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SPECIALS

News about events and festivals, backed by the industry but independent in content. Find out more: info@cultureelpersbureau.nl

John Zorn by Scott Irvine

November Music 2023 focuses on top and mid-career international creators - November 1 to 12 in 's-Hertogenbosch

This year, with the arrival of John Zorn, Barbara Hannigan, Jennifer Walshe, Rebecca Saunders, Simon-Steen Andersen, Tristan Murail, Oslo Sinfonietta, Jack Quartet and The Crossing, November Music opts for the absolute world's best. In addition, Dutch mid-career makers such as Aart Strootman, Maya Fridman, Rozalie Hirs, Kika Sprangers, Jameszoo and LudoWic will be given the chance to strike out with new, large-scale productions. With. 

Read More "November Music 2023 focuses on top and mid-career international creators - November 1 to 12 in 's-Hertogenbosch
boulevard poster

Boulevard full programme announced

It's time to get puzzling: the full programme of Boulevard 2023 is available from now on. In addition, Boulevard Magazine 2 is also out, containing background articles, filters to help you choose and, of course, a look at this year's programme. Brain gymnastics Earlier, we already announced thirteen names and now you can find the complete programme.... 

Read More "Boulevard full programme announced
CocoRosie - PR image

CocoRosie live at Holland Festival: remarkably accessible and solid, and so is the festival itself

The Casady sisters, since they went through life together as CocoRosie in 2003, have developed a totally unique sound. Yesterday, they were guests at the Holland Festival, at the invitation of their friend ANOHNI. The latter, as associate artist, introduced this year's festival audience to the female and queer side of the New York art scene. CocoRosie are with... 

Read More "CocoRosie live at Holland Festival: remarkably accessible and solid, and so is the festival itself

Monk forces concentration with Indra's Net at Holland Festival

The dome of the imposing former Gashouder on the Westergasfabriek grounds turns out to offer excellent acoustics for music. There, last night, the premiere of Indra's Net, the latest composition by singer, director and filmmaker Meredith Monk, took place. Famous mainly in the United States, where she has been composing and performing minimal music for more than 50 years. Since 1978, together with her... 

Read More "Monk forces concentration with Indra's Net at Holland Festival
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black-pr image

Holland Festival breaks fascinating new ground with old punk and Lithuanian rave.

Amy Winehouse is alive. Though perhaps we shouldn't call it life, as she stands in all her corpse-blue glory, looking bewildered at the audience in the Muziekgebouw for an hour. A bit like we know her from those tragic last concert recordings, where she was stiff with all the chemicals and liquid aids to perform a few last notes. She is now... 

Read More "Holland Festival breaks fascinating new ground with old punk and Lithuanian rave.
PR image Pentheseleia by Dim Balsam

Eline Arbo's Penthesilea oscillates between madness and horniness at the Holland Festival

At the walk-in, several actors dribble across the bare stage. No set pieces, few lights, a little smoke from the machine. Slowly, the stage fills, and the actors line up at the front of the stage. The first scene is sung, a surprising choice. Then Diana, the high priestess of the Amazons, a brilliant role by Marieke Heebink, holds a... 

Read More "Eline Arbo's Penthesilea oscillates between madness and horniness at the Holland Festival
scene photo by © Sukmu Yun

Colourful dragons conquer the stage - Eun-Me Ahn's Dragons in HF23

Whereas in the West dragons are mythical creatures to be defeated, in the East they are the embodiment of joy, unlimited possibilities and destiny. People born in the year of the dragon (every 12 years with 2000 being the most recent adult generation) are proud, irresistible, vibrant and extroverted, according to Chinese astrology. Put seven on and... 

Read More "Colourful dragons conquer the stage - Eun-Me Ahn's Dragons in HF23
image from the film by David Hannan

Thanks to Wallworth at the Holland Festival one last look up from beneath a dying sea.

The dome of Artis Planetarium is made for stars; it is not a shiny Imax canvas. That the images in Coral: Rekindling Venus by Lynette Wallworth therefore do not splash off the screen is to be expected. Wallworth, a close friend and colleague of ANOHNI, is prominent at this year's Holland Festival and made Coral, Rekindling Venus exclusively... 

Read More "Thanks to Wallworth at the Holland Festival one last look up from beneath a dying sea.
Ed Atkins Photo by Kiasma

Poetic gem by Ed Atkins knows exactly how to strike a chord

That he prefers not to hear news about the weather, but that there were once people alive who he knew, and what the weather was like then, Ed Atkins cannot talk about that often enough. So he repeats that phrase endlessly. A 'loop', then, as we know it from music and video art. But performed live. Is... 

