now light and quiet again. No more opening hours from early morning to midnight. Just, peace and quiet. Although the Jan Fabre mosaics hanging there now are disturbing. Mosaic Panels 2016 is...
Bassoonist Pascal Gallois gets laughs when he tries in vain to insert the flowers he has just received into the tube of his instrument. Also in the now classic Dialogue de l'ombre double by Pierre Boulez, he manages to make the audience chuckle on Sunday 19 June, when he produces a kind of elephant-like trumpet with much misfiring. His performance is part of the action ''Save the bassoon', which will conclude on Sunday 25 June with a concert at the Holland Festival Proms at the Concertgebouw. For this hundreds of (amateur) bassoonists ON. Action successful, in other words.
You don't have to go to Terschelling at all for an atmospheric location performance. COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst is an exciting experience on a totally, totally neglected place.
In the 1980s, she started choreographing with Djazzex, years later she performed for Obama. Now Conny Janssen (interview here) with her ensemble at the Ferro Dome. A dilapidated venue you wouldn't expect much from the outside. Plans to turn it into a Rotterdam Heineken Music Hall are according to the AD cancelled. It's as if the city of Rotterdam said to Conny: here's a place we can't do anything with, you do something with it. Dut succeeded her wonderfully: thanks to a creative approach, the entire industrial entourage has a underground-appearance.
´The Master of the Go Game´ deserves a reprint. This fascinating novella by Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) is in danger of falling into oblivion. The book is only available second-hand and in a few antiquarian bookshops.
Full of religious inspiration, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote the oratorio Die Schöpfung, his famous musical ode to the Biblical creation story. Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b 1965) reflects on Haydn's masterpiece with an aesthetic film that shows how humans bend the world to their will. During the Holland Festival this film was screened at a live performance of the music by Collegium Vocale Gent and baroque orchestra B'Rock led by conductor René Jacobs. Got Die Schöpfung an extra charge through this film, which largely consists of people in white suits walking around sandy landscapes?
Maarten Baanders saw an opera that remained an island. An omnivore was Athanasius Kircher (1602 - 1680). No phenomenon in the universe could escape his urge to investigate. A universal scholar he was, but also a fantasist. Hence, he did not count in science. But for a grotesque opera, you can hardly imagine a more attractive protagonist. Louis...
Aase Berg from Sweden, Luis Chaves from Costa Rica and Sinéad Morrissey from Northern Ireland read their full selection of festival poems. Translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected directly along. The readings will be preceded by an introduction to the poets' work. Presentation: Feline Streekstra. Ever since her first collection Hos Rådjur (1997), Aase Berg has been writing direct, hard and compressed poetry full of...
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