Director Noël Fischer, artistic director of HNTJong, Het Nationale Theater's youth club, learned a week ago just before the first try-out that she and Trojan Wars would not be allowed on stage for the try-out, nor for Saturday's premiere. No ordinary performance but a marathon performance with three parts, with fodder for the mind (music) and the...
UPDATE Friday, March 13, 9:30 a.m.: After the Culture Council sounded the alarm on Thursday night, the House of Representatives passed a motion urging a support package for the affected cultural sector. The text of the motion, tabled by D66, Groen Links, PvdA, Partij van de Dieren, Denk and 50Plus, reads as follows: 'The Chamber, having heard the debate, whereas meetings with...
On 2 March, Platform Aanvang! launched the petition Nederland maakt kunst / art makes the Netherlands at the Solidarity evening in ITA. An evening that opened the conversation for a solidarity sector, but most of all sounded the alarm for the planned downsizing of the arts sector. The petition was signed by more than 11,000 people in a week. When we saw the...
After its successful tour last November, the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble will tour again with The Unknown Chaplin. The second tour - from 3 March to 22 March - will take in venues in Ede, Helmond, Tilburg, Den Haag, Amersfoort, Enschede, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. www.nbe.nl/programma/the-unknown-chaplin/ Six hilarious, humorous and melancholic silent films by the great universal genius Charlie...
Emerging fascism is becoming increasingly parlous. Especially among young people, I discovered recently at a concert by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw. A reading club of twenty-somethings said they enjoyed James MacMillan's Second Percussion Concerto. They joined me in denouncing the draconian cuts to culture. But suddenly it sounded carefree: 'We are all voting for Thierry.' When I was dismayed...
'My love for opera is rooted in my youth. Emotions you feel as a young person become almost tangible in opera. While listening, I often experienced a catharsis.' Director Serge van Veggel zooms in on depression and delusion with the production Opera Melancholica. Starting point is Philip Glass's The Fall of the House of Usher, presented as a form of 'anatomical...
So this: 'It is not easy to compete with YouTube, Netflix and other entertainment giants lying at our fingertips...' Wise words from Jiří Kylián in the foreword to the programme booklet of A Christmas Carol. The renowned choreographer sees The Dutch Don't Dance Division at the Zuiderstrandtheater creating something magical with their latest production: with limited resources in this multimedia...
'A new piece is usually only heard once, then it disappears into a drawer forever.' Such a sigh I often hear, in all tones. Not only from composers, but also from ensembles, concert organisers, musicians and even subsidy providers. Good news, then, that Meriç Artaç's opera Madam Koo will be repeated twice this month, Wednesday 11 December in CC...
The myth just had to end. Nan van Houte, former director of Amsterdam's small theatre Frascati, has buried Action Tomato. During Requiem for Tomato, on 4 November 2019, she made it crystal clear that this legendary event has been measured too big by our theatre historians. In 1969, when a few tomatoes were sent to the al...
From 42 to 18 pages. Actually, that says it all about the new Diversity and Inclusion Code that saw the light of day on Friday 1 November. After all the wooliness and ifs and buts of the original Cultural Diversity Code, the new thing is a miracle of clarity. Is perhaps also necessary, in these times of identity wars, where on the left and...
On 23 October, website Theaterkrant.nl wrote a piece on the future of the performing arts. A future that is black and gloomy when you, as a creator, count on growth, or even survival at all. In short: so much money is going away from the Performing Arts Fund, that from next year only between 50 and 60 applications can be honoured, in...
Formerly considered three times nothing, today the paintings of water lilies and wisteria are the most famous canvases by French painter Claude Monet. We visited his gardens in Giverny and took a look through the eyes of the master. https://youtu.be/dfbUOdDe3Lk Mugs and socks When you think of the painter Claude Monet, the first thoughts probably go to his colourful...
