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7 confusing reasons why the stage version of The Fountainhead rattles, but you should still go.

Topical again, now that Toneelgroep Amsterdam is reviving the play, my review from 2014. This week, the stage adaptation of The Fountainhead premiered. The book is terrible, the performance rattles, the actors win only narrowly. The content, however, creates even more confusion, which is why I won't stop you from going to see it. And Hans Kesting, of course. I put it this way.

'I did not have sexual relations with that woman', no way: surprising Don Juan at Theaterschip Deventer

In an immaculate virginal white uniform, Don Juan gives a slick press conference for his wedding to Elvira. We hear the famous words with which Bill Clinton denied the Lewinsky affair. Actor Ischa den Blanken's grin speaks volumes when he says: 'These allegations are false.' We know: he is lying.

Or is it?

Clinton's statement ended in a heated debate about what exactly should be understood by 'sexual relations'. In Really Not! too, everything is not...

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Greco and Scholten divide attention between CCN Ballet Nationale de Marseille and ICK Amsterdam

Minister Filipetti has given the green light. Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten will indeed become the new artistic directors of CNN Ballet National de Marseille. A company with 30 dancers, 60 employees in total, in a building with 9 studios and a theatre hall. Who in the Netherlands still gets that done?

ICKamsterdam states in a press release that Greco and Scholten will split their time between CNN Marseille and ICK Amsterdam. The two institutions will work together, but there will be no...

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5 lessons from a Tilburg riot: superficial newspaper determines superficial cultural politics

Regional newspapers hardly do any real cultural journalism anymore. We know this because it was the reason we once founded Culture Press. Just how bad things are now, five years later, with art in the region and the way newspapers deal with it, was evident this month in Tilburg. A local journalist from the Brabants Dagblad had written a piece on questions raised by a PVV MP in the province. In the news story, this former sports journalist qualified...

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Show with substance is like good sex with a storyteller

 "A good book is a man seducing me is like sex with a stranger." Anne Provoost, the securely Flemish-talking essayist managed to shake up P.F. Thomése and Hermamn Koch for a moment. In a debate during Writers Unlimited, she made a plea for the not-true story, and did so in a metaphor that rather stirred the imagination. She quoted her own work "Fiction and Power" in which reading indeed becomes a rather physical affair:

"Your lich...

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Noreena Herz topples from pedestal at Writers Unlimited

"Don't listen to the experts, they are actually always wrong." The gist of 'Eyes wide open', Noreena Hertz's latest book, is clear. That she is an expert herself, and therefore her views should be distrusted, makes sense. That the conversation she had on the subject with former politician Femke Halsema became increasingly bizarre was not so logical. Downright shocking was the fall that the terror of all the world's bankers took at the end.

That people are bad at making decisions,...

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'Thanks to facebook I have time to spare': writers embrace the social network at Writers Unlimited

Fouad Laroui does not do internet. The Moroccan-born author and professor does not even have a mobile phone. "I realise that this makes me part of a small elite," he declared during a debate at Writers Unlimited, "but I don't see the point of it." His tablemates did not share his opinion, which is quite remarkable. Just a few years ago, most of the international writing elite regarded social media as something with which they did not need to interfere.

'The outcast Moroccan and the Fleming may fight it out again' #WU14

In the rich tradition of writers who can drink each other's blood and foaming at the mouth with their pen, Writers Unlimited orchestrated a 'polemic'. In this debate, Abdelkader Benali expressed the voice of the people, and Saskia De Coster that of the elite. Both hacked at each other with help from moderator Elsbeth Etty. Result: a lot of incoherent banter.

For the occasion, in keeping with the title of his latest novel, Benali matched himself with a Bad Boy image, by ...

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Cinema attendance growth stagnates, Verliefd op Ibiza Dutch frontrunner

Christmas saved the 2013 cinema year. While it seemed to be nothing at the beginning of December in terms of cinema attendance, the last three weeks of the year made up for a lot - courtesy of Hobbit 2.

2013 closed with 30.8 million visitors, Wilco Wolfers, president of the Dutch Cinematography Federation announced at the cinema industry's New Year meeting. Best-attended film was the US animated film Despicable Me 2, followed by The Hobbit 2 and the Dutch copl...

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Why the National Ballet should stay and Melle Daamen should become chairman of the Culture Council.

Update
Meanwhile, in NRC Handelsblad reacted somewhat panicked to the opinion of Melle Daamen, whom he calls an impatient entrepreneur: "You can imagine structurally subsidising two instead of four dance companies anymore. The other two could apply for grants for projects from the Performing Arts Fund, which should then get more funding."

