Holland Festival 2025 opens 11 June with Thai AI dance, Butoh, a focus on the vulnerable body, a special three-week project and a performance in The Hague 

Holland Festival 2025 opens on 11 June at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam with the European premiere of Cyber Subin by Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun. Dancers and avatars dance together in a co-created choreography by AI that reinterprets the traditional Thai Khon dance.  

For the first time in 35 years, the Holland Festival is back in The Hague (Amare), this time with Star Returning by Samoan visionary theatre maker Lemi Ponifasio. The timeless stories of the Chinese Yi people come to life in Ponifasio's distinctive stylised, musical theatrical language.  

The final weekend of the festival features no fewer than 10 eye-catching performances, including ROHTKO by Poland's Łukasz Twarkowski, Extra Life by former associate artist Gisèle Vienne and the world premiere of Eric de Vroedt's The seasons, a seven-hour theatrical experience based on Ali Smith's novels.  

During the intervening weeks, the special project Welcome to Asbestos Hall by associate artist Trajal Harrell and the VR opera From Dust by Michel van der Aa can be visited almost daily. Coproductions include the long-awaited Trilogia Cadela Força - Capítulo II: The Brotherhood by Brazilian Carolina Bianchi, in which she examines male codes of conduct, and Bérénice by Romeo Castellucci, an unforgettable monologue by Isabelle Huppert.  

In total, the 78th edition of the Holland Festival features 43 leading productions, with 143 performances, at 17 venues. There are 16 co-productions, 4 in-house productions, 14 world premieres and 22 Dutch premieres. 22 Makers make their debut in the festival: from grand productions with dozens of participants to intimate solos close to the audience.   

The entire programme is now on www.hollandfestival.nl  

Associate artist 2025 Trajal Harrell presents Welcome to Asbestos Hall 

Since 2019, the festival has worked with associate artists who show their own work and, in conversation with the programme team, suggest opportunities to expand and deepen the programme. The associate artist in 2025 is American choreographer Trajal Harrell (Douglas, 1973). 

‘Through butoh, which embraces old age and decay as a part of life, I found that I want to talk about weakness. … Fragility is not victimhood; it can be present at the same time as strength… I want to show weakness as a fundamental quality that unites all human beings.’ Trajal Harrell 

Since 2013, Harrell has been exploring the relationship between modern dance and butoh, a post-war Japanese minimalist and committed dance form, which focuses on the imperfect body, pain and mortality. In 2025, he completes his butoh research with Welcome To Asbestos Hall, inspired by butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata's original cultural meeting place and studio Asbestos Hall in 1960s Tokyo. In Welcome to Asbestos Hall, Harrell shares new work at various stages of development and engages visitors in the creative process, in so-called 'Visits'.  

There is also an extensive programme of guest performances, talks and workshops. In addition to this exciting new project, Harrell also contributed a number of artists and makers related to him by whom he is inspired: DD Dorvillier, Takao Kawaguchi and composer jazz musician Craig Taborn. Amsterdam-based pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama will host a special programme with local residents: We Are the House: Salon.  

Welcome to Asbestos Hall will take place at Likeminds, Amsterdam North. Harrell will also perform existing work at the Stedelijk Museum: Caen Amour (2016) and Sister or He buried the Body (2022). 

Dance and vulnerable bodies as means of artistic expression 

The focus of this year's Holland Festival is on dance, movement, fluidity and the body as a means of artistic expression. When does movement become dance, what is the guiding, animating mechanism behind it? In many ways, artists are challenging the idea of the perfect (dancing) body, and juxtaposing it with radical expression. 

The fragility of the body plays a role in the performances of Gisèle Vienne and Carolina Bianchi. Dividing lines between an ice block and the human body disappear in The Second Body by Ola Maciejewska. And the musicians of Asko|Schönberg themselves become part of the choreography in Tero Saarinen's Study for Life, his tribute to composer Kaija Saariaho. The Paraorchestra is a collective of musicians, both with and without disabilities. They perform for the first time in the Netherlands with Drone Refractions at The Concertgebouw, a performance in which the audience can be among the musicians. The dance performance Told by my mother by Lebanese Ali Chahrour highlights the emotional weight mothers carry in their bodies and voices. 

Cultural cross-pollinations  

This year's edition once again features a rich palette of international exchanges and cross-pollinations. Artists from Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, united in the collective Small Island Big Song, pay tribute to the resilience and culture of their habitats in One Ocean. In Ring of our Time of the Amsterdam-based World Opera Lab, 40 artists from Nigeria, Iraq, Indonesia, Mexico and northern Europe jointly present a new opera. Composer Joël Bons, with Atlas Orchestra 40 top musicians from Asia, the Middle East and Europe together on one stage for the first time. Forbidden Echoes by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra featuring Kurdish singer Hani Mojtahedy, German producer Andi Toma and compositions by Golfam Khayam and Nader Adabnejad promises a concert full of melancholy, beauty and fierce protest.   

Art about art  

Paintings, a sculpture and the legacy of a choreographer: these are the sources of inspiration for a number of works in the festival (#kunstoverkunst). Takao Kawaguchi draws on archive footage of choreographer and butoh founder Kazuo Ohno. Marc Vanrunxt, with Freie Form French West's sculpture of the same name as a starting point. Otemba - Daring Women by Misato Mochizuki, Jan van den Berg and Janine Brogt, is based on a 17th-century painting by Jacob Coeman and ROHTKO by Łukasz Twarkowski on the spectacular case involving a forged painting by Mark Rothko.  

Nightlife  

As in previous years, the festival also offers an extensive night programme. Besides the house DJs and a grand opening party in Welcome to Asbestos Hall, the programme includes a club night in Parallel in which The Holland Festival and Africadelic celebrate 750 years of Amsterdam while reflecting on 50 years of 'on'dependence (1975-2025) of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé & Príncipe, the Comoros and Suriname, with various live performances and DJ sets. 

Familiar and renewed collaborations 

This year, the National Opera & National Ballet once again have performances on the programme as part of the Holland Festival. The National Opera performs Boris Godunov, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. The National Ballet performs no less than two productions during the festival: Other Dances, with choreography by Jerome Robbins, Ted Brandsen and David Dawson, as well as In C By Sasha Waltz.   

The renewed collaboration with NTR ZaterdagMatinee in Het Concertgebouw results in two performances. When we were trees is a concert by Ensemble Resonanz with cellist and rasperformer Abel Selaocoe, including Selaocoe's own work and a world premiere by Kate Moore. The world premiere of Atlas Orchestra is an initiative by Joël Bons created in collaboration with the Oranjewoud Festival. 

Accessibility and ticketing  

The Holland Festival wants to be accessible to everyone. Therefore, the festival offers various discounts for young people through the HF Young Favourites performances, and many performances have discounts for students and school pupils, and CJP pass holders. There are last-minute and rush tickets, which are announced through the socials. And as every year, there are free events such as Opera in the Park and parts of Welcome to Asbestos Hall.