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Halbe Zijlstra: 'nothing to do with local arts policy'

Halbe Zijlstra is proud of his policy, and keen to come and tell it in front of the entire cultural sector. So on Sunday 26 August, he appeared on stage during the annual 'Paradiso Debate' to reiterate how well things had gone with the 200 million cut in the arts sector. He praised the resilience of the affected art world, and would be happy to do the same again.

Edelkoort signals development of animation art better than she thinks

On 12 August 2012, during the worst watched Summer guests-broadcast of all time (343,000 viewers) told trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort about The Johnny Cash Project. A great example of what crowdsourcing can do for creativity: in 2010, everyone was invited to add a drawing to an animated music video to Johnny Cash's latest song. We now know what and who is behind this:

'I expect a wonderful interplay, that's the big challenge for me.' STUT gets to work with The Henry Girls #vvu

In about a year's time, the Stut Choir and Irish folk band The Henry Girls will be on one stage. Artistic director Donna Risa: ''I expect a wonderful interplay.''
STUT is a household name. The neighbourhood theatre group has been creating performances with and about ordinary Utrechters, taken from the neighbourhoods, since 1977. In 2010, the theatre group gave birth to the Stutkoor, which is now taking part in the community art lab's exchange project for the 2013 Treaty of Utrecht celebrations. Artistic director Donna Ri...

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'Community Art is Slow Art': Margreet Bouwman and Eugene van Erven on the Community Arts Festival 2013 #vvu

 Young people from Guatemala, nightingales from Northern Ireland and theatre-makers from the interior of Peru. Just some of the guests at the Community Arts Festival held in Utrecht in June 2013. Music, film and theatre with ordinary people behind and in front of the scenes, accompanied by professional artists. What else do they have in common? They all make art in an environment where murder, manslaughter and war are more natural than peace.
This 'How to survive a war' theme is a...

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Eastern orchestras settle 40% rebate on musicians' salaries and union is sidelined

[recap] In order to avoid having to merge ánd bring in an extra half a million each, the orchestras in Overijssel and Gelderland made very ambitious plans. Which bear striking similarities. Both orchestras requested and received money from the province, albeit much less than requested. In theory, this would compensate for the reduction in the state subsidy, but that provincial money is mainly meant to reform the organisation. However, it is not enough for that. Not nearly enough...

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Enterprising young theatre makers, Meermanno meets revenue standard, Eindhoven accepts collection, Amsterdam supports cultural education, et al.

Entrepreneurship is in young theatre-makers' blood (...) A new theatre circuit seems to have emerged in recent years. More and more young groups, such as Stichting Nieuwe Helden, PSTheater and Circus Treurdier, work relatively independently of subsidies and almost always outside the theatre building. They seek out their audiences anywhere, whether on the street, by a canal or in a... 

Sarah Moeremans camps out at the theatre and shows young actors all over it during #dekeuze

Director, actress and theatre designer Sarah Moeremans is holding office in the lobby of the Rotterdam Schouwburg for a year. Titled "My First Camp", she has moved into the front hall to be more in touch with the various users and visitors in the building and the world around it. Has the public space become a wilderness, which... 

Die Zeit comes up with text from porn poem Frederick the Great. But we are earlier.

Update: the poem in question was not meant to convince Voltaire of the Prussian thrust, but an Italian, Francesco Alegerotti. A scrabeus poem by Frederick the Great has surfaced. A poem, whose existence but content was unknown. Until now, that is. Today, the German quality magazine Die Zeit comes out with the full text. And Bild Zeitung has... 

There is crying, screaming and dancing frenziedly in Helium by Davy Pieters on #debasis

  "You are my sunshine," sings a woman very softly. Meanwhile, the audience sits in pitch darkness. We are trapped. Banished to a shelter that, it seems, suddenly has no exit. It is a real shelter in which theatre-maker Davy Pieters holds her performance Helium. Shelter 313 at Soesterberg Air Base once served as a refuge for personnel. Via... 

Artists bring paradoxes of Soesterberg Air Base to light at Festival #DeBasis

Art at Soesterberg airbase is almost by definition a paradox. So is the natural site that was a military base. And that is why visual art finds a perfect home here. For festival De Basis, artists from five countries were asked to enter into a dialogue with this absurd, until recently forbidden terrain. This results in beautiful contrasts. First of all in... 

Hot and sunny weekend at Soesterberg airbase: time for new experiment with The Dodo

With temperatures above 25 degrees, it will be a sweltering but also unique summer day, that 10th September. The Cultural Press Agency will be present that day and Sunday with four journalists at the former Soesterberg Air Base to report on festival De Basis. When you get there, you will make lots of nature, even more impressive war history and a theatre performance or two... 

