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

The enchantment of the world

Monday 22 October, 2007

Rüdiger Safranski has pulled off the improbable: his book on Romanticism is a genuinely exciting account of German intellectual history. By Ulrich Greiner
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Let us now read about famous men

Wednesday 10 October, 2007

Germany's book market is being flooded this autumn by biographies of dead male writers. Ina Hartwig examines the whys, wherefores and potential pitfalls of this latest literary craze.
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Love and two coffins

Monday 8 October, 2007

German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's "The Edge of Heaven" won the best screen play award at Cannes. Now showing in German cinemas, it is a light, bright film about death, an optimistic requiem full of little utopias. By Katja Nicodemus


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Translating the hate preacher

Monday 1 October, 2007

Director Romuald Karmakar has made a film which reveals the Islamist mindset. Based on the lessons delivered by Imam Mohammed Fazazi, whose mosque in Hamburg was visited by the 9/11 pilots, it stretches for over two hours and provides almost nothing for the eye. Precisely this, says Eckhard Fuhr, makes it so effective.
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In the cradle of the Phaedra myth

Thursday 27 September, 2007

Hans Werner Henze's fourteenth opera "Phaedra" almost cost him his life. Now the premiere has taken place in Berlin. Volker Hagedorn visited the eighty-one-year-old composer at his home above the Tiber valley, where he has lived and worked since 1953.
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Building on the past

Monday 24 September, 2007

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's new Kolumba art museum for the Archbishopric of Cologne is magnificently successful, in terms of both material presence and dignified handling of the past. Sitting astride a Gothic church, an archeological site and a 1950s chapel, it builds on a history stretching back thousands of years. By Jörg Biesler

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German Book Prize 2007 - the shortlist

Wednesday 19 September, 2007

The German Book Prize 2007, an annual award for the best German language novel, has been awarded to Julia Franck. Read an English excerpt of her book, "Lady Midday", and of the other five on the shortlist.
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Coincidence and illumination

Wednesday 19 September, 2007

Cologne Cathedral looks back at a long and eventful history. The inauguration of Gerhard Richter's stained glass window for the South Transept adds a new chapter, bright with 72-colour, frame-breaking abstraction. By Petra Kipphoff
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The endless in and out

Monday 17 September, 2007

The third anti-porn campaign of the women's feminist magazine Emma is absolutely necessary and, at the same time, hopelessly old-fashioned. You can't use the tools of the 70s to fight the pornographication of today's market - at least not if you want to win. By Iris Radisch
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"We have stars but no sky"

Thursday 13 September, 2007

"Yella", the new film by director Christian Petzold, hits the screens in Germany today. He talks to Christiane Peitz about working with actress Nina Hoss, abandoning Hitchcock, and his personal bugbear, the amphibian film.
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"Being high, being free, terrorism's gotta be"

Thursday 6 September, 2007

Thirty years ago, the kidnapping of German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction signalled the beginning of the Deutscher Herbst, the highpoint of German terrorism. Arno Widmann looks back on the culture of violence in the 1970s.
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The impertinent muse

Wednesday 5 September, 2007

Ann Cotten is the poster girl for Germany's poetry jet set. She publishes manifestos at 6 in the morning, pours through dictionaries of foreign words and takes very fruitful lunch breaks. By Ina Hartwig
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Fear of the standstill

Thursday 23 August, 2007

The Berlin festival Tanz im August presents human swarms, wailing feedback and the dark side of the pas de deux. This is good for dance. By Katrin Bettina Müller
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Shooting down the system

Wednesday 22 August, 2007

A document recently made public testifies that the secret police of the GDR were instructed to shoot anyone attempting to escape over the border to West Germany. While the fact is already widely known, the publication has unleashed a new debate about the shootings at the wall. East German author Reinhard Jirgl explains why. (Image © Peter-Andreas Hassiepen)
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"The time for philosophising is over"

Monday 20 August, 2007

Ernst Tugendhat, philosopher and critic of German pseudo-profundity, talks to Ulrike Herrmann about the fear of death, Heidegger, anti-Semitism and unfounded speculations in brain research.

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