First performances Holland Festival 2024 announced

Ticket sales will start on 28 November for the first four performances for the 77th edition of the Holland Festival.  

11,000 Saiten ('11,000 strings') by composer Georg Friedrich Haas is a spectacular sound experience at Amsterdam's Gashouder, by fifty pianists and the ensemble Klangforum Wien. Choreographer Trajal Harrell returns with The Romeo, his new large-scale dance performance. The Bird of a Thousand Voices is a musical and visual performance inspired by an Armenian folk tale by Tigran Hamasyan, Ruben van Leer and Boris Acket. Associate artist 2024, Brazilian theatre director and filmmaker Christiane Jatahy, presents the bold new work Hamlet, a co-production with L'Odéon - Théâtre de l'Europe. Jatahy is thus making her first contribution to the festival with her own work. She is also contributing to the creation of part of the festival programme.

11,000 Saiten  

Fifty pianos in a large circle at the Gashouder in Amsterdam. They form the starting point for this composition, sometimes of ethereal beauty, at other times swelling menacingly to a thundering roar. 11,000 Saiten by grandmaster Georg Friedrich Haas is a work for ensemble and fifty pianos, all tuned slightly differently.  

The Romeo  

Imagine if there was one dance for everyone, inspired by endless possibilities for how the world could have been, and by a name everyone knows. With The Romeo Harrell depicts this dance for people of all backgrounds, genders, generations and for every circumstance. Harrell, one of the leading choreographers of his generation, draws influence from a variety of examples, from contemporary dance, voguing, Japanese butoh and ancient Greek theatre to performance art.  

The Bird of a Thousand Voices  

An ancient Armenian folk tale about the search for harmony in the world comes to life in a multimedia concert with a visual design that stimulates the imagination. Tigran Hamasyan, fuses his compositions and improvisations with traditional music from his native Armenia. For The Bird of a Thousand Voices, he collaborates with singer Areni Agbabian and two innovative Dutch visual artists: director Ruben van Leer and visual artist and scenographer Boris Acket.  

Hamlet  

In Christiane Jatahy's interpretation of Shakespeare's classic, Hamlet, after having been the epitome of male melancholy for four centuries, wakes up as a mature woman who wants to set her past straight.This new Hamlet faces violent power structures, not forgetting the acts of violence she herself committed in the past, and feels a deep desire to radically overthrow them.