The new format of the Holland festival puts the spectator first. Plenty of visible events, free performances and being in the middle of the city. It's director Ruth McKenzie's trademark. It is therefore not surprising that she does not shy away from the digital universe. After all, what better way to share than digital art? But what then is digital art...
Manger, the new performance by Boris Charmatz and Musée de la Danse, gives spectators all the space they need. Where you line up to watch or just to listen, who or what you watch and for how long, is up to you. The Purification Hall on the Westergasfabriek site, majestically empty and echoing, creates a wondrous atmosphere in this for Charmatz'...
Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten rehearse their new performance Extremalism in Marseille. The two dance companies under their direction, ICKamsterdam and Ballet National de Marseille, have merged for this occasion: 30 dancers on stage, six authors and designers in the auditorium, and the crew of technicians is also made up of Amsterdamers and Marseillais. They are working together on the biggest production that Greco and...
What happened to the five million Overijssel gave the orchestra in 2011 to 'get more money from the market'? This was also what councillor Van Abbema wondered, and the answers the province gave her mostly raise more questions. What is abundantly clear is that the province wants to keep the orchestra no matter what and of no merger
Stepping into M.U.R.S. is a treat. This is the smart city, the city of our near future. Communication electronics and fun rule. It resembles a fairground or a huge disco. Exciting voices welcome you. You whirl in with the crowd. Everyone joins in. Your phone is in touch. Cheerleaders stand on a stage,...
Stars, we don't really do that in the Netherlands. Our ground level does not allow diva behaviour. In our lowlands, you get a plus if you have stayed so nicely ordinary despite your success. Even if you stand in the Arena with your songs, like the Toppers, this weekend. How different it is in Istanbul. There, you are allowed to be shamelessly famous. Like.
Summer at home. Six film theatres are experimenting with an extra room online from 4 June. Here's how it works. Suppose you would like to see Summer. The modest but atmospheric coming-of-age drama that earned Sigrid ten Napel a Golden Calf best actress nomination. About a summer in which, for a 16-year-old village girl, everything changes. But you are unlucky. Your favourite movie theatre does show Summer, but just not on that night...
Visiting M.U.R.S. without the app on your smartphone is a challenge. The performance by the infamous Barcelona-based theatre collective is a commentary on how people are unwittingly becoming part of a SMART society run by international corporations via all sorts of gadgets. Are you in or out? Is there actually anything to choose? According to Jürgen Müller, one of the founders of...
An old man strolls into the infirmary with a transistor radio. 'Where did you go blind?' the already present blind ask the newcomer. 'In a museum,' he replies. A moving conversation then unfolds about what was the last painting he saw, and the possibilities are projected onto the wafer-thin canvas that separates the audience from the sick room. This tot...
A tricky question, but Festival Havenwerk director Erik-Jan Post has an idea and likes to bad some sacred cows. About arts education. About the concept of 'amateur'. About how big you should want to be as a festival. 'We are much less a festival in the classic sense. Havenwerk is more of a meeting place, with the participants at the centre. This year, therefore, the entrance fees are...
In The Loom of Mind, Icelandic folk singer Mugison, his bosom friend Pétur Ben, and Flemish baroque ensemble B.O.X. join forces. What does that sound like: melancholic Icelandic blues with 17th-century instruments? Like a stand-up storytelling concert performance? Or like a drunken panda who wants to have a game? How did you find each other? Pieter Theuns, lutenist and founder of B.O.X.: "I found Mugison...
Theatre group Vis à Vis, based at Almere Strand since 2007, has been around for 25 years. In all these years, the group has mainly created accessible, successful open-air theatre performances such as PICNIC, Silo 8 and HaRT. Visual comedies with lots of spectacle, where solid themes are treated in a light-hearted way. EXIT is their anniversary performance. A dozen questions to Arjan Anker, artistic director of Vis à Vis:...
A beauty list. The Dutch Theatre Festival's official jury selection cannot be described any other way. Neatly divided into large- and small-screen productions, with a mime and a location production as well. At the same time, the selection makes no sense at all. Because yes, the Theatre Festival admits that it looks mainly at theatre. And after all, aren't there all kinds of awards for opera, youth theatre,...
Europe's biggest hangout. That's the best way to describe the roof of that half-sunken car park in the heart of Rotterdam. Transformed fifteen years ago into the impression of a ship's deck, that 'Schouwburgplein' is now mostly owned by groups of skaters, vagrants, street urchins and other metropolitan troublemakers. Visitors to the Schouwburg usually rush without looking around too much to the...
It's dance, but not as we know it. That's the best way to describe the current edition of Korzo and Nederlands Dans Theater's dance festival Spring Awakening. With two wonderful standouts, by choreographers Tom Weinberger and Kenzo Kusuda.
For the sixth time in its history, the Tour de France will start in the Netherlands: on Saturday 4 July, the cyclists will start their three-week war of attrition under the Dom in Utrecht . A day earlier, the Britten Youth String Orchestra kicks off its own Tour de France, in home town Zwolle. In one week, the young musicians will give seven concerts in La...
Tonight, the Arnhem city council will take an important decision on the renovation of Musis Sacrum, the monumental concert hall located at a prominent point in the city. But the real news is not in what will be decided tonight, but in the far-reaching consequences. Musis Sacrum dates back to 1847 and is part of the cultural heritage. The venue complex is in dire need of refurbishment and with...
The building alone made literature festival City2Cities worth a visit. After all, the Post Office on Utrecht's Neude, built in 1924 as an ode to progress in a style that brought together the best of the Amsterdam School, had been closed for years. So even those who don't get excited by Nick Cave and who think Michel Houellebecq is a creep had a reason...
Berlin's Gorki Theatre won a prize this year: it was named the best theatre in the German language area by the German-language press. The company won the award partly because it employs many actors of immigrant origin. With its performance Der Untergang der Nibelungen, which can be seen in this year's Holland Festival, the group also thematises the...
Yep, I'm running behind, because just now I finally saw (in parts) the King's Day concert! But hey, good music has no expiry date and for now this concert will be online for a while. What a party! Some of my favourite musicians participated. Faithful readers of Culture Press know that violinist and composer Oene van Geel is definitely one of them. He brought along Zapp4...
Even before the final notes of Benvenuto Cellini had sounded, the audience erupted in loud cheers and cheers last night (12 May). So Monty Python director Terry Gilliam's team pulled out all the stops to make this first opera by Hector Berlioz an unforgettable experience. That his dadaesque staging evokes memories of the joke-and-roll approach of the...
The fastest, and most beautiful, way to cycle through Leidsche Rijn is along the Groenedijk, and then all the way to the end. Pedalling 20 minutes from Utrecht Central Station, there recently, and for 2000 years, lies Castellum Hoge Woerd. It is a newly built idea of a Roman fort that guarded the ancient border of the Roman Empire here, along...
Ton de Leeuw lived in Paris for the last decade of his life and studied with Olivier Messiaen in his younger years. On 21 May, Cappella Amsterdam will present four of his French-language choral works in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The programme also includes works by his student and friend Daan Manneke and the young French composer Laurent Durupt....
At Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, Hans Kesting will once again play the title role of Shakespeare's Othello, in a legendary version by top director Ivo van Hove, already 12 years ago. A stone's throw away, at De Balie, is the equally impressive actor Kenneth Herdigein in David Mamet's play Race. Why connect the two? Hans Kesting, the...
How can you write about a three-day conference, part of which took place behind closed doors, the closing night of which looks very neat on vimeo, but where the tension in the room was palpable? With a completely open mind and not much more background than an average newspaper reader, but with a firm belief in the power of the arts,...
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