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interview

Culture Council debates only with like-minded people.

Update: Meanwhile, the Culture Council has picked up the gauntlet. Melle Daamen posted his pieces on Culture Press, and Joop Daalmeijer has agreed to give a comprehensive interview. More news soon, then. 'Melle is a member of the Supervisory Board. You have nothing to do with that. So that's why NRC anyway?' Dixit Joop Daalmeijer, the man who since he became chairman there... 

Johan Simons to Ruhr, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Vienna, Ghent. And Varik.

He is the greatest director in the Netherlands. But also the least honourable theatre-maker we know: Johan Simons. The man whose star has been rising since the 1980s is now in Munich. But he is not staying there. After putting the local company Kammerspiele even more firmly on the map internationally, he is looking for new challenges. Den Bosch earlier reported... 

Ragged ritual defies permanent display: Germaine Kruip at the Stedelijk @HollandFestival 2014

"You know ma'am, that big red painting? Turn right before that". A young attendant shows us the way. At first glance, it's nothing. A man in semi-uniform, black trousers, white shirt, slowly turns on his axis. Sol Lewitt's mural, number 1084 from 2003, lends him the necessary decorum. Around the corner hang Barnett Newman and Andy Warhol. Would the man care? In this 'hall of fame' of conceptual art, the man's spinning stands out somewhat timidly. Some...

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dance education

Dance course explodes. Sudden vacancy management dance course Royal Conservatoire

The dance course at The Hague Conservatory of Music has exploded. Sort of. Nancy Euverink, director of dance education is in fact stepping down from the Royal Conservatoire (KC). And not only that. Deputy director Tom Bosma is not staying on either. Who will take over after the final performances and in the new season is still unclear. An international vacancy has been posted.

Legendary director Peter Brook (89): Theatre is the field given to me

The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.

You may ask 1 question to theatre legend Peter Brook, what will you ask?

I will be talking to Peter Brook in Paris on 7 May 2014. For people who have studied theatre, this is something very special. The man once wrote a very well-organised and manageable booklet that is on the shelf of all theatre people: The Empty Space. But he was also the director of performances where more people attended than there were ever seats. In other words. At parties, daring or being able to say you have been to a performance at Les Bouffes Du Nord, or nine hours in ...

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Sometimes a good story needs to be told, not just imagined.

Some art needs a story. Then a canvas on the wall with the caption 'Untitled' is not enough. The performance 'Laaroussa' (Bride) by French-Tunisian brother and sister Selma and Soufiane Ouissi falls into that category. As extraordinary as their physical presence on a dark stage is, without explanations beforehand and a Q&A afterwards, it all says precious little.

Is that bad?

"Forbidden!" Or is it? Reinbert de Leeuw performance makes curious about biography

It is the kind of publicity even literary agency Sebes and Van Gelderen dreams of. An argument between biographer and subject that makes it into all the national newspapers. Especially when it is not a biography of, say, an ex-soccer player who squandered his fortune, but one of wayward composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw.

On Friday, the book was in bookstores, with a rave review in Het Parool on the same day, followed another day later by an interview with author Thea Derks...

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Director sues own orchestra to death

It was big news. One orchestra is seizing the instruments of another. Only it doesn't add up. Just as much does not appear to be right in conductor Jan Willem de Vriend's letter in last Thursday's Volkskrant.

Because we have been closely following the orchestral feud between the Netherlands Philharmonic and the Netherlands Symphonic for some time, we already knew that De Vriend was not telling the truth with his statement that, legally speaking, it was now 2-2 between the two orchestras. It st...

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Biography Reinbert de Leeuw released today

Today, Leporello Publishers in Amstelveen published my long-awaited biography Reinbert de Leeuw: man or melody, on which I worked for more than seven years. The book is on sale at several bookstores in Amsterdam and can be ordered through any bookstore in the Netherlands. When I attended a concert conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw in early 2005, I discussed with a number of... 

World premiere of deceased Ten Holt

Tonight, Feb 14 honours the North Netherlands Orchestra at the Oosterpoort in Groningen Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012, with the world premiere of his orchestral work Centri-fuga, which he completed in 1979. It has never been performed to this day and will be christened tonight by conductor David Porcelijn. After the interval, Ten Holt's magnum opus will also be heard Canto ostinato for four pianos, performed by Sandra and Jeroen van Veen, Fred Oldenburg and Irene Russo. Earlier this week, other pianists also performed it at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. 