Read More "Poetic gem by Ed Atkins knows exactly how to strike a chord
© Ahad Subzwari

Music can move, comfort and even heal the greatest traumas, the Holland Festival makes us feel

ANOHNI lived in Amsterdam for a year as a young child, in Gerrit van der Veenstraat, formerly Euterpestraat. The street where the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) had its headquarters during the war in what is now a nice school with a focus on art. Opposite was the building from which Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung organised the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews. The... 

Read More "Music can move, comfort and even heal the greatest traumas, the Holland Festival makes us feel
Sigur Ros - © Hörður Óttarsson

Sigur Rós overwhelms Concertgebouw with multi-layered magic music - HF23

The picture is immediate. Vast glaciated vistas, patches of fog and the twilight of a land where the sun rises only once a year. Something like that. And then that soaring music that in one long tone makes all air traffic redundant for at least a month. Beneath it the rumble of shifting earth plates. For the first time in 10 years, Sigur Rós made another... 

Read More "Sigur Rós overwhelms Concertgebouw with multi-layered magic music - HF23
Pankaj Tiwari, an artist from the poorest part of India, and Polish performer Maria Magdalena Kozłowska. Photo: Eva Roefs

Sustainability is a luxury issue in Jerome Bel's airplane-less autobiography (and the show turns out to be more fun than I first thought)

Input from members: that's what drives this club. Just watch. Yesterday I wrote this piece: Jerome Bel is quite something. The man who identifies himself as a choreographer has banned himself from flying for sustainability reasons, which is why he could not come to Amsterdam from Paris to read his own autobiography. However noble the non-flying... 

Read More "Sustainability is a luxury issue in Jerome Bel's airplane-less autobiography (and the show turns out to be more fun than I first thought)
Lynette Walworth by Cassandra Hannagan

Lynette Walworth brings empathetic art. That takes some getting used to at the Holland Festival

A TED Talk, but not 15 minutes as prescribed by that scattershot ideas organisation, but an hour and a half. In How To Live (After You Die), the monumental artist Lynette Walworth takes you through a story-with-light images about the temptations of sectarian faith, which, via the Amazon and the Outback, over Donald Trump and along the steppes of Mongolia, ends in the caves... 

Read More "Lynette Walworth brings empathetic art. That takes some getting used to at the Holland Festival

Culture Press podcast, the Holland Festival edition: the most feminine festival ever?

The first half of the Holland Festival is pretty much over, so time for Team Culture Press to take a look at what that first half has brought us. A lot, according to Helen Westerik and Wijbrand Schaap, and also many real highlights. 'Perhaps the best edition in years.' Among other things, we discuss the intimate installation 'Evolution of Fearlessness', look back... 

Read More "Culture Press podcast, the Holland Festival edition: the most feminine festival ever?
ensemble Wuthering Heights. Photo: Steve Tanner

Glossy role for the bog in unprecedentedly perfect update of Wuthering Heights at Holland Festival

I can't resist mentioning it, because I think they were doing it for a reason, the dancers in the musical Wuthering Heights making really visible big rounds with their arms one time: this was a half-second reference to Kate Bush's world-changing 'windmill swings' in the music video to her legendary 1978 pop song. A subtle nod as in my... 

Read More "Glossy role for the bog in unprecedentedly perfect update of Wuthering Heights at Holland Festival
still from Euphoria by Julien Rosefeldt

Rosefeldt's 'Euphoria' is one of the most impressive things I ever experienced. 

What if 200 of the greatest thinkers and poets this planet has known in recent centuries were just one of us? An ordinary stranger on a bus, or your taxi driver, or a skater? Or a singing tiger in a supermarket? Julian Rosefeldt makes that thought audible, tactile and almost tangible in the mega-installation 'Euphoria' at the... 

Read More "Rosefeldt's 'Euphoria' is one of the most impressive things I ever experienced. 
Laurie anderson by Ebru Yildiz

Deep poignancy and plenty of humour with Laurie Anderson at Holland Festival

Laurie Anderson visited the Holland Festival for a third time and played to a sold-out Carré. With a five-piece Sexmob, a jazz combo from New York for the occasion, she performed well-known and lesser-known songs from her oeuvre spanning more than four decades. And every song felt like it was dear to her, with fresh, new arrangements of double bass and baritone ... 

