Rotterdam
Armando Navarro (1930-2013): Scapino Ballet for more than just children
Armando Navarro (Argentina, 1930 - Amsterdam 2013), former artistic director of Scapino Ballet, passed away last Sunday. Together with his wife Marian Sarstädt formed Navarro one of the Netherlands' best-known dance couples, alongside Han Ebbelaar and Alexandra Radius (Het Nationale Ballet) and Jiří Kylián and Sabine Kupferberg (Nederlands Dans Theater).

BN'ers at Scapino Ballet's captivating lucky draw TWOOLS

World country the Netherlands: Rotterdam, Delta Works, Cows, Tulips, Flatboats and Mills.
We are quite happy with the Netherlands, if only because of the language. After all, we can write in Dutch here, and then there are quite a few people who can read us, and understand us when we speak. In Thailand

Thirty thousand euros for young top talents
The concentration is enormous, the mastery great. The boys and girls standing here dancing can do something. The apparent ease with which these 12-year-olds display their dance moves shows at the same time how difficult ballet is. After all, the movements have to be performed perfectly, and splashily. Moreover, of this group, only a few will make it to the world's top: The National Ballet. Students of the...

'A lot of art is too much about pleasing'
It started with an email out of the blue. Artist Joncquil had Googled my website and was struck by the name. I myself had almost forgotten how I had ever come up with the name, Joy of Irony: a song by the legendary, highly underrated English noise/metal band Fudge Tunnel. Joncquil came to my site because of his expo at the time, Himmel und Joy. He had read some of my pieces and introduced himself. Maybe one day we could have coffee to talk a bit about art.
Thus it happened.

A world of strange wonders where nothing is right making everything right
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.

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:
Gergiev Festival full of Sunday afternoon music
What could be the matter with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival - the official name to emphasise its international appeal anyway? As soon as you enter concert hall de Doelen, you immediately get the feeling that you have arrived at an ordinary, weekday concert, even though Valeri Gergiev is on the posters. No decoration of the large rooms...
Culture Council hands out in second round
Yet money for the National Academy of Visual Arts, money for an orchestra merger in the south of the Netherlands and 4.7 million for a knowledge institute for amateur art. The clear-cutting of the Dutch cultural sector has become a little less extreme thanks to a second advice from the Council for Culture. Besides the aforementioned positive assessment, there is also money for a knowledge institute for the creative sector

Soul Seek is the world's first internet opera. With a nod to Mulholland Drive.
"For me, opera is much more than just music," says Israeli director Sjaron Minailo. "It may sound a bit pompous, but my internet opera is completely in the tradition of Richard Wagner. Soul Seek is really a multimedia gesamtkunstwerk, in which fashion, web design and digital media, play, cinema, theatre, dance and experimental music merge into one. Without one element...

Cultural merger fever could have serious consequences
In Amsterdam, Holland Festival, Theaterfestival, Toneelgroep Amsterdam and a few more clubs will 'work closely together'. In The Hague, this applies to Het Nationale Toneel and youth theatre house Stella Den Haag, while in Rotterdam
Originality rewarded at Oscars 2012
You can hardly claim it was a surprise result, because for weeks - what do I say, months - The Artist had been mentioned as a surefire Oscar favourite. Still, the crowning of this largely silent French black-and-white film that pays tribute to the end of the silent film era in Hollywood is proof that originality still counts in...
Berlin 2012 - Dutch debut Hemel wins Critics Award
De Nederlandse film Hemel is op het festival van Berlijn door de jury van internationale critici uitgekozen tot beste film in de Forum-sectie voor jonge cinema. Dat is een mooi succes voor regisseur Sacha Polak die met dit drama over een jonge vrouw die op zoek naar liefde het spoor is kwijtgeraakt haar eerste lange speelfilm aflevert. Hannah Hoekstra in…

Culture Council given little leeway
He barely showed his face in recent months, rarely engaging in debate with artists or the public. Now that the mega cut in culture is law, and nothing can be changed about it until 2016, we can follow Halbe Zijlstra's victory lap again. Also on twitter.
IFFR 2012: Raw and sensitive Serbian debut awarded twice
Smiling, she lets a boy film her with his mobile phone and she happily wriggles into lascivious curves in the process. But when he really wants to see her breasts she flinches. Yet later she will go much, much further and she gets staggeringly little in return. Jasna, the rebellious protagonist from Cliff (Clip), is a Serbian teen...
41st International Film Festival Rotterdam opens with disturbing French drama 38 Témoins
Compared to previous editions, you could almost call the choice of opening film that kicks off the Rotterdam Film Festival tonight almost un-Rotterdamian. No wild young debut, exotic Asian or artistic crossover this time. The French book adaptation 38 Témoins, which has its world premiere in Rotterdam tonight, is the seventh feature by Walloon actor/director Lucas Belvaux and has already been acquired...
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