With Henry by Itamar Serussi, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam makes an exciting statement. After all, the kickoff of the anniversary season is not a corny look back at 70 years of dance history, but stands in the middle of the present and looks ahead. Scapino does so with a relatively unknown choreographer delivering his first full-length work, in an unusual dance style. Mars Not entirely unknown is Israeli Itamar Serrusi. He is...
OPERA2DAY presents the world premiere of Mariken in de tuin der lusten at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague on 11 October. An opera with the collaboration of an impressive list of artists, including composer Calliope Tsoupaki, Asko|Schönberg and actress Hannah Hoekstra as Mariken. But will you achieve success with an opera, with modern-classical music moreover and Middle Dutch text? Director and creator Serge van Veggel...
The first weekend of October saw the Netherlands Dance Days (NDD) take place in Maastricht. As Ruben Brugman reported, important prizes for the dance world are awarded there. But the Dance Days seem mainly intended to promote Dutch dance, more than being a critical evaluation or artistic boost. At the Dance Days, no pithy speech on the State of Dance as...
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games... Would young people still be interested in history? Writer Anke Manschot believes so. On the eve of Children's Book Week, which starts today, her exciting and gripping historical book The Leap of Normandy, the world's first children's novel about D-Day, was published. Five questions for the author. Historical juvenile novel During a holiday in Normandy,...
In a full University Theatre on Tuesday 6 October, Pierre Audi gave a master class for young singers, dramaturgs and directors. Three scenes had been prepared by the students and were then expertly filleted by Audi. "Sorella, que dici?.... Prenderò quel brunettino", from Mozart's Così fan tutte began as a scene of two punk girls gripped by consumerism. The director and trainee dramatists...
Those who go to a dance performance want to enjoy beautiful movements, expression, movement composition and a fine stage setting, wrapped in music or a soundscape. But there is something, which is always overlooked: the sound of dance itself. Dancer and choreographer Eline van Ark discovered that this forgotten aspect holds great richness and subtle expressiveness. The sound...
During a festive dinner at Theater aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht, 'Zwanen' were awarded to dancer Jorge Nozal of NDT 1, Ann Van den Broek for The Black Piece and to Roel Voorintholt (Gouden Zwaan), artistic director of Introdans. The annual highlights festival De Nederlandse Dansdagen hosted this successful 'Swan Dinner': posh sponsors and stakeholders ate side by side with messy dance artists. This is how it should be...
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the period when modern art was born? Then I correct myself: no, there were many problems and uncertainties back then too. But the new exhibition Colour Unleashed at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag makes me hesitate again. Because the exhibited...
Bodies are dragged away to loud applause and cheers: a more symbolic beginning Nederlands Dans Theater could not have imagined. With Start Again, the international ballet company highlights an exile until 2019 at the harbour in Scheveningen. A tricky location, because remote. But also a dynamic place. A Dutch choreographer would surely invent a choreography there with ferries, cutters and lifeboats. NDT, however, chooses the...
Many theatre practitioners secretly beg for the introduction of corporal punishment for schoolchildren with CKV. After all, schoolchildren with CKV are bent on ruining the lives of actors. They are assisted in this by disinterested teachers, who on their nights off are more concerned to please their pupils than the providers of culture. As a compromise, ...
Early this year, it still looked like the monumental and striking Main Post Office on Utrecht's Neude would stay closed for good. There was even talk of a sale to a private individual who would build luxury flats in it, thus permanently obscuring the hall of the people, where many a Utrechter once cashed her cash cheques...
Cimbalom and harmonium are not the first instruments you immediately think of when you think of classical music. Yet, the ever-adventurous Ludwig collective puts precisely these mavericks at the centre of two concerts, on Saturday 26 September at the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert in Utrecht and on Sunday 27-9 at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam. In 1915, Igor Stravinsky and a friend visited a...
