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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,... 

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Interview Jiří Kylián on Free Fall in Korzo

Jiří Kylián: 'The silence of a photograph, I love that'

With Free Fall, Jiří Kylián shows his photographic works for the first time. He talks enthusiastically about his discoveries, his inspiration, and Sabine. The house in The Hague where Jiří Kylián has lived for more than 30 years radiates joy of life. Warm colour tones, fragrant flowers, classicist furnishings yet cosy. Unmistakably the 'touch of a woman.' That woman is Sabine Kupferberg, the life partner and... 

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'Alva'. Unknown stage work by Vondel discovered

This was our April fool's joke for 2016. Thanks for sharing! During renovation work at the Stadsbank van Lening building on Amsterdam's Oudezijds Voorburgwal, a manuscript of a work of poetry that has since been attributed by literary historians to Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) has recently turned up. It concerns a rough, unfinished version of a play entitled 'Alva' and is dated around... 

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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... 

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Frans Budé: 'A poem has to have a story'

In his recent collection Achter het verdwijnpunt, death plays an important role. Poet Frans Budé lost no fewer than four poet friends in a short time and honoured them in verse. The 70-year-old poet himself still writes as avidly as in his younger years: in addition to an occasional collection on the Maas, to be published in May, he wrote poems for the upcoming exhibition... 

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Holland Festival 2016: urgent, challenging and inviting

Never before has the Holland Festival placed itself at the centre of society as it is today. The 2016 programme is steeped in the turbulent times in which we live. The Netherlands holds the presidency of the European Union this spring. Artistic director Ruth Mackenzie has taken this fact unflinchingly to give 'Europe' a wide place in the programming. In presenting... 

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connie palms

A Saturday night with Connie Palmen, Adriaan van Dis and Socrates. #wu16, #wn16

Next time, there will be 10 people queuing for a hotseat, 100 online viewers and dozens of live spectators in the foyer. At least I hope so, because only then will experimenting with new forms, apps and devices make sense, of course. At the second Winternachten night, Saturday 16 January at the Theater aan het Spui, we had slightly fewer viewers than... 

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Winternachten: a fascinating and amusing evening of talking about Evil #wu16

Literature is not a means to bring about political change, but to change people. That is exactly what he aims for with his books, Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswani said yesterday at Winternachten, where his new novel The Automobile Club of Cairo was presented. That is probably how visitors to the literary festival at the end of the evening also came to... 

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Winternachten is about something

Hello Darkness is the theme of the international literary festival Winternachten, this coming weekend in The Hague. It takes guts, in a time when everything has to be fun and cosy and we prefer not to spend our free time dealing with misery or 'heavy topics'. That is why we love Winternachten, because that festival really goes... 

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Susan Neiman chief guest at Winternachten 2016: Why the atomic bomb really fell on Hiroshima

Propaganda is not just something that occurs in, say, Russia, but also in the West - more so than we ourselves realise. For example, is it widely believed today that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to capitulate and thus end World War II, nothing could be further from the truth. In that respect, Germany goes... 

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Nieuwpoort 05 © Sanne Peper _ Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Alum plays "1600, Battle of Nieuwpoort": promising start to historical series

Today it was announced that the Gijsbrecht tradition, revived since five years, will end again due to lack of subsidy. A shame, of course, although we don't have to mourn the end of this Amsterdam custom, which has existed since 1638. After all, the play is totally unplayable, historically completely off the mark and all in all a rather pretentious representation of the history of... 

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Stefan Hertmans: 'Poetry is my way of digesting the world'

The Flemish author Stefan Hertmans (1951) is best known in the Netherlands as a novelist, especially since he won the AKO Literature Prize and the Gouden Boekenuil Publieksprijs with his beautiful autobiographical novel Oorlog en terpentijn (War and turpentine). But besides being a writer of novels, collections of short stories, essays and theatre texts, Hertmans is above all a poet. He wrote the Poetry Gift for the upcoming Poetry Week, which starts at the end of January.... 

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Bowie expo in Groningen more compact than the British original, but well worth seeing

Cultural philosopher Ad Verbrugge has never had very much with David Bowie. He told that at the beginning of his lecture, Friday night 18 December, as a special attraction of the David Bowie Late Night at the Groninger Museum. That was the first disappointment for the assembled fans. More were to follow. Indeed, Ad Verbrugge had not quite prepared for his... 

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Legendary alto Aafje Heynis died

'So, that one is hanging again', the alto Aafje Heynis is said to have exclaimed after a performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion. The statement is probably apocryphal and has also been attributed to soprano Jo Vincent, but fits perfectly with her typically Dutch down-to-earthness*, which was at odds with her heartfelt performances of very diverse music. In 1983, she quit until... 

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Welcome back to Amsterdam Huang Ruo!

Saturday 13 December, the NTR Saturday matinee presents the world premiere of Unscrolled for piano and orchestra by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo (Hainan, 1976), with pianist Emanuele Arciuli and the Residentie Orkest conducted by Emilio Pomàrico. This kicks off his three-month stay as composer in residence of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Ruo is the first to receive this honour,... 

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Idfa viewing tip 27 November: Perhaps the weirdest and fiercest film of the festival

It doesn't often happen to me that just under 30 years after seeing a film, I still remember in what state I left the theatre. Supreme confusion it was. Was all this real? As a filmmaker, were you allowed to hit your interviewees? Was it staged? It was too horrifying to imagine everything really happening 

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In the theatre, all fear disappears

I hesitated for a while whether to report on the theatre workshop offered to Syrian refugees by Koon Theatre on Monday 9 November, as part of Dancing on the Edge. During the workshop, the refugees prepared a short presentation to be shown in Stadsschouwburg Utrecht on Friday 13 November, prior to the theatre performance Above Zero. The reason... 

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"This piece already carries history with it"

Terezín, 1944. In the most deplorable conditions imaginable, Victor Ullmann completes the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. The camp authorities forbid a first performance after a few rehearsals. The unmistakable allegory on Hitler and his downfall leads to one of the rare forms of censorship in the camp, which the Nazis showed as an example to the Red Cross.... 

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'Taking part in an invasion is a thousand times harder than writing a book about it'

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 to the author. Author Anke Manschot. ©Sasja Jansen Historical j...... 

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The five shows you must see in September

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 ... 

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Writer Jonas Gardell: 'I slept with death'.

With the completion of the trilogy A Story of Love, Illness and Death, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, a heavy burden fell from his heart for Swedish writer Jonas Gardell. As one of the few in his circle of friends, he escaped the dance of death. Pure luck, he says. 'I slept with death.' Also, the last... 

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