Over seven years ago, I started as house poet at Sven Ratzke's Late Night Show in Utrecht's Blue Hall. It was a special time. Not for Sven, who probably came into the world singing and wearing designer clothes through a curtain of peacock feathers and imitation ermine fur. For him, the sultry, permanently ramming sold-out nightclub show was cut-and-dried. For...
On Tuesday 30 June and Wednesday 1 July 2020, Aan tafel can be seen at the Maaspodium, Rotterdam, a performance on the history of slavery as part of Keti Koti. It is the third year in a row that Maas is trying to make this painful part of history palpable through theatre. The performance will be made (coronaproof) and performed by Sue-Ann...
Let's just start with the good news: De Staat is a regular fixture in the Netherlands from now on. And so we are talking about the band De Staat. Who make fantastic music videos these days. They have been promoted from a four-year grant with the Performing Arts Fund to a four-year grant according to the Cultural Basic Infrastructure (BIS). With 55 other newcomers. All weighed...
Just like in the world outside culture (call it capitalism), in the cultural sector itself you also see a huge payment gap between creators and 'the plush'. Only you can't talk about that taboo without being seen as a traitor.
Last month, De Arbeiderspers published Romana Vrede's novel De nobele autist, based on life with her son Charlie, who has a mental disability and autism. Conversation on what she learned from him and other life events. 'Not Charlie is crazy, the world is crazy.' 'Normal' is not normal 'When my son Charlie was a 2-year-old boy in...
'Your hands can't stop you anyway, so I will always make things. But I'm not just an artist pur sang, I also want to keep communicating.' Chantal van Heeswijk is an artist. She had a packed schedule, until mid-March. 'I am always busy in many ways. But that's almost always work involving a lot of people....
'Thea, have you heard that new piece yet? It's beautiful!' And there plopped another wetransfer in with a recording by Kate Moore, Pete Harden, Calliope Tsoupaki or any other composer. Frans Curvers was at the front of every (world) premiere. Whether it took place at Paradiso in Amsterdam, De Doelen in Rotterdam, TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht or a backstreet church somewhere....
Under the guise of 'what can still be done', Maas theatre and dance has developed a programme for children, young people, parents sitting at home who do feel like or need theatre in these unreal times. We came up with Maas TV, an online channel on our website where children, young people and adults can watch a daily registration of...
Last week, my in-box and my social media feed were full of cancellations. Screenings, film festivals and museums: everything I was looking forward to or contributing to was cancelled or shelved. Understandable and sensible. But also maddening, and a loss of income for me and many others in the cultural sector. Still, there are things that...
Travelling makes you a better person. Everyone thinks so, and it is a great favour to be able to travel. A privilege to be able to do it. If you go to England by train, the last few minutes before you disappear under the Channel at Calais, you see more and more fences appearing. And we are not talking about the average...
When I tried to explain to secondary school students the other day how little the orchestra members who perform the musical surprise act at the Eurovision Song Contest were paid, they looked at me in bewilderment. After all, it was more than you earn as a 16-year-old as a stock boy at the average grocery store. So what was really the problem? So now let's do some other maths, thanks to the...
The great philosopher of the 1968 left-wing uprisings was untrustworthy both privately and in his philosophy. His muse Simone de Beauvoir was also a victim. In almost an hour and a half, theatre company OT Rotterdam unfolds the disenchantment of De Beauvoir in a brilliant role by José Kuipers, opposite Tim Linde as ex-student leader Benny Lévy and confidant of Sartre. Kabbala Piece...
"We are hopeful," is the reply when I speak to a colleague just before the start of the Berlin film festival. For curious as to how the choice of Carlo Chatrian as the new artistic director has fallen among German critics. Chatrian, previously director of the leading arthouse festival in Locarno, lies well, I understand. Whether this 70th Berlinale will see all that new momentum...
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...
Those who want to be musicians have to bleed. Earlier, we reported that the highlight of the Dutch edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was going to be performed by professional musicians and conservatoire students who would receive 100 euros a day for it. Outrageously little, when you know that full days of work were going to be involved anyway, for eight days. Well: it's even worse than...
Much has already been said about Almere, that it is ugly, for instance, or too car-oriented. There are also few cities in Europe where the four-lane roads extend as gloriously to the shopfront as in Almere. I'd like to add a note of praise. Coming from the station, walking across an artificial dune of car parks and fast-food chains, skimming past...
In the trailer for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which kicks off on 22 January, film images crumble into abstract shapes and colour patterns. It has to do, I understand, with the wonder of the irrepressible urge to make stories. Once, a cave dweller put a painted hand on the rock face. In the digital age, we conjure stories with coloured pixels. The...
Dance performance Uniform by creator Nastaran Razawi Khorasani, a huge success at Oerol 2018, is being remade. The performance will be re-created, premiere on Saturday 15 February 2020 at Maaspodium, Rotterdam and tour the Netherlands until 10 April 2020. Uniform is a dance performance about the desire for commonality, an ode to the follower. Uniform What is the power...
We got some confusing messages last weekend. The reason was the festive announcement of the organisation of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the finals in Rotterdam. Third year and master students of the Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians were invited. A 'fee' would be available for...
[update: they get even less, see post below] We received confusing news last weekend. The occasion was the festive announcement by the organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the final in Rotterdam. Invited were third-year and master students from Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians. For the performances...
In the first version of this post, we assumed 100 euros for 8 days. We turned out to be misinformed. The application of the remplaçants' collective agreement, mentioned in the explanation by the Song Festival, gives a bit more leeway, although its hourly and daily rates are still controversial. But 1,000 euros for eight days is now apparently the going rate....
Jules Deelder instilled in me a love of poetry. He was there when I was in need of something other than the big-people poems that weren't about me, as a would-be punk. That was almost forty years ago now. He's just died, and heaven is also going jazz-ish. Last night, while the night mayor of Rotterdam...
From February 2020, Vanja Kaludjercic will succeed Bero Beyer as festival director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
I went to Rotterdam Zuid to see Shakespeare. The play was called Cleopatra and someone had tried to turn it into a feminist manifesto. That is something like making a rhinoceros jump through a hoop: the British bard relates to feminism as Thierry Baudet relates to Greta Thunberg. So it had not succeeded, and the reviewer of...
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...
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