Listening to a short poem is sometimes hard work. This was evident during the Night of Poetry, held for the 33rd time on Saturday 19 September. At a poem that ends in brief toneless silence from the poet after four short sentences, the experts separate themselves from the amateurs in the audience. Clap quickly, before the next poem is over. Or.
Eating on stage. That's the standard 'Theatre Dinner', but more exciting. Especially if Shakespeare's Richard III is played during dessert. Toneelgroep Oostpool, the Arnhem-based company that has been going strong in recent years with striking performances, goes one step further again in exploring the ultimate audience experience. Sjim Hendrix, not only a cook, but also an artist and...
Those who do not want to open the theatre season in 'Black Tie' and with a gala would do well to go to the Fringe Festival. Already in its tenth year, the festival is bouncing in all directions, this year with 80 performances. Unselected, untamed and unjudged, as they call it themselves. In other words, sometimes you see something wonderful and sometimes you...
We had already announced it. This period is all about positive framing by the arts sector. Good news has to be spread, although people don't really know why. After all, there are no shareholders to be kept happy, only concerned art lovers. Enfin. On Wednesday 9 September, NRC journalist Daan van Lent presented the result of an investigation into the...
Actually, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) was a bit of an oddity, an anachronism. He bit into the composition style of his great example Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who died in 1893. When contrasting Rachmaninov with some of his contemporaries (Dmitri Shostakowich, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Strawinsky and overseas Charles Ives, George Antheil and Edgard Varèse), it is only right to notice...
Next weekend, from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 September, the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ celebrates its tenth anniversary with a jam-packed festival three-day event. From a cruise on the IJ with music by John Cage, a sleep concert by bassoonist Bram van Sambeek, a world premiere by Dutch Composer Willem Jeths, to a musical picnic in the entrance hall. No fewer than eight...
It is most visible in the performing arts. Recently, a striking number of vacancies for 'business leader' have been appearing in the cultural sector. We put on some ears during the theatre festival, and then you hear something. Nobody wants to respond openly, the interests are too big and the reputations too vulnerable. We therefore sum it up here only roughly...
It was world news in 1997. In one of the first building sites of Vinex district Leidsche Rijn, archaeologists found remains of a Roman boundary line, walls of forts, a cargo ship and all kinds of utensils. Digging it up and building houses was no longer an option. In 2007, it was decided to build a cultural park: a castellum. A modern version of a Roman fort bringing together various functions....
Just after the end of the Early Music Festival, the Gaudeamus Music Week, the Mecca of cutting-edge notes for seventy years, starts in Utrecht. Five nominated composers under thirty compete for the coveted Gaudeamus Award, previously won by now established composers such as Unsuk Chin, Yannis Kyriakides and Michel van der Aa. For the second year, the...
Nederlandse Reisopera, Madama Butterfly (opera), 3 September to 10 October Dutch sopranos are like footballers. They fly halfway around the world, but are only rarely seen in their own country. Take Annemarie Kremer, nominated in Germany as 'Sängerin des Jahres'. The Nederlandse Reisopera is taking her all over the Netherlands in the role that brought her world fame: the title role of Madama ...
Olson Lamaj runs a gallery with three friends: from their own money and in their spare time. They have to because it is the only way to give young, contemporary Albanian artists a chance. Lamaj studied photography in Milan and fine art in Florence and now earns his money as a graphic designer. He speaks to me after working hours
She welcomes the audience to her small wedding chapel in juicy American. 'My name is Joe,' she says with a mischievous smile, 'I can't help it, my father was having a good time when he chose my name.' Today, in The Long and Winding Road by the Volksoperahuis, Manoushka Zeegelaar Breeveld will play a couple plucked from the audience 'in the...
If anyone can give a good picture of cultural development in Albania, it is Vincent van Gerven Oei. This Dutch philosopher and artist has lived in the country for five years and, as an insider and outsider, therefore has a strong opinion. I meet him at café Bukowski in a hip entertainment district of Tirana. When the embassy told me about Van Gerven Oei...
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