I wrote this story in 2003, following the publication of a major historical study on theatre attendance. I return to it often, this research. Because it keeps me with both feet on the ground while screaming for culture. And because it underlines the need to overhaul the system anyway. 'Nothing so constant...
Festival Le Guess Who? in Utrecht staat aan de vooravond van zijn tiende editie. Van 10 tot en met 13 november nemen meer dan honderd artiesten bezit van elke denkbare plek in de Domstad waar je met goed fatsoen kunt optreden. Van heinde en verre komen ze, net als de bezoekers. Expect the unexpected, met de hele familie? Is dat…
From 19 to 23 October, more than two thousand music professionals gathered in Santiago de Compostella for the 22nd World Music Expo (WOMEX). I was there and came back with mixed feelings. My first music fair experience was the WOMEX in Rotterdam. In 2001, the Maas city was the cultural capital of Europe and thus had extra resources at its disposal. The Berlin organiser of...
Ooit gebouwd voor een Belgisch danscafé kwam The Busy Drone in de jaren zestig naar Nederland. Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij plaatste het draaiorgel in 1968 bij zijn stand op de jaarlijkse boekenbeurs in de RAI, wat de opvallende naam verklaart. Vijf jaar later kocht directeur Edy de Wilde het instrument aan voor zijn Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, waar het tot…
Zvizdal, the documentary theatre portrait of Pétro and Nadia filmed by Berlin between 2011 and 2016, is not only in Paris, Ghent and Athens. This moving story can also be seen in the Netherlands until 11 November 2016. Near the place where an atomic experiment failed in 1986, Berlin and Zvizdal tell a moving story about an old peasant couple. They remained as...
Theatre group Aluin celebrates its 25th anniversary. The company, which originated at the Utrecht acting school, celebrated at the place where it all started: Utrecht's Theatercafé De Bastaard. On Sunday 23 October, they reprised their first ever performance, a play entitled 'It', based on the novella The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James. About a man who thinks he is destined...
Tussen alle grote titels die om aandacht vragen, worden debuten vaak over het hoofd gezien. In de serie Het Debuut bespreekt A Quattro Mani elke maand een opvallende debuutroman van de afgelopen tijd. Op eigen benen Je bent achttien, negentien en gaat het huis uit, studeren. De wereld ligt aan je voeten, de vrijheid lonkt, je beloftevolle dromen gaan over…
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...
Friday 23 September will open the new season of the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert with the world premiere of Atlantis by Robin de Raaff. He composed this fifty-minute piece commissioned for this broadcasting series, for the Groot Omroepkoor and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, augmented by solo soprano and solo baritone. The text is largely taken from the poem of the same name by American Hart Crane,...
Book adaptations set the tone at the Netherlands Film Festival 2016. The Hero after Jessica Durlacher's novel opened the Utrecht film festival.
When you think of Amersfoort, do you think of classical music? Um... A new initiative should change this. At the opening of the cultural season, Amersfoort Klassiek presented itself with a fine ambition: to profile the Keistad as a city of classical music. A great initiative as far as I am concerned, because Amersfoort does indeed have a lot to offer in the field of classical music. For instance, there is Amerfortissimo, the...
A creak. A squeak. A plop. A cough. Genuflection. In Utrecht's Pieterskerk, the singers of Silbersee surround us with almost inaudible, mysterious sounds. The fragmentation evokes an atmosphere of a restless nocturnal forest. Does an owl screech there? The fabric condenses and the sound shifts colour as the singers buzz through cardboard tubes, blow mini harmonicas and shrill...
When you go to a concert, you think about the music, the ensemble, the soloist and/or the conductor. Maybe you look up something about the composer but you never think about the programmer who made the concert possible. Astrid in 't Veld is someone who thinks about the range of concerts on offer years in advance in order to help you with...
What is a memory worth? A first kiss, for instance: how much poorer are you if it is forgotten? In hard euros. Such questions Greg Nottrot likes to ask his audience, and we, his grateful listeners, gladly join in his money thought experiments. The man who, with Oscar Kocken, came up with the revolutionary concept of the live talk show Order of the Day, now makes,...
