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Why we're losing more and more music thanks to 'digital' #HF17

For new music, the primal performance is often also immediately the last time a piece is played. The scores await the archive or dusty drawer; recordings are nowhere to be found. David Dramm searches for these gems of stilted notes. He presents them at the Holland Festival Orphanage: three evenings of forgotten compositions from the rich... 

Why Radio Plastic (and the rest) won't survive the self-driving car

One of the most wonderfully successful programmes on Dutch radio is Radio Kunststof. Every weekday on Radio 1, between seven and eight o'clock, it attracts a bizarre number of listeners, especially for that time of day. And especially for an art programme. On TV then is DWDD, also called art programme on its public channels, but with Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and millions of viewers. How... 

Somewhere at STRP Biennial 2017, a future, earth-shattering genius is walking around among the schoolchildren

Leisure is the mother of philosophy. -motto of British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, seen in Klokgebouw during STRP17 An app called "Die with me" that, as soon as your smartphone is at five per cent remaining power, automatically connects with other Die with me users. An app game called "Airb'n'bhost", where you have to choose who offers the airb'n'b interior from three portrait photos each time. The most fun:... 

Technique and dance give groundbreaking theatre experience

Dance and technology. That is the theme on the second day of the Moving Futures festival. After seeing this broadly composed programme, I no longer doubt that there is such a thing as 'progress in art'. This is not just about the new means artists can use to shape their work. The... 

Moving Futures festival seeks new audience for modern dance

'Many people find contemporary dance difficult. Especially performances by young makers who experiment and seek new ways. At the Moving Futures festival, everyone can discover how dance can touch you. We do this not only by showing good performances by young makers. We also offer activities around it, context programmes. By doing so, we give the audience tools to make a connection with... 

Edward Snowden and Oliver Stone make a resounding statement

In the presence of Amnesty International and Edward Snowden - via a video link from Moscow - Oliver Stone's new film Snowden premiered at Tuschinski on Thursday night. The dramatised story of the young, gifted public servant who is troubled by conscience and decides to go to the press is not very original or compellingly portrayed. But on the wave of... 

ISH Fund Performing Arts awards

Performing Arts Fund cuts dance subsidies. Not enough, according to some.

The Performing Arts Fund announced the awards for the 2017-2020 period. What does this mean for the dance sector? Pluralism and 'bleeding through'. While everyone is on holiday, the Performing Arts Fund announced the grant awards for the performing arts for the 2017-2020 period. And it was reiterated: the fund is facing a previously initiated budget cut of 30 per cent. That would... 

Holland Festival goes Nuclear: Atomic by Mark Cousins

Anyone who can remember the fall of the wall has grown up with the threat of nuclear attack. And with that comes the idiotic government advice to get under the table in case of a nuclear explosion, preferably with a colander on your head. And to keep plenty of canned food and water on hand.

Choreographer Jan Martens on Spring: 'I hold my heart every time, how it turns out'

Choreographer Jan Martens' new performance, The Common People, is on show in Utrecht this weekend during Spring. Dozens of volunteer performers have a blind date on the stage of the Stadsschouwburg's main auditorium. The audience can walk in and out between performances, drink a beer for the duration of one or more duets or browse on the back stage and... 

Voices Outside The Echo Chamber: we need exhibitions like this

An exhibition that puts our view of migration and migrants at the centre, critical of our migration policy but does not fall into easy pamphleteering, that is "Voices outside the echo chamber". On Friday 29 April, the exhibition "Voices outside the echo chamber"-an exhibition by Framer Framed, the Amsterdam-based organisation that has been questioning and commenting on the visual language in our arts for years-opened at the Tolhuistuin. After all,... 

New avenues for fantasy and horror: nostalgia, nihilism and quirky malevolence

Imagine has been transforming for several years. When this festival was still going through the world under the name Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, its main focus was on genre cinema. The Fantatstic genre is an insidious term used as a catch-all for science fiction, fantasy and horror. In these postmodern times, fantatstic is harder to delineate. The festival therefore changed its name back in 2009,... 

