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The Pyre: taut, disruptive performance by Gisele Vienne @HollandFestival

Holland Festival

Those who suffer from the misconception that dance is about beauty are mercilessly disabused of the dream by Gisele Vienne ...

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Two concentrated chickens and something with Chekhov at @hollandfestival

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Seagull, an early play by Anton Chekhov, is about drama in the same way that his equally famous play Cherry Garden is about cherry growing or real estate fraud. Not so. It seems to be a mistake that playwrights often make and that Chekhov made in his 115...

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Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo disappoints with storm painting at @hollandfestival

So there is figurative music. Music that, like a figurative painting, offers a fairly accurate depiction of reality. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo's composition 'Hurricane Transcriptions' is such a picture: 17 strings from the rather peerless ensemble Kaleidoskop do a nice impression of Hurricane Sandy that hit New York last year, and Lee Ranaldo sings a song to go with it.

Disappointing? Pretty much. Actually as disappointing as the performance of...

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Community art of 'Hidden War' forges bond between Dutch and Guatemalans

Treaty of Utrecht

It is cold, chilly and dark. But also quiet, green and spacious. Visitors were not tolerated here until recently. And now Fort Nieuwersluis, near Breukelen, is opening its doors. From 20 to 23 June, the performance 'Hidden War' can be seen there. In it, Guatemalan players show what it is like to live in a violent country. And Dutch actors add their experiences of what it is like to move from a free country to a country a...

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Marie on a string: Anja Röttgerkamp stars as an unknown soldier in Gisèle Vienne's The Pyre @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival
'The Pyre', the latest show from internationally rising star Gisèle Vienne, initially seems less disturbing than her previous work. Pieces like 'Jerk' (2008), based on the true story of a young serial killer, and '...

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Zimmermann & De Perrot give circus genre creative tap at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Circus, tricks, clownery, spectacle: it has been a party for centuries. But roughly the same party every time.

Zimmermann & De Perrot, originally clown and DJ respectively, found each other in the brilliant insight that circus could be turned into beautifully absurd modern theatre.

'El Djoudour' is interesting as a cultural-political project, but does not convince artistically @Holland Festival

Holland Festival Holland Festival
Men and women together on the dance floor, it is still forbidden in large parts of the Muslim world. Two years ago, the dance performance 'Nya' was at the Holland Festival, a piece written on the skin of nine Algerian dancers, mostly ...

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Desdemona in black and white

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Is the kingdom of the dead in the opera Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa a 3D garden full of brilliant colour, director Peter Sellars chooses in Desdemona by Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré for sober black and white. On the stage of a sold-out Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ are glass bottles and jars, sometimes lit from below, sometimes from above, with hanging light bulbs like flickering candles. On the left are a number of ngonis (Malian lute) and two koras (Malian harp lute), played by black musicians.

Chilean IK generation seeks revolutionary art at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Six actors, four years in a bunker. One is dead. Those are the details we have to make do with in Tratando de hacer una obra que cambie el mundo. According to this title, the actors are trying to create a play that will change the world. The characters have locked themselves away in an underground bunker and receive occasional provisions via a packet.

Escape from Guatemala's hidden war for a while

Treaty of Utrecht
'Hidden War', the theatrical exchange between actors from the Netherlands and Guatemala, is nearing performance. The Guatemalan actors of the company Caja Lúdica have been in the country for a few weeks now. Together with the Dutch actors, they are rehearsing at Fort Nieuwersluis (near Breukelen), where the performance can also be seen from 20 June. Alan Hack (18) is one of the Guatemalans playing in the show. He experiences his stay in the Netherlands as a paradise encounter with freedom[/heading].

John Adams' other Gospel of Mary @HollandFestival: masterpiece just too long

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Mary is arrested at a demonstration and thrown into a cell next to a heroin addict, while her sister Martha has just started a shelter for the homeless. And Lazarus, yes, Jesus brings him back to life here too, with downright breathtaking cl...

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Crushingly good: Nine Rivers by composer James Dillon, with conductor and percussionist Steven Schick @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

From the mild, everyday cacophony around the Muziekgebouw in the afternoon, on the terrace by the IJ, you'll get into the silence of the concert hall in a few steps. For three and a half hours (with over two hours of breaks in between), Asko|Schönberg, Slagwerk Den Haag and Capella Amsterdam will play and sing your ears off. Steven Schick (a.o. once Bang on a Can), not only conducts, but also takes charge of the middle part of the concert, at the Bimhuis, as a percussionist. Under his inspired direction, 'Nine Rivers' navigates between spectacle and purism: a battle between complex form and the simplicity of raw sound matter.

Abou Lagraa: gender separation frustrates Arab man

'That men and women in the Islamic world live apart from each other, that is a big frustration,' says choreographer Abou Lagraa. 'That is what El Djoudour is about.'

 

Because of his background, Abou Lagraa has a particularly enlightening take on these issues. He was born in France, the son of Algerian parents. His family is Muslim. So is Abou Lagraa himself, though in practice he does nothing about it. But however Muslim his parents were, they brought him full...

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'Shéda', insane chaos with a glimpse of genius @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

If already after the first 15 minutes, half of the middle row flees the auditorium, and you look at your watch, thinking, my god we still have over five hours to go, there is something thoroughly wrong with the performance. 'Shéda', by Congolese playwright Dieudonné ...

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Meistersinger @HollandFestival convinces musically only

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Cowardly knight defeats untalented rule fetishist with help from wise cobbler and wins singing contest and the hand of coquettish goldsmith's daughter. Or: boy meets girl on the streets of Nuremberg and decides to enter the local version of Nuremberg's got talent. The judges send him away, but he gets the audience vote. Wagner wouldn't be Wagner, however, if he didn't take about five hours for this story.

Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

It's a tricky genre, which drone, or ambient. Or, what do you call the avant-garde cello experiments of the Icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir (1982). Very slow, very repetitive, very minimalist. Abstract sound art that leans heavily on loops, resonations and buzzing, über syrupy tones that swell into a large, layered sound collage.

Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival part 2. Thea Derks: 'Guilt & penance before, after, with and in death'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Amsterdam, 5-6-2013 - It is difficult to go uninhibited to a production that has already caused so much controversy as Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden. This 'first 3D opera' was ne...

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Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival, part 1. Henri Drost: "much more than 3D film opera"

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Forget all the fuss about the first ever 3D film opera, forget all the fuss in British newspapers. Michel van der Aa himself sighed in interview that, on reflection, he would have loved to have made the second 3D film opera. And perhaps he had

Orchestre El Gusto lets sounds of Kashba Blues blow through @hollandfestival like warm desert wind

Holland Festival Holland Festival

They are gentlemen of age and therefore with a history. Grey or bespectacled or bald - or with a combination of all three. Their music has taken them everywhere. And now they are in a packed Carre: the Orchestre El Gusto. To their own delight, as they thank the audience for coming. The musicians from the kasbah of Algiers play the music as it is

Jan Lauwers with musical folk theatre at @hollandfestival: 'It's forbidden to memorise lyrics'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

An explosion in a crowded market square claimed 24 lives, including seven children. When the village commemorates that tragedy a year later, a boy falls out of a window and a girl disappears into a dungeon for 76 days. That leads to a series of acts of violence ...

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