Holland Festival 2023: a programme with great artistic scope and new audiences

The 76th edition of the Holland Festival opened on 1 June with Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Simon McBurney and closes on 1 July with Requiem for Nature by Tan Dun, Pierre Audi and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. With over 80,000 visitors, an average attendance of over 80% and many sold-out theatres, the festival was very well attended, by a remarkably diverse audience, which was often wildly enthusiastic afterwards, or, as befits a festival, engaged in a lively discussion about what it had just experienced. The large-scale, musical film installation Euphoria by Julian Rosefeldt ran for 17 days and attracted more than 10,000 visitors. In Donau, one of the new festival venues, visitors were carried away into the late hours in the large-scale, multidisciplinary site performance Respublika by director Łukasz Twarkowski. Together with the Hartwig Art Foundation, the festival presented the world premiere Indra's Net of living legend Meredith Monk. Associate artist of this festival edition was singer, composer and visual artist ANOHNI. She inspired an important part of the programming, both with her own work, through collaborations and through discussion topics she brought up.

Connection and audience broadening

Director Emily Ansenk: 'ANOHNI is a true connector. She has given the festival many handles to think more inclusively and from different perspectives. This created new entry points for comprehensive programming with a very wide scope, from avant-garde of Ribingurumu Metamorufuoshisu from Toshiki Okada and Dai Fujikura to very accessible programmes such as Wuthering Heights By Emma Rice. From large-scale performances such as Bros From Romeo Castellucci to small intimate productions such as Epitaph by Ed Atkins. This appealed to a particularly diverse audience from young to old and from all kinds of backgrounds, which was clearly reflected in the halls. Both visitors and makers were exceptionally engaged with the festival and with each other this year. It is a line that the festival is keen to continue in the future.'

Associate artist ANOHNI

The question that ANOHNI always focuses on is "What is really happening?" ("What is really happening?"). It is a question that applies to many fields, from feminism and ecological disaster to the consequences of colonialism, exploitation and capitalism. Through this question, she seamlessly connected her own work and thinking to local stories and managed to engage international and local makers and like-minded people in empathetic and content-rich ways.

ANOHNI created the exhibition especially for the festival SHE WHO SAW BEAUTIFUL THINGS, at House Willet Holthuysen. She was the driving force behind special collaborations with makers from home and abroad and local women with positions in the public domain, such as during the three-day Future Feminism programme with dance and music performances, an exhibition, talks and more. Through the well-attended location project The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat), including music by William Basinski performed by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, she invited the audience to reflect on the fraught history of Amsterdam's Gerrit van der Veenstraat, where she herself lived briefly as a child.

ANOHNI also brought forward other makers such as writer, singer and activist adrienne maree brown and video artist Lynette Wallworth, CocoRosie, Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine and Laurie Anderson. And she initiated a series of short interventions by Dutch 'elders' for various performances. These esteemed Dutch elders contributed to the fulfilment of her desire to establish a deep and genuine connection between artist and audience.

Accessibility and streams 

The broad programme was deepened with a wide range of introductions, follow-up talks, education projects and encounters between artists and audiences, both live and online. Several programme elements were accessible free of charge: The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat), Opera in the Park, Like a River at Galaxy Expo, The Worm by Ed Atkins at the Hartwig Art Foundation and several talks at festival centre De Balie and as part of Future Feminism. Podcasts about the programme can be listened to on HF Digital, among others. Streams of the shows Indra's Net By Meredith Monk and What's Your Heaven by CocoRosie can still be viewed online until 2 July.

Facts and figures

From 1 June to 1 July 2023, Holland Festival presented a total of 40 productions with over 200 performances, including 8 world premieres and 32 Dutch premieres. Six makers were introduced to the Netherlands: Lucas Avendaño, Lynette Wallworth, adrienne maree brown, Łukasz Twarkowski, Raven Chacon and Emma Rice.