Composer Julia Wolfe: 'John Henry symbolises the struggle of man versus machine'

Last year, Julia Wolfe (1958) won the Pulitzer Prize with her oratorio Anthracite Fields. In this poignant piece about the plight of miners, she draws on American folk music. She composed it for the co-founded Bang on a Can All-Stars, a New York ensemble that became known for its rousing mix of rock, mimal music and... 

Movies that Matter: 'feel bad' films make a 'feel good' festival together

These are bleak times. A few days after the opening night of the Movies that Matter festival (MTM) in The Hague, the world was rocked by the attacks in Brussels. For an event that focuses on human rights issues, a sign that the violent consequences of international conflicts seem to be getting closer. This raises the question of whether an audience that is... 

Hitler on Hacking habitat (Roy Villevoye)

Hacking Habitat: battle for total digital power impressively depicted

In the corridor leading to the airspace, a shabby man stands leaning against the wall. Exhausted, cold, untouchable. It is a young Adolf Hitler, portrayed by Roy Villevoye as the homeless, failed artist he once was. Now he is at Hacking Habitat and full of potential, according to the caption. The art manifestation that has taken possession under that title in... 

something raw logo

This was Something Raw 2016: less rebellious, more social

The raw in Something Raw can mean all sorts of things. The first thought might be something rough, as in the effect of sandpaper on skin or the havoc left by an elephant in the china shop. But rough is a derivative meaning. Raw first of all means unprocessed and fresh. There is a certain hope in the combination of rough and raw: artists who like... 

Contemporary trends in theatre and performance at Something Raw Festival 2016

Three mongols playing Mongols. Dschingis Khan, the opening performance of Something Raw, is provocative and consequential. With this performance by German theatre collective Monstertruck, or the also Berlin-based Man Power Mix by Sheena Mcgrandles and Zinzi Buchanan, the festival Something Raw lives up to its name. Something Raw is a festival in which Amsterdam theatres Frascati, De Brakke... 

Turn on your livestream and get a pack of tissues ready

Next Friday is the day. Then, speakers in the fields of technology, economy and design will climb the stage in the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam to talk about their 'ideas worth spreading'. This year's theme is 'the perfect trifecta', because if there is anything magical according to founder Jim Stolze, it is the interaction between audience, speakers and performers. Notable... 

Rik Wouters, Autumn, 1913, 135 x 140 cm, Oil on canvas, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp ©Lukasart in Flanders

Belgian colour on Dutch cheeks - 7 reasons why you should visit 'Colour Unleashed' soon

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... 

Autumn of reflection

Movies that Matter will not only see you at the festival in March. The film event, organised by Amnesty International, will also tour several film houses in the Netherlands this autumn. It kicks off in October with the screening of Hubert Sauper's documentary We come as friends. In his earlier film Darwin's nightmare, this award-winning Austrian showed... 

Soviet design - does it exist?

The first thing I think of when I think of Soviet design are the magnificent posters showing muscular men with bared bodies and sturdy women in wide skirts harvesting immense fields of grain, or enthusiastically operating heavy machinery in huge factory halls. So the first question that the Moscow Design Museum asks in its press release is right on target: why do we know so little about design... 

Feeling the 3d scan (photo author)

Rembrandt expert in an hour thanks to the Mauritshuis

For eight years, the Mauritshuis researched and restored his painting 'Saul and David'. As a result, it can now be definitively attributed to Rembrandt. But the small exhibition 'Rembrandt? The Case of Saul and David' mainly shows how the museum collaborated with all kinds of different scientists and laboratories to unravel the numerous mysteries surrounding the canvas. As a visitor, you will be taken through the... 

Hatsune Miku: So did we all fall in?

It is one of the most pre-discussed performances of this Holland Festival. Newspapers, magazines and webmagazines dived en masse on The End featuring Japanese superstar Hatsune Miku. That she is not real. About all of us being fascinated by the virtual and technology. About her two and a half million Facebook friends. About the fans who have written more than 100,000 songs for her. About the costume designs... 

Scene photo La Fura del Baus, M.U.R.S. Photo Josep Aznar

La Fura dels Baus pushes you into a haunted house of play and seriousness in M.U.R.S.

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,... 

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