What's Cooking in Belgium: it's out!

It's written, published and launched. Yes, What's Cooking in Belgium: Recipes and stories from a food-loving nation, written by yours truly and Neil Evans, is a reality…and there's far more to it than chocolate, beer and Brussels sprouts!

The book is a compilation of stories and recipes, grouped thematically, which together tell the story of Belgium and its love of food. Illustrating the recipes are fabulous photographs, for which neither Neil nor I can take any credit. For those we have the food stylist Hilde Oeyen and the photographer Diane Hendrikx to thank.

Our book in the front window!

The Brussels launch took place last week, supported by the publisher Luster, the English language bookshop Waterstones and Le Meridien hotel. We had a brilliant evening! We both really enjoyed giving our presentations, explaining how the book came about and how we went about researching and writing it, and were extremely pleased that so many people followed up with interesting questions. It was also fun signing copies of the book afterwards!

For more information about the book, please take a look at the publisher's website. For now, the easiest places to order the book are directly from the publisher, at Waterstones Brussels or simply get in touch with me.


Below are a couple of photos from our Brussels launch. Today Brussels, tomorrow...

The Sami make history in Brussels

Earlier this year I went to Inari in the far north of Finland, home to the Sami parliament. While I was there I was lucky enough to meet several Sami people, including one of the parliament's Vice-Presidents, Tiina Sanila-Aikio (pictured below). I learned a lot about the Sami culture, including how the indigenous Sami people are seeking to preserve their language and traditions.

© European Union 2013

By a stroke of luck, the Sami parliament happened to come to my hometown of Brussels this week where they made history by holding a session in the European Parliament. As you can see from the photos, they came attired in their traditional dress as they sought to remind the EU of the importance of fighting to preserve minority languages and cultures.

©Anna Jenkinson

The invitation to Brussels came from the MEP Nils Torvalds who in welcoming his Sami colleagues said, "We don't need to go very far back in history to see that the Sami people didn't have many rights in Finland...You should continue your fight. You have to save the Sami languages for your children. Without the Sami languages, the Sami culture won't be there in 100 years. We hope it will be there as long as Finland or Europe."

© European Union 2013

Nordic Dance Makes Waves in Bruges

December's here again and so is December Dance, an annual festival of contemporary dance in Bruges. This year's theme is 'Nordic Waves', and as the name suggests the focus is on dancers and choreographers from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark.

Westward Ho! choreography: Tero Saarinen
photo: Sakari Viika

The festival opened on Thursday evening with a triple bill from the Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen. While each of the three pieces was very different in character, it was striking how each of them used light in an innovative way to complement the dance and music: Westward ho! had a backdrop of the aurora borealis (Northern lights), the visual focus in Scheme of Things was a large rectangular board of lights that at times resembled disco lights and at others the light of fire and other elemental forces, while in Vox Balaenae a prism suspended from the ceiling played light games with the dance floor and the soloist's costume.

VOX BALAENAE choreography:
Tero Saarinen
photo: Sami Kulju

Can't wait until Tuesday's performance which promises to be a showstopper with choreography by the Helsinki Dance Company's Kenneth Kvarnström, combining contemporary dance with live classical music and costumes from leading Swedish and Finnish fashion designers.

Check out the full programme here. The festival runs until December 16.

Heavenly music at the KlaraFestival

4 Elements - 4 Seasons - Sommer (Dvd Extract) from Stephan Talneau on Vimeo.

The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin orchestra last night gave a performance of baroque music like I've never seen before. On the programme were 'The Elements' by French composer Jean-Fery Rebel and 'The Four Seasons' by Antonio Vivaldi, both pieces composed in the early 18th century and both brought to life not only by the musicians but also by a dancer.

The performance, which was part of the annual KlaraFestival in Belgium, was full of life, energy and movement. At times I was absorbed in the music, at others mesmerized by the choreography. Sometimes I found myself chuckling at the cheeky gestures, at other times quite simply wowed by the interaction of music and dance.