10 dagen festival Boulevard. Ik heb me erin gestort. Ik heb 14 voorstellingen gezien, een boel hoeken van Den Bosch (en Tilburg) van dichtbij gezien en meer verschillend theater meegemaakt dan gewoonlijk in een half jaar. Ik heb ook meer friet gegeten dan goed voor me is, meer bier gedronken dan doorgaans en genoten van het afluisteren van gesprekken van…
It has been eagerly awaited for weeks: the Night of Poetry. For the thirty-fourth time next month, poets and audience gather around the stage for a night of verses and music. Regular presenter Piet Piryns, now fused with the event, looks back and ahead. He remembers it well, his first...
Diversity in the Amsterdam art world is not yet flourishing. The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, which announced its grant awards today, is getting a bit tired of it: "Across most disciplines, committees note that cultural diversity of audiences, staff and governance is disappointing, as are efforts to change this. Outside the specialised organisations for which cultural diversity is a core business, ambitions are still not high, despite two decades of cultural policy in this area. If the ambitions are there, organisations do not always manage to give them hands and feet. There often seems to be a certain discomfort or 'not knowing how'."
So to start with the good news: Marmoucha grows 398 per cent compared to the previous grant round. The capital's producer and promoter of performing arts in the field of North African and Middle Eastern arts and culture in the Netherlands was severely cut back in 2013, but the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts found its work over the past four years to be so good that the grant has been more than deserved. In the new round of awards which became known on 1 August they rise from 25,070 euros to a tonne, adding that perhaps they should not be so ambitious.
American-Dutch violinist Joseph Puglia is a passionate advocate of contemporary music. Last year he scored highly with his rendition of the Violin Concerto by Anders Hillborg, together with the young musicians of the NJO Symphony Orchestra. He is first violinist of Asko|Schönberg, with whom he presented the world premiere of the violin concerto composed especially for him earlier this year Roads to Everywhere By Joey Roukens.
It is a new and important trend within the programming of international dance and performance festivals in the Netherlands: not only showing relevant work by international choreographers, but also paying explicit attention to dance makers connected to Dutch dance practice. Spring Utrecht opened in May with Nicole Beutler and closed with Jan Martens, while during Julidans Pere Faura was allowed to kick off with sin baile no hay paraíso (no dance, no paradise).
In onze participatiesamenleving is Community Art ‘hip, hot & happening’. Er zijn dan ook veel projecten en initiatieven die amateurs en professionals samenbrengen. Gelukkig maar, want hoe breder kunstuitoefening en -beleving gedeeld en gedragen worden door zoveel mogelijk mensen, hoe mooier de wereld wordt, vind ik dus.
Woody Allen made sure in 1972 that his fans could not watch Star Wars with dry eyes years later. The final scene of his film 'Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask' shows us the male brain as the bridge of a Star Cruiser where the crew is hard at work to bring a date to a successful conclusion. The spermatozoa in the front are a squabbling gang of take-off runners, heading for an uncertain descent towards beating egg.
It promises to be a beautiful portrait, the film director John Albert Jansen is making about poet Remco Campert. Poetry International (from 7 to 11 June in Rotterdam) is already screening a preview. 'I find it moving to see that there is still a certain shyness in Remco, as if the little boy is still hidden under the surface. That comes across very nicely.'
Tongue kissing, pole dancing, strap-on dildos and anal penetration I don't usually associate with the art of dance and don't expect in a city theatre, but for Florentina Holzinger and Vincent Riebeek nothing seems too crazy. "Europe's most provocative performance duo" - in the words of Rainer Hofmann, artistic director of Spring festival - allowed themselves to be cast for 'Schönheitsabend' inspired by their predecessors, who reinvented dance with taboo-breaking choreographies in the early 20th century. In three acts, Holzinger and Riebeek present themselves as continuers of that tradition, exploring the boundaries of theatre.
De nieuwe voorstelling van choreograaf Jan Martens, The Common People, is dit weekend in Utrecht te zien tijdens Spring. Tientallen vrijwillige performers hebben een blind date op het podium van de grote zaal van de Stadsschouwburg. Het publiek kan tussendoor in en uit lopen, een biertje drinken voor de duur van een of meerdere duetten of op het achterpodium grasduinen en…
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