The hottest day of this summer is dedicated to Festival De Basis at Soesterberg. Be there. #thebasis

Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 September promise to be the most beautiful days of the year. With temperatures above 25 degrees, it will be a sweltering but also unique summer day, that 10th September. The Cultural Press Agency will be present that day with four journalists at the former Soesterberg Air Base to report on festival De Basis. When you get there, make... 

Cackling fresh location artists prepare for Festival DE BASIS

With a few creative friends and a nice budget, romp around in a playground of many tens of acres of pristine nature. Surrounded by the remains of military might. It automatically makes you talk riotously. But that's how it goes sometimes. With art. So, to get right to the point: cuts are not always bad. For instance, divesting the... 

Eszter Salamon and Daniel Linehan gems of highly diverse Julidans

Holland Festival, Julidans, IT's, Over 't IJ. End-of-season theatre is always strewn across Amsterdam. Between April and September, international performance offerings migrate from Utrecht (Springdance and Festival aan de Werf) via Amsterdam to Rotterdam (Internationale Keuze). If you want to experience something of contemporary, international dance, Springdance, HF and Julidans are the places to be. [For... 

#HF11 Messy set-up of Around Robert Wyatt gets in the way of magical moments

Scene from ''Around Robert Wyatt''. Photo Annabelle Tiaffay. "Alifib" by British progrocker Robert Wyatt (b. 1945) is a song that gets under the skin. Wyatt's near-breaking voice sounds so genuinely sad that it takes your breath away. It seems an impossible task to perform "Alifib" convincingly without the master himself. Yet the French Orchestre National de Jazz gets... 

Die Jahreszeiten, in OT's version, fits perfectly into the Flemish-Dutch Opera Days

Photo: Ben van Duin In the Netherlands, the view of opera is mainly guided by concert practice. As such, the Dutch approach to this genre differs considerably from what is common in the rest of Euroa. This is evident from the fact that over the past century, investments have been made in concert halls that are among the best in the world. 

Utrecht Visual Arts Centre gets visit from Salman Rushdie, George Soros and Johnny Depp in Ventia

Image via Wikipedia It's easy to cycle past it as a Utrecht resident, the Basis voor Actuele Kunst (BAK) in Lange Nieuwstraat, but internationally few can ignore it. BAK is big. Under the leadership of artistic director Maria Hlavajova, who is as ineffable as she is sympathetic, the centre has become a leading centre in the world of contemporary art. A few... 

Liszt's music is too important to ignore

Fransz Litszt, born in 1811, explored every nook and cranny of the piano in his work, trying to incorporate every conceivable technique. As this contemporary of Carl Czerny, Niccolo Paganini and Richard Wagner was born 200 years ago this year, so there is a Liszt year. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra bit the bullet of that on Friday 28 January,... 

National Travel Opera possibly first victim of culture cuts

The rapid austerity operation of at least 200 million on the cultural sector has yet to be fleshed out, but one thing is already clear. If it were up to state secretary Halbe Zijlstra, the National Reisopera, which operates from Enschede, would stand a good chance of being killed in that operation. His request for advice to the Culture Council, sent the week before Christmas, states the following:... 

Dutch actors relive emotional childhood memories during Shelley Mitchell's Method Acting Masterclass #tf2010

"We are artists. Acting is a vocation. Not everyone understands that. Sometimes it's a lonely existence." Understanding, almost motherly, Shelley Mitchell addresses a group of Dutch actors at De Balie. The American actress and founder of The Actors Centre of San Francisco is introducing them to 'method acting' during a three-day master class. Not pretending, but becoming one with your character. A way of acting that has won many famous actors an Oscar. Think ...

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John Moran experiments with thousands of bits of sound you hear every day

Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg is velvet red. Theatre Bellevue, the beating heart of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, whorish pink. The Amsterdam Fringe, that means performances in more than 25 places. In theatres, but also on location. From 2 to 12 September 2010 Henk de Jong for The Dodo and performing arts trade journal TM in search of the pearl of the Fringe. Here he keeps a diary, and a longer article by him will appear in the next issue of TM.

On to Theatre Festival TF and International Choice Rotterdam Theatre

  The Dodo has had its baptism of fire. We now know what the basics are, and therefore what can be improved. and of course there will be others with even more suggestions. We're going to take all that into our tents this July, think and sleep on that and then go with the new insights.... 

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