Read More "Deep poignancy and plenty of humour with Laurie Anderson at Holland Festival
ANGELA (a strange loop) 4 © Julian Röder

Susanne Kennedy's 'Angela - a strange loop at the Holland Festival: no new insights, rather clichés

Well, Angela... this 'posthuman' play by German-British director Susanne Kennedy, now at the Holland Festival, aims to touch on many things: life & death, time & space, truth & fake. The play begins with a text running across the walls announcing that everything in this story is real, based on diaries and facts. Soon after, this statement becomes... 

Read More "Susanne Kennedy's 'Angela - a strange loop at the Holland Festival: no new insights, rather clichés
scene photo by Camilla Adams

'Drive Your Plough...' - Masterful narrative theatre by Simon McBurney is a lesson for every viewer #HF23

A word says more than a thousand images. This may seem strange in a world that thrives on visual culture, but it is a truism. If you have yet to see cows of all shapes and sizes, let the Holland Festival convince you. Yesterday, I saw the opening performance 'Drive Your Plough Over The Bones Of The Dead' and... 

Read More "'Drive Your Plough...' - Masterful narrative theatre by Simon McBurney is a lesson for every viewer #HF23
ANGELA (a strange loop) 1 © Julian Röder

In Susanne Kennedy's Angela, you have a say as a spectator. #hf23

Not much happens in Angela (A Strange Loop) by Susanne Kennedy. That is not a bad thing; there is more art in which little happens. Beckett, for instance, was a master of it. Just as he caused confusion in the 1950s with pieces like Waiting for Godot, viewers and critics alike get a bit thrown off by Susanne... 

Read More "In Susanne Kennedy's Angela, you have a say as a spectator. #hf23
vake poes; or how god disappeared, lisaboa houbrechts Photo by Kurt van der Elst

Vake Poes by Lisaboa Houbrechts at the Holland Festival: in search of beauty in a very dark story

'Sometimes people come to me crying to tell their stories, things they have experienced.' Theatre-maker, author, director Lisaboa Houbrechts has stirred things up with Vake Poes, the theatrical family epic she created with the Flemish company La Geste. The intense performance, in its lyricism fitting into the oeuvre of Alain Platel's Les Ballets C de la B... 

Read More "Vake Poes by Lisaboa Houbrechts at the Holland Festival: in search of beauty in a very dark story
image by Prophetiques by David Kadoule

Dancing into the night - Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) by Nadia Beugré splashes off the stage.

Sometimes the run-in to a performance is so pleasant that you hope everyone will continue to drone on for a bit. Make it last longer! It feels like you're at a rehearsal, or a private party, at a private event, where you can peek in. That is certainly the case with Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) by Nadia Beugré, which... 

Read More "Dancing into the night - Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) by Nadia Beugré splashes off the stage.
Arrow by Anohni

Amsterdam Museum presents multimedia exhibition by artist and musician ANOHNI at Huis Willet-Holthuysen

From 4 June to 29 October 2023, ANOHNI, the Holland Festival's associate artist, presents a multimedia exhibition at Huis Willet-Holthuysen: She Who Saw Beautiful Things. With this art display, ANOHNI honours its former collaborative partner Dr Julia Yasuda. Also on display are photographs taken by her now-deceased wife Erika Yasuda. These are now on display for the first time. Back to... 

Read More "Amsterdam Museum presents multimedia exhibition by artist and musician ANOHNI at Huis Willet-Holthuysen
Scene image Bacchae by Alex Kat

The Bacchae at the Holland Festival: Nietzsche, rock-hard beats and beautiful operatic voices in a wild plea for queerness.

'Simplicity is the problem of our time. Simplicity is labelling. It should be about fluidity and confusion.' Greek opera-maker Elli Papakonstantinou, whose star has risen rapidly in recent years, is performing a contemporary version of Euripides' classic tragedy 'Bacchantes' at this year's Holland Festival. In that 405 BC play, wine god Dionysus (also known... 

Read More "The Bacchae at the Holland Festival: Nietzsche, rock-hard beats and beautiful operatic voices in a wild plea for queerness.
BROS © Jean-Michel Blasco

WANTED: 23 male players for BROS

The Holland Festival is looking for 23 male actors for the production Bros. An excellent opportunity for those who want to work with renowned director Romeo Castellucci and experience a performance behind and on the stage of the Rabozaal in ITA. Bros is a large-scale production that leaves a big impression. Who are we looking for? We are looking for a diverse group of men aged 18 to 65, with a height between... 

Read More "WANTED: 23 male players for BROS

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