Rotterdam Theatre's International Choice has always been a personal choice

Last year, it was still about 'a sense of belonging': the ability to feel at home somewhere, to know you belong somewhere. This year, the motto of the quirky Rotterdam festival De Internationale Keuze is almost diametrically opposed to this: parallel reality. Instead of one place offering warmth, the festival is now saying that that place doesn't actually matter. Every reality is relative: there is always another one next to ours, and - as it goes with realities - that one reality is as concrete to those who have just come from another reality as it is to those who were already there.

Annemie Vanackere, responsible for the programme since the start of The International Choice in 2000 and look and feel of the Rotterdam festival, sees no boundary between the personal and the universal. The cry 'a sense of belonging' was a quote from her life partner Michael Seamanwho died unexpectedly in the summer of 2009. That coming home thus took on a very wry meaning for the creator of the festival programme is obvious. Just when you start to feel at home, the warmth falls away. Last year, moreover, jhet festivaol also lacked its own home because the theatre was being renovated. Vanackere's personal tragedy also coincided with the arrival of the populism-driven and tolerated cabinet Rutte, which hates vulnerable art like the one in The International Choice from the bottom of its heart.

In June this year, Vanackere announced her departure. Next year, she will be director of a prestigious Berlin theatre, where she will have the opportunity to make and show her International Choices for a whole year. She is leaving for a parallel reality, where she will feel equally at home, and that sentiment is reflected in the programme: it is almost optimistic in tone, opening windows and doors and letting a much-needed breath of fresh air into the reality of those left behind.

This makes the festival before it has even begun a fine and worthy parting gift from Vanackere, whose contribution to Dutch theatre we will miss hard yet again.

Like last year, the Cultural Press Agency an online festival daily newspaper from The International Choice. Follow us and the festival via this site.

More information on The International Choice can be found here