'I always draw out my characters before I start composing. They are inspired by people I see on the street, personalities I admire, details that make someone special... I usually focus on one specific aspect of a character, a dominant mood that I then highlight in my composition.' Born in 1990 in Istanbul, Meriç Artaç was already...
Exactly 200 years ago, on 13 September 1819, Clara Schumann was born in Leipzig as Clara Wieck. She is among one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. Against her father's wishes, she married Robert Schumann, whose work she fervently promoted. She also wrote well-received compositions of her own and was more famous than Robert. Yet after her...
For a moment, the envelope seems unopenable but then Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven conjures up the redeeming paper after all. 'The winner of the 2019 Gaudeamus Award is Kelley Sheehan!' The little American almost falls off her stool in amazement. Probably not entirely by chance, the new music organisation has positioned her right in the middle of her four fellow candidates. - She herself would...
Canadian Emily Molnar is the new artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1) from season 2020/2021. Looking at her track record, she has everything going for her: a loyal ten years as artistic director of Canadian BC (British Columbia) Ballet, a good reputation as a choreographer, acclaimed as a visionary, innovator and coach and she has a...
The peak of the festivalisation of the Netherlands seems to be behind us. The number of festivals has declined by over 10% in two years. This is according to research by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam into the festival landscape in the Netherlands. Responsible lecturer Harry van Vliet (Crossmedia): "The decline in the number of music festivals was already visible in 2017, but the decline is the...
Antonio Mancini, Lorenzo Delleani and Fillippo Palizzi, who does not know these influential Italian painters? Apparently a lot of people don't. Don't feel guilty, even for many art historians the names don't ring a bell. This is in contrast to Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Bernini and Titian. These artists need little introduction: Italian art, culture and identity are usually drawn from...
You have those performances where, as an unsuspecting spectator, you are invited on stage and, once there, get completely blocked. SOUL #3 Co-Creation is not one of those. Well almost. Indeed, in this work, dancer Claire Hermans explains that fear is a blockade to creativity. The four performers therefore do not urge you to take to the floor to...
'I have broken every bone on the left side of my body at least once. My knee ten years ago, my elbow five years later, a toe, a finger, and under my left eye I have a scar from a stone someone threw at me when I was a kid.' Jesús de Vega, dancer, choreographer, videographer and teremin player, has had the requisite...
'What we so often forget is to just talk about our love for theatre.' Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre, wants to talk about substance for once. And then with the entire performing arts sector. Soon there will be SPOT-Live, the renewed Congress of Performing Arts, and there he wants to talk about love. 'Quite by chance, it happened a month ago....
The Council for Culture has just proposed the new Basic Infrastructure (BIS), and it has become a very big, in traditional terms 'prosperous', baby. Since the Council is not allowed to name names, and can only list functions, we have already made a fill-in list here, in which we list (very briefly, because little time and not knowing about everything) which existing cultural...
![M carbunaru [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons](https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Vasile_Craciun_-_competitie_internationala.jpg)
How nice it would be if Zutphen were to be Cultural Capital of the Netherlands next year, proudly representing itself and thanks to a strong impulse from its surrounding area: the province of Gelderland. They could immediately tackle the hopeless situation of the local theatre, the kids from the suburbs could also go to hip-hop in a real hall and everyone in the Netherlands would know...
How did the Hague prostitute Blonde Dolly make her millions? And why was her killer never caught, when it was abundantly clear who must have strangled her? That smells like a conspiracy, and conspiracies are like grist to writer Tomas Ross' mill. In Blonde Dolly, he tackles one of the oldest and most mysterious cold cases in the Netherlands. Until it...
There is an artist café in Utrecht that few Utrechters know about. And I don't mean Theatercafé De Bastaard, where by now a whole generation of actors, filmmakers and writers come from, but the artists' foyer of TivoliVredenburg. I've eaten and hung out there a few times, as an embedded reporter of De Nacht van de Poëzie, when it's very late into...
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