Holland Festival presents scalable programme: It's about time.  

A night walk where, for once, it is not about talking to each other, or exercising the muscles, but about being very aware of where you are. Mindfulness as a theatre experience so, and if all the coronagraph remains against us, the only part of the Holland Festival that can go on live because of sufficient distance and outside. It hopefully doesn't have to get that bad, with the 2021 edition, number 74 already. There are 39 live programme items ready for June, and you should want to be there. Live, because these are events you rarely see. 

Slow Burners, Jochem Valkenburg, music programmer, calls the Holland Festival's offering: 'Performances that at first sight you may not understand at all, but which stay in your head until - sometimes months later - the penny drops.' I can agree from experience, although the penny often drops quite early. That is what art is capable of and that is what we all crave. Although culturally we are so starved that an hour of Snollebollekes live also feels like water in the Sahara for some. 

Clarity

Emily Ansenk, as of corona director of the Netherlands' most prestigious performing arts festival, does hope for clarity from the government. After all, this year's programme is scalable, unmissable in beauty and as coronaproof as theatre can be. And it is very coronaproof. 'It is not about thousands of people in a square, but theatre-goers who come in much smaller numbers. In venues where everything is geared to safety.' 

Ryuichi Sakomoto and Giselle Vienne are this year's associate artists of the festival, and even though the former will not be performing live due to serious health problems, they have teamed up with artistic brains Annemieke Keurentjes and Jochem Valkenburg to create something beautiful. Expect stillness where greatness was common, and grandeur where it is possible. Like the opera Time at the Gashouder of the Westergasfabriek. With scalable audiences.

Soft Valkyrie

Or this one: Wagner as podcast. The vocals whispered, the sets described, the music hushed like a piano, so all perfect for the intimate experience a podcast offers. Something to look forward to already, that Soft Valkyrie. Just like that performance Giselle Vienne once again highlights how essential live parties are.

The small, scalable Holland Festival also features Dutch talent. This year, its Bogaert&Vanderschoot guest, and their work - often uncomfortable but irresistible, closely approximates that of associate artist Vienne. 

What I'm most looking forward to, apart from those performances, and the live feel? The Sheep Song, by FC Bergman. And, of course, the screening of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence on big screen. Featuring two of my idols. Bowie and Sakomoto. But that makes sense. 

You can find the Holland Festival press release here, and the programme is online. Ticket sales from mid-May.