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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Reinbert de Leeuw defies limits of orchestra in Saturday Matinee

Reinbert de Leeuw turned seventy-five last September, but already in May the VPRO honoured him with three full-length broadcasts on Radio 4. Together with Aad van Nieuwkerk, I made a selection from his best recordings of Kagel, Ustvolskaya and Louis Andriessen, among others, about which I also let him speak. This was followed in September by a real Reinbert festival and his own magazine. The magazine not only highlighted him... 

Dutch Dance Days Prize nominations: Cecilia Moisio, Giulio d'Anna and Melissa Ellberger

Young choreographers Cecilia Moisio, Giulio d'Anna and Melissa Ellberger have been nominated for the Prize of the Netherlands Dance Days Maastricht 2013.

 

Cecilia Moisio - photo Jamain Brigitha

Cecilia Moisio gained fame as a dancer in works by Ann van den Broek and others. For some years now, she has also been creating her own work. Juxtapose, the choreography she was nominated for, is a witty but also biting performance....

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Chris Marclay enchants @hollandfestival with his found footage collages

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Multidisciplinary jack-of-all-trades Chris Marclay has broken through with his film project The Clock: every second of the day represented with found footage. It took him five years to make the 24-hour work. That says something about the way he makes his art. The incredible precision with which he edits makes his work so convincing that the viewer almost falls into a trance.

The Holland Festival presented three of his works at EYE, the new film museum, in which he collaborated with MAZE, a descendant of the Maarten Altena Ensemble.

Marie on a string: Anja Röttgerkamp stars as an unknown soldier in Gisèle Vienne's The Pyre @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival
'The Pyre', the latest show from internationally rising star Gisèle Vienne, initially seems less disturbing than her previous work. Pieces like 'Jerk' (2008), based on the true story of a young serial killer, and '...

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'El Djoudour' is interesting as a cultural-political project, but does not convince artistically @Holland Festival

Holland Festival Holland Festival
Men and women together on the dance floor, it is still forbidden in large parts of the Muslim world. Two years ago, the dance performance 'Nya' was at the Holland Festival, a piece written on the skin of nine Algerian dancers, mostly ...

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Escape from Guatemala's hidden war for a while

Treaty of Utrecht

'Hidden War', the theatrical exchange between actors from the Netherlands and Guatemala, is nearing performance. The Guatemalan actors of the company Caja Lúdica have been in the country for a few weeks now. Together with the Dutch actors, they are rehearsing at Fort Nieuwersluis (near Breukelen), where the performance can also be seen from 20 June. Alan Hack (18) is one of the Guatemalans playing in the show. He experiences his stay in the Netherlands as a paradise encounter with freedom[/heading].

Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival, part 1. Henri Drost: "much more than 3D film opera"

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Forget all the fuss about the first ever 3D film opera, forget all the fuss in British newspapers. Michel van der Aa himself sighed in interview that, on reflection, he would have loved to have made the second 3D film opera. And perhaps he had

Social media and art connect people, but Egypt stays away for a while #vvu

Treaty of Utrecht

Experiments may well have a different outcome than you hope for beforehand. The Community Arts Lab is now discovering through the Face to Face project that the world of the internet still has to deal with real borders. A project in which ordinary people in Egypt would create a work of art with ordinary m...

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Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Simon Stone (28) wrote a new play based on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 stage classic The Wild Duck. The Swiss-born Australian provided the Norwegian play with entirely contemporary language and dressing. The actors sit

NSB officer Tobie Goedewaagen and subsidies: the faulty founder of a good system

The Dutch system of art subsidies was set up in 1942 by NSB leader Tobie Goedewaagen, who also founded the Kultuurkamer. Typical of a fact that had been known for a long time, but which people preferred not to talk about. Benien van Berkel, art marketer with a past at Theatre Carré and the Holland Festival, obtained a PhD in 2012 on a study into the life of the cultural NSB Goedewaagen. On 24 April 2013, the book resulting from that research was presented: 'Tobie Goe...

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Film project makes lives of ISK students visible: 'That's my grandmother, that's my heart'

Treaty of Utrecht Munira has written a letter in Somali. Before reading it out in her own language, she has to say something about it in Dutch.
Another student interviews her and asks who the letter is for.
Munira: 'It's a letter for my grandmother.'
Classmate: 'What does it say?'
Munira: 'I love you dear grandma. I miss you.'
Classmate: 'Why your grandmother?....

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