During Rebel's work, the choreographer and dancer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola played with fire and danced in water as he interpreted the music of 'The Elements'. During Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons', he wooed the solo violinist through the first signs of spring, the heat of summer, autumnal leaves and winter snowflakes. It really was a truly original and uplifting performance.

Another great concert earlier in the festival, whose theme this year is 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', was 'Kosmos'. Have a read of my review in the Wall Street Journal.

The KlaraFestival runs until September 14, so there's still time to catch a concert, be it in Brussels, Antwerp or Bruges.

Manifesta comes to Belgium

Waterschei mine, location of Manifesta9
©Anna Jenkinson

My destination: a former coal-mining complex in Genk (Limburg province, Belgium). My reason: Manifesta, the roving European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which opened at the site this weekend and runs until 30 September.

I say contemporary art, but in fact there was as much history and heritage on show as there were new creations. From coal sacks hanging from the ceiling (as devised by Marcel Duchamp for the 1938 International Surrealism Exposition in Paris) to bookshelves filled with miners' employment booklets, from sculptures made of coal to a colourful, cascading installation of fabric by Chinese artist Ni Haifeng, the exhibition takes the visitor through centuries of industrialisation to the present day.

Ni Haifeng, Para-Production, 2012
©Anna Jenkinson

Inspired by the location's coal-mining heritage, the curators sought to underline the interaction between contemporary art, historic art and heritage. The result is a well-integrated exhibition with a strong thematic focus and plenty of resonances between archive documents, historical material and contemporary installations. The legacy of Manifesta 9, according to the organizers, will be an emphasis of how deeply embedded culture is in our society.


This year's biennial, unlike its predecessors, is taking place in one location: the beautifully renovated Waterschei mine. Officially known as the Andre Dumont mine after the man who discovered coal in Limburg, the site was completed in 1924, remaining a working mine for several decades before closing its doors in 1987.

Villa Empain: Art Deco Brussels Beauty

Villa Empain, on an embassy-lined avenue in Brussels, is a beautiful Art Deco residence that could have been lost forever had the Boghossian Foundation not stepped in and restored it to its former splendour. To read the rest of my article about Villa Empain, published in Flanders Today, click here. For some beautiful photos to whet your appetite, look no further than below.

© Europa Nostra

© Europa Nostra

© Europa Nostra

The Joy of The Sixteen in Bruges

© Mark Harrison

As Harry Christophers' vocal ensemble The Sixteen sang of the glory of man and of trumpets sounding, a sense of sheer joy rose up through my body. The voices rang out and filled the Concertgebouw Brugge concert hall in what was a truly wondrous experience.

The main work on last night's programme was Brahms' 'Ein deutsches Requiem', an unusual work perhaps for a group best known for its Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. But as Christophers has said, "Since Brahms had been so influenced by the Protestant Church music of the great German master of the early Baroque, Heinrich Schuetz, the Requiem seems to be perfect material for The Sixteen."

And in case you're wondering how a small vocal ensemble pulled off a masterpiece that usually demands a large choir and full orchestra, Brahms also wrote a scaled-down version with an arrangement for piano duet: it is this version that The Sixteen performed with pianists Christopher Glynn and John Reid.

One advantage of the version with piano duet is a more intense focus on the text, with the voices at no point being drowned out by an orchestra. The tone and texture of The Sixteen's voices underscored the meaning of the words and I had the sense that even if you hadn't understood the German text, or had a translation to hand, much of the meaning would have been understood simply through the musical interpretation.

The importance of singers understanding the text of a vocal score was recently highlighted by another conductor, Collegium Vocale Gent's Philippe Herreweghe. As part of a Herreweghe celebration this month, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels showed the documentary film "Collegium Vocale, 40 years of passion" as a prelude to a performance by the choir of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. In the documentary, several Collegium Vocale singers emphasised how, for Herreweghe, the text was of primary importance. You had to use your head as well as your heart when singing with him, they said. Those words would seem to be equally applicable to Christophers and The Sixteen.