Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
more
Young German playwrights lament the butchering of their texts, while Thomas Ostermeier of Berlin's Schaubühne insists that theatre has the power to change lives (and end marriages). The Homeworks arts festival in Beirut is evidence of a renaissance of Arab art that's going largely unnoticed. And the "Club 8" of Romanian authors writes against the grain in their country.
read more
The FAZ takes a melancholy
stroll around Berlin, "a workers' city with no work".
Sociologist Ulrich Beck looks at a society quite content without
sociology and vice versa. Die Welt longs for a successor to dandy
Count Harry Kessler to sink their teeth into German bad taste. The taz
looks at the German obsession with their Chancellor and at William
Forsythe's new dance piece "Clouds over Cranach".
read more
Barbara Duden has a hard time making sense of how 18th century women talked to their doctors. George M. Oswald pooh poohs today's pop writers who pose as serious authors. Ukrainian theatre director Andrey Zholdak says the world is a plague. And the NZZ sheds light on Turkey's relationship to the EU.
read more
Isabelle Huppert stuns the audience in Sarah Kane's "4.8 Psychosis", Pete Doherty turns barfing on his audience into an art form and Ralph Fiennes defends the butchering of John Le Carre's "The Constant Gardener". Chilean author Jorge Edwards writes on the "perfect second-in-command" Augusto Pinochet on his 90th birthday and Swedish publisher Svante Weyler surveys the slayed heads of state of the Congo. Plus mixed takes on Zaha Hadid's science centre in Wolfsburg.
read more
Iranian writer Navid Kermani is ashamed of his country's new president and pleased that nobody can pronounce his name. French pop author Camille de Toledo considers the riots in France to have been poetic revolt. Cecilia Bartoli bewitches the critics in Berlin and a new double retrospective of Michel Majerus takes the computer aesthetic into a further dimension.
read more
The feuilletons have a lot to say about Bernd Neumann, Germany's not exactly flamboyant new Minister of State for Culture. The FAZ explains that Germany's first woman chancellor is a man. Andrzej Przewoznik wants to put World War II expulsions back in the context of European history. Isabelle Huppert tells how standing still on stage is more thrilling than a lot of acting jobs. And rapper Fefe wants to take the gangsta out of rap.
read more
Germany's new chancellor Angela Merkel's former office colleague reminisces about their illuminating coffee breaks in the GDR. For Andreas Willisch, Germany's ticking bomb is the skinhead not the immigrant. The NZZ reports from a taboo-breaking conference on death sponsored by Berlin's foremost undertakers. And the FR covers an exhibition of artist Hundertwasser's lavishly detailed but uninhabitable architecture.
read more
On the anniversary of the Nuremburg trials,
Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld reminisces. Salman Rushdie calls for an Islamic Enlightenment. No one in Vienna bats an eyelid at Hermann Nitsch's six-hour gore performance in the Burgtheater and the debate continues on Beck publishers' decision not to publish Luciano Canfora's book on democracy.
read more
Islamicist Bruce Lawrence explains that much of the appeal of Osama bin Laden's terrorist ideology is its elegant formulation in classical Arabic. More and more Germans are being buried under trees in graveforests. Georg Klein defends soccer despite the kicks, jabs, spit and insults one team hurls at the other. And a cold November pedestrian zone in Hessen provides the perfect Bollywood backdrop.
read more
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman regrets that there is no space left for human and material garbage, art historian Horst Bredekamp curses the man behind Berlin's new main train station and feminist Alice Schwarzer understands why there are no women among the rioters in France. Pete Doherty talks about his band Babyshambles and the duress of being a boy poet in England. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories find ever more fertile ground. And classical music booms in China.
read more
Ukrainian director Andrey Zholdak tells how he was forced to voluntarily resign after staging Romeo and Juliet. The Berliner Philharmoniker talks about touring China today and 25 years ago. Trier is bending over backwards to create a "Marx Factor" in Chinese. Detlef Felken won't publish a book because "Adenauer was no Nazi". And the critics savour the goblet of fire of the latest Harry Potter film.