Rutte and Bosma don't do vision or substance and bend culture debate to their will

Culture debate 2013: Rutte and PVV shake hands. It was about Caro Emerald. About Zwarte Piet. And the classic: subsidy on opera tickets. And briefly about carnival. And it made all the news. Geenstijl. Radio 1,2,3 and 4. What else was the debate about? Um... no idea.

Lower chamber talked about art. We followed the debate for you

We kept a liveblog. Nice and old-fashioned, from the days when every month there was uproar somewhere about the government's handling of art. Now there is peace in the tent, as the PVV sardonically points out, because 'The Left' is now the bearer of policies devised by the PVV. The PVV predicts a black future for 'The Left' once the PVV comes to power.

Below are our updates, which paint a picture of a room that still doesn't really know where it is in d eculture ...

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Dutch Academy For Film - for a good story about Dutch cinema

The Dutch film world has a new club. Dutch filmmakers can join the Dutch Academy For Film (DAFF). With the aim, in a nutshell, of raising the profile of Dutch film. The DAFF was founded on 24 June this year following the example of similar academies in, for example, England, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. A press conference at the Netherlands Film Festival today was the occasion to give it more publicity.

Were there then ...

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Daan Roosegaarde for president? Alderman? Councillor?

Jet Bussemaker believes in Daan Roosegaarde. She confessed this on Sunday 1 September during the traditional Paradiso debate. She admires his courage to imagine the unthinkable and his drive to come up not with opinions, but with proposals. Her message to the art sector, once again almost fully present in Paradiso, was clear: stop complaining, start doing something.

The political finale of this year's Uitmarkt was all about 'change'. Because that something needs to change is d...

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Selection Theatre Festival 2013 marked by audience-friendly performances

De Verleiders, last season's big theatre hit, tops the jury selection of The Theatre Festival 2013. Conceived and created by a group of actors and cabaret artists, including Pierre Bokma and George van Houts, the show about real estate fraud was a tremendous success in theatres. So it is also rightly included in the festival, which since 1987 has annually showcased a selection of theatre performances from the previous season. Another hit that also received great media attention is the ...

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Help! England is also going to cry out for culture

The Scream for Culture with which the Dutch cultural world launched its opposition to the scrapping of art subsidies in 2010 was, in retrospect, a publicity disaster. Perhaps not as unfortunate as the naming of the 'March of Civilisation', but it did not generate much goodwill either. Yet people think differently across the North Sea. This month, a new campaign was launched there entitled: My Theatre Matters. In that campaign, people are urged 'to shout abo...

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'Anti-Greek' facade banner Theatre Frog destroyed after protests

We received this via Facebook: "During the night of Friday 11 to Saturday 12 January at 1.30am, a group of about seven young men destroyed a large canvas hanging on the facade of Theater Kikker on the Ganzenmarkt in Utrecht. The canvas, which had a size of about 7 by 7 metres, referred to the Greek flag and served as an announcement of the project 'De NUTtige Winkel, Greece in de uitverkoop' that the Utrechts Toneel is performing at Theater Kikker from 8 to 26 January. The poli...

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Milestone in sight

We never actually pat ourselves on the back, but so once every few years it is allowed. For instance, when you are 'top story' within an hour on the global twitter story website 'storify.com'. Of course, we often have a sudden surge in visitors, and certainly last September was a top month with 15000 visitors, but something like this, more than 500 visitors in not even an hour.... 

Bold p***o on the euro note?

There has been another interesting cultural twist to the 'Europe debate'. Someone has shouted that the watermark of the new series of euro notes will include a picture of 'the rape of Europe' by the Greek supreme god Zeus. The anti-Europe and anti-Greeks in the various timelines need no more to frame the conspiracy of the banking mafia against European citizens.

Enough of that. I was just wondering how it could suddenly be about the 'rape' of Europe,...

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Halbe Zijlstra: 'nothing to do with local arts policy'

Halbe Zijlstra is proud of his policy, and keen to come and tell it in front of the entire cultural sector. So on Sunday 26 August, he appeared on stage during the annual 'Paradiso Debate' to reiterate how well things had gone with the 200 million cut in the arts sector. He praised the resilience of the affected art world, and would be happy to do the same again.

'Windfall cuts': bricks saved, people sacrificed

The major research and management consulting firm Berenschot has calculated that, on balance, the cuts to the arts turn out to be not too bad. Client of the study, De Volkskrant, then headlined that big. And indeed, it is kind of good news that the pile-up of cuts (the state 24% less, the provinces 20% less and the municipalities only 9 % less) is so low in net terms. We were surprised for a moment, but when we asked around, we found out

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