Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

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 more

GoetheInstitute

Secrets of the grotto

Friday 29 July, 2005

"Die Gezeichneten" (The Marked Ones) by Franz Schreker, which is playing at this year's Salzburg festival, has got critic Peter Hagmann hot under the collar. For him, the opera vibrates, mounts and climaxes.
read more

Hero to zero

Wednesday 27 July, 2005

This year's Bayreuth Festival opened with a new interpretation of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" by Swiss director Christoph Marthaler. The stakes were high; the last Tristan, by Heiner Müller, enjoyed iconographic status. And for Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, this year's performance was an unspectacular failure, with the notable exception of Nina Stemme's brilliant Isolde.
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 26 July, 2005

In the New York Review of Books, Peter W. Galbraith worries that the Schiites could take over Iraq - democratically. The Spectator celebrates the Greatness of Britain. Polityka fears that Anti-Islamism could become the new Anti-Semitism. Al-Ahram presents two new books on Al-Jazeera. In Nepszabadsag, Peter Bartok explains why Duke Blaubart doesn't need to have any more than three wives. In The Guardian, Jane Stevenson talks about her experiences in the biggest men's club of the world. And the New York Times visits an old age home for laboratory chimps.
read more

Between the Sex Pistols and the Koran

Tuesday 26 July, 2005

In the wake of terrorist attacks, people who plead for a dialogue between religions are avoiding the key question: why do Muslims become terrorists? By Zafer Senocak
read more

Goya's ghouls

Thursday 21 July, 2005

Berlin stages the most comprehensive show of the Spanish master ever seen in the German-speaking world. Stamina is needed to brave the horrors of his uncannily contemporary vision, but, pleads the curator, "Don't forget the happiness of Goya!" By Claudia Schwartz.
read more

"Don't touch me" Mozart

Thursday 21 July, 2005

After turning his back on the opera eleven years ago and dedicating himself entirely to cinema, cult director Patrice Chereau has returned to the Festival international d'art lyrique in Aix en Provence with an impeccable staging of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte". But why? By Claus Spahn
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 19 July, 2005

In Espresso, Umberto Eco explains how Catholic priests protect their religion from fundamentalism. Outlook India explains to the Brits why there is so such thing as British Asians. In Spiegel, Ian McEwan gets annoyed about the egocentricity of the anti-Iraq demonstrators. The Spectator highlights the communist career of the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. In the Novel Obs, ethnologist Philippe Descola explains what we can learn from the Jivaro. The TLS presents the Wittgenstein of music history. The ES magazine celebrates Transylvanian writer Jehan Cavus. In New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff learns about the universality of human rights from Iranian students.
read more

How to empty the room in one minute

Monday 18 July, 2005

Sony has already packed its bags and left Berlin but the music scene is unconcerned. Electronic music in the German capital is in the hands of a lively network of small labels, experimental, alive and kicking. By Oliver Ilan Schulz
read more

The big lie

Monday 18 July, 2005

Sociologist Ulrich Beck explains why German politicians' idea of full employment is an illusion and why Kafka's works belong to the classics of sociology.
read more

Hot rubber and no boots

Wednesday 13 July, 2005

In Roskilde, people don't wait for Bob Geldof to provide them with live music. Every year, those willing to do without sleep and toilets take part in the raucous ritual of the Roskilde Festival. And proceeds go to a worthy cause. This year, everything was great, except the music. By Andreas Becker
read more

German Elections Special

The results of the federal elections have left Germany in something of a political muddle. After both mainstream parties (SPD and CDU) declared themselves victor, the coalition negotiations began. By October 18, a new chancellor has to have been named. We've put together a dossier of relevant articles on the elections and their aftermath: Arno Widmann writes that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has dropped his media mask, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht describes the penchant for paradox hanging over the entire election, Jörg Lau runs over the spectrum of protagonists. Eva Menasse and Tanja Dückers debate the role writers should take in the election campaign...
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 12 July, 2005

Foreign affairs warns against Islamic attackers with European passports. Pascal Bruckner asks in Le Figaro whether Europeans have lost their taste for freedom. In Plus-Minus, Agnes Heller calls terrorists frustrated intellectuals with little talent for anything else. Andrzej Stasiuk marvels In Espresso at the symbolic rise in status of the Polish plumber. In Elet es Irodalom, György Konrad celebrates the hedonism of the European brain. And Al Ahram looks at the transglobal hiphop umma.
read more

"I like being several people"

Monday 11 July, 2005

"I don't stop being Turkish when I'm in the USA, and I'm also an American when I'm in Istanbul." Turkish novelist and professor of gender studies in Tucson, Arizona Elif Shafak talks to Arno Widmann about multiple identities, the joys of heterodoxy and the dangers of getting comfortable.
read more

German coverage of the London bombings

Friday 8 July, 2005

A small dossier on yesterday's terrorist attacks in London from the German point of view.
read more

What do the conservatives want?

Thursday 7 July, 2005

If Germany's conservatives win the coming elections in September they'll be more powerful than ever before. But what do they actually want? By Gustav Seibt
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 5 July, 2005

Jack Lang begs the "pardon" of the Polish in Gazeta Wyborcza. Plus - Minus looks at those lost in the tea leaves of Kalingrad's future. Elet es Irodalom traces the shifting of the blame in Eastern Europe. Der Spiegel finds bone-stealing grannies in Naples and Foreign Policy enjoys picking out US-lovin stereotypes. Al Ahram Weekly smiles on the future of Egyptian e-books and Outlook India compares and contrasts V.S. Naipaul with Pankaj Mishra.
read more

Who are Germany's new young conservatives?

Tuesday 5 July, 2005

Now that Gerhard Schröder has admitted failure to himself and the rest of the world, German conservatives are being summoned back from political Siberia and pushed into the spotlight. But are they even still alive? By Mariam Lau
read more

Siebeck's superstars

Friday 1 July, 2005

Wolfram Siebeck rounds off his culinary cruise through London's eating establishments, provoked by the Guardian's somewhat Anglocentric list of the world's fifty best restaurants.
read more

Damned to expertocracy

Friday 1 July, 2005

The end of democracy? Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk talks with Marius Meller about French revoltism, British phlegm and Europe's national hallucination chambers.
read more

Writers warn about Linkspartei

Friday 1 July, 2005

A group of German writers have signed a public condemnation against what it sees as dangerously populist sentiments behind the new 'Linkspartei'.
read more