read more
Die Welt identifies a certain "clandestine schadenfreude" in the German media coverage of the French riots. The curator at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow cites historical precedent for why she should keep her stolen goods. Composer Mathias Spahlinger returns to tonality, filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne can't keep symbolism at bay, and the castrati myth is squashed once and for all.
read more
The feuilletons battle it out to explain the rioting: gender issue, reaction to apartheid or assimilation, French-style. And there's signs of hope in Evry, a French suburb not going up in flames. The German news magazine Der Spiegel is shaken by internecine fighting. Santa Claus is autopsied in an exhibition of Serbian art. And a gangsta magazine reviews the best getaway car tires.
read more
As the World Summit on the Information Society is set to kick off in Tunis, the NZZ asks if the US is gagging the world wide web. Ukrainian poet Tymofiy Havryliv weighs the pros and cons of the Orange Revolution. Chinese sociologist Wang Hui says you no longer have to be a dissident to criticise the goings on there. And despite it's weaknesses, Madonna's old-style instinctive eroticism gets a thumbs up in the SZ.
read more
Andre Glucksmann talks about the atmosphere of nihilism in France, while Mehdi Belhaj Kacem sees similarities between Nicolas Sarkozy and Al Pacino. Die Zeit would rather not see Macbeth portrayed as the Godfather and Patrick Süskind is not sure he wants to see his book "Perfume" as a film - but he's going to. And in the Beijing opera, audiences can't get enough of Wagner.
read more
Sociologist Alain Touraine tells the French that they need to change their attitude. Writer Günter de Bruyn tells the West Germans to open their eyes and stop the psycho-babble. The FAZ accuses Lars von Trier of didactic rhetoric and DIY ideology. And Philip Gröning's documentary about Carthusian monks offers respite in silence.
read more
The feuilletons continue to struggle with the question of why Paris is burning. The media, the political apparatus, history, poverty and school teachers are all to blame. And while Germany's suburbs remain peaceful, Die Welt reports on how the country is successfully desecrating its cultural heritage.
read more
The German feuilletons are full of the burning banlieues. The NZZ traces the lust for violence to computer games, the SZ looks to rappers for answers. The taz profiles Chinese mega-moderator Yue-Sai Kan, the NZZ sings the praises of Brigitte Kronauer's cushion-plumping women. And pop theorist Diedrich Diederichsen puts the story straight on Popes and pop stars.
read more
The SZ is riled that the GDR is being written off as a "footnote" in German history. The NZZ is fascinated by the mysterious knotted Quipu texts found in Caral, and tickled by a majestic lame duck in Norway. The Berliner Zeitung talks to the makers of "Lost Children" about child soldiers in Uganda and the FR broods on melancholy.
read more
Xenophobia thrives in Europe - Nicolas Sarkozy wants to purify the Parisian suburbs and a new Dutch dictionary provides a new and improved vocabulary for talking about the problem. German scientists continue to pick meticulously through the Buddha's rubble in Bamian. And the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart literally sucks in its visitors.
read more
The FR finds the dissolving coalition talks in Berlin "not tragic, not funny, just feeble." The FAZ describes the post-earthquake hurly-burly in Kashmir. The NZZ looks back on the flourishing Jewish community in wartime Shanghai. The taz remembers Pier Paolo Pasolini's sexy if plebby idols. And Die Welt carries a portrait of Estonian four-places-at-the-same-time conductor Paavo Järvi.
read more
Tahir Abbas writes in the NZZ that Europe's radicalised Muslim youth have been left in the lurch by their parents' generation. Die Welt hopes Berlin's city palace will take inspiration from Dresden's Frauenkirche. The FAZ marvels at the sheer violence in Willem de Kooning's work, and the Dylanesque charm of actress Julia Hummer in her new role as rock singer. And the taz unpicks the stitches in the Rosemarie Trockel retrospective in Cologne.
read more
RSS
Twitter
