The Holland Festival is the Netherlands' leading festival, showcasing the best of what is being made internationally and nationally on the bigger stages.
We live in destructive times. Nature, art and culture, the inner life: they are breaking down under the tyranny of money, commerce and efficiency. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten take a stand against this. Addio alla fine is an all-in experience in the form of a boat trip to an unknown place, where the audience is immersed in dance, music and...
Multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Shara Worden - also known as My Brightest Diamond - is waiting for me, armed with her ukulele. Just before the interview, she wrote a new song. Worden laughs: "There are way too many videos on the internet of me playing the same songs over and over. I thought I should try something new." The Dodo was there...
In Detroit Dealers, Wunderbaum mixes a personal family story with the decline of Detroit, once one of the most influential industrial cities in the world, and philosophical musings on the car, as a romantic metaphor of progress and the American Dream. The show swings in all directions. Detroit Dealers is part documentary film, jazz concert, performance, spoken word poetry, rap battle, and theatre. This overdose of...
Dodo reviewers Maarten Baanders and Mariska van der Meij both attended the performance Passio-Compassio, and struck up a conversation. - From the programme book of Passio-Compassio - All people experience suffering, regardless of religion or cultural background. Like love, suffering also results in passion. Art and religion are both capable of transcending the cycle of suffering and passion. If...
The 1923 Afro-Cubist dance classic can be seen at Music Theatre today and tomorrow, commented on by Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula. "Europeans have no idea that they are denying the shared history of Africa and Europe. Belgium is part of everyday life in Congo, but Belgians hardly know anything about Congo, or it is the clichés about poverty
We are live, from half past 10. We talk about a full week of Holland Festival, during which some highs and lows passed by: John Cage, pole dancing, Marilyn Monroe, you name it. Check back here, or watch directly on our youtube channel. We try to include all reactions.
Anyone who might think that making a stage show is a simple one-two punch of a genius director with a good team of creatives and perfect actors is wrong. Only, as a spectator once attending the performance, you don't notice any of that. And that is just as well. You come for the performance and you won't care if...
Imagine Arjan Robben. The much-troubled frontman of the Dutch national team has just seen a brilliant move rewarded with a penalty and he is ready to take it. Out comes a field hand with a new set of adhesive letters for his shirt because the numbers are no longer legible from the stands. Lots of lashing, shirt off, seconds glue. Circumstances, in short. After two minutes, the fielder is gone, the number readable and the referee's whistle sounds. Then try to hit the target.
Soon, Twitter brought an initial reaction to Waiting for Miss Monroe, Robin de Raaff's opera that had its world premiere at the Stadsschouwburg last night. @DavidMPinedo: What an atrocious opera Raaff's 'Waiting for Ms. Monroe' is. An atonal fart that has NOTHING musical. Just screaming. And a second. @sandraeik: Exciting world premiere Waiting for Miss Monroe - incredible performance by Laura Aiken as Monroe....
Popcorn wants to build bridges and dissolve borders; away with the differences between high and low culture. Covers of the band's favourite songs are interspersed with new compositions, thus blurring boundaries. Unfortunately, they do not succeed in this and the band sounds mostly academic and soulless. Popcorn is an experimental performance in which a composite band aims to bridge the gap between...
With enfant, choreographer Boris Charmatz broaches a difficult topic: how do we as adults deal with ourselves, and how do we deal with children? Charmatz draws on the French philosopher Lyotard, who pondered the "inhumanity" of adults and saw real people in children. The current image about physical contact with children is distorted and it is...
True story. There is laughter in classical music. At many an orchestral rehearsal, the viola jokes are all over the place. And in the Concertgebouw, you might catch some mock chuckles. But classical composers are not known for their humour. Except Joseph Haydn. The Viennese composer brought a cosy witticism to his works here and there. One of his...
Youth these days mostly evokes the thought of danger. Society suffers from a distorted ideal image that leaves real children little room to play. Eventually, therefore, they rebel in Enfant. But until then, the very young performers still mainly have the role of adjunct or capstone, complement or extension of the nine adult dancers. The new...
Tight-lipped. Freshly cut. And with a beatific, apt voice, The Speaker - played by director Sulayman Al-Bassam - looks like a slick public relations man. Or better: a civilised Arab dictator with an Oxford degree. One of those who is supported by the West and deeply hated by his own people. He steps behind a lectern and narrates. Once upon a time,...
We've already had one episode on it, and it was obviously a huge success, but right at the climax you have to start something new. That's why tonight at 22:30 we have a new thing: The Dodo Holland Festival Hangout. Live, interactive and online. Innovative, in other words, as you know it from us. You know them: those reporter trucks with metres of spaghetti...
We've already had one episode on it, and it was obviously a huge success, but right at the climax you have to start something new. That's why tonight at 22:30 we have a new thing: The Dodo Holland Festival Hangout. Live, interactive and online. Innovative, in other words, as you know it from us. You know them: those reporter trucks with metres of spaghetti...
In his Requiem for tenor, narrator and ensemble, Micha Hamel makes the most of the space of Amsterdam's De Duif church. Musicians play on the altar, from the balconies, mingle among the audience and push out a piano. - But what does Hamel really want to say? In front of a sold-out house, Micha Hamel's Requiem premiered last night. He ...
Antony Hegarty gives away the layered and emotionally charged show Cut the World with his pianist and the Metropole Orchestra. He shows that it need not be an issue to present more of the same. Meanwhile, the audience imagines itself in the fairytale forest, eating out of his hand. It is not the first time the androgynous child-man Antony has...
Vincent Macaigne strikes me as a director you shouldn't fight with. Right from the first seconds of Requiem 3, he rams full steam ahead with the most hysterical opening scene I have seen in ages, and keeps on hacking relentlessly for 80 minutes. It takes a while to get through. But suddenly, in this tsunami of...
Claron Macfadden did it on her own, Alain Platel with 150 people and Andrea Breth in 54 scenes: touching. And convey a message. Dodo-reporters Mariska van der Meij, Daniël Bertina and Wijbrand Schaap look back at the first weekend of the Holland Festival 2012, and reviewer Maarten Baanders looks ahead to Emio Greco/PC's special performance. Kind of...
Two men are sitting together at a table eating spaghetti. One is wolfing down the plate of pasta in no time, while at the same time telling an amusing anecdote - just barely intelligible - with fierce gestures and self-righteous grunts. The other, an elderly guy, is totally ignored. Despite frantic attempts, the poor man just cannot manage to...
At two-thirds, the lump shoots in to not go out until the end. It happens at every Alain Platèl performance. Heartfelt sobs from the audience, lots of swallowing around you and the inevitable tears welling up like a natural disaster. To call the Flemish choreographer's work predictable because of this is going too far. What he and his company Les...
[View the story "Opening Holland Festival 2012" on Storify] Opening Holland Festival 2012 On 1 June, the Holland Festival opened at Theater Carré. We were there, saw Platel's C(h)oeurs and tasted the atmosphere. Although it almost went wrong. This is what of it was witnessed on social media Storified by Cultureel Persbureau - Sat, Jun 02 2012 08:37:18...
Top theatre from all corners of the world, big names we had never dared hope for, and a newsreel that we will broadcast at unexpected times. Festival day newspaper The Dodo, now a household name in festival land, is going all out at this year's Holland Festival. Of course. It is the dream of every blogger, professional or amateur, to be at the performances of the...
Maybe it is also just the wrong choice to see part three immediately after the first two parts. Maybe after a day of you or some settling down you will be able to appreciate Petry's text, on its own merits. Imagine a three-star dinner. A sensuous succession of small and medium-sized dishes, prepared with the...
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