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SPECIALS

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

10 per cent less ticket sales, but Festival Boulevard is still satisfied.

Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch sold 55,000 tickets this year, 5,000 less than in 2012. The festival, which this year was held from 1 to 11 August, did attract more crowds for the free offerings on the festival square. This brought the total number of visitors to the festival this year to 145,000, 5,000 more than in 2012. As the venue occupancy is still nice at 85%, the drop in ticket sales will mainly be due to a smaller offer of performances.

Read More "10 per cent less ticket sales, but Festival Boulevard is still satisfied.

House of Eutopia: haunted house of an ideal society

'Eutopia comes from the Greek and means as much as 'Good place'. With this installation, I want to make people think about what that is: a good place.' Architect and visual artist Filip Berte worked on his 'Good Place' for seven years and the result can now be seen in Utrecht's Zijdebalen Theatre.

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‘Dit was de plek waar de Koude Oorlog werd gevoerd’ Dennis Meyer over Festival De Basis

“Ik ben heel benieuwd naar de reacties van het publiek. Mensen hebben altijd een beeld bij een festival. Die komen, en verwachten dat ze van alles mee kunnen maken. Wat je hier krijgt is het terrein, een ontdekkingstocht en een verhaal dat daardoor naar boven komt. De belangrijkste energie die er op en om dit terrein heerst is: ‘Ik mag erop, en wat is er dan allemaal?’ Op die energie wil voortbouwen.”

Read More "‘Dit was de plek waar de Koude Oorlog werd gevoerd’ Dennis Meyer over Festival De Basis
Shirokuro © Anja Beutler

Unmercifully gracious, 'Shirokuro' builds on hammered Ustvolskaya @HollandFestival

Holland Festival

The collaboration between pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama and choreographer Nicole Beutler in the performance 'Shirokuro', seen last week at the Holland Festival, provides a beautiful perspective on two piano sonatas by Galina Ustvolskaya. 'Shirokuro' means black and white in Japanese. Despite strong visuals and impressive co-protagonists on stage, the Russian composer's absolute music is never explained and therefore retains its sheer power.

Read More "Unmercifully gracious, 'Shirokuro' builds on hammered Ustvolskaya @HollandFestival

Russische bloemen en Beatrix @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Prachtige jurken, grote zonnebrillen en hoge hakken. Het is duidelijk dat op de voorstelling van het beroemde Moskouse theatergezelschap Theatre of Nations ook een groot Russisch publiek af is gekomen. Mannen in pak die af en toe tegen hun mouw praten lijken te getuigen van aanwezige Russische miljardairs. Maar niets blijkt minder waar als plotseling prinses Beatrix met haar gevolg de zaal binnenstapt. 

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Fewer audiences, but fuller halls for @hollandfestival 2013

69,500 visitors, at least 5,000 fewer than previous editions, but the halls were fuller. With 82% audience occupancy, the Holland Festival organisers are satisfied with the 2013 festival. Whether that higher occupancy rate, apart from the smaller number of performances (14 fewer than last year) is also due to smaller halls, is impossible to find out from here, but the fact that the large Theater Carré, with its many unsellable low-visibility seats, was also hardly used this year will certainly have helped.

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Franui provides the most fun Mahler evening in years at @HollandFestival

Holland Festival

What to expect from a 'musicabanda' from East Tyrol? Gemütliche folk music? Yodelling? Dance music for weddings and parties? An evening in a beer pub? Either way: definitely not Mahler. But why not, thought the Franui from the village of Innervillgraten. Result: an enervating performance around orchestral songs. We have never heard Mahler like this before.

Read More "Franui provides the most fun Mahler evening in years at @HollandFestival

Martin Wuttke makes Berlin museum night worthwhile at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival

There are those who spend nights queuing for a ticket. After all, the Berliner Ensemble is mythologically big. As big as the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, or La Comédie Française in France. Monuments to cultural history, dedicated to one writer, like Brecht or Shakespeare, or to an entire history, as the French are used to. We Dutch have

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Photo: Anne Bonthuis

Exhibit B confronts with probing looks @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

A sociable group of ladies who came in laughing and chatting, leave the room bewildered and tearful. Upset, embarrassed, this is how I see all visitors coming out. What is hard to describe in words is written on their faces. Exhibit B by Brett Bailey is more than impressive. It is an exhibition that confronts and touches.

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Chris Marclay enchants @hollandfestival with his found footage collages

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Multidisciplinary jack-of-all-trades Chris Marclay has broken through with his film project The Clock: every second of the day represented with found footage. It took him five years to make the 24-hour work. That says something about the way he makes his art. The incredible precision with which he edits makes his work so convincing that the viewer almost falls into a trance.

The Holland Festival presented three of his works at EYE, the new film museum, in which he collaborated with MAZE, a descendant of the Maarten Altena Ensemble.

Read More "Chris Marclay enchants @hollandfestival with his found footage collages

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

Holland Festival

Anyone suffering from the misconception that dance is about beauty is mercilessly disabused of the dream by Gisele Vienne. Her pieces are about pain. Sometimes gory and explicit, sometimes sublimated but no less powerful. The Pyre is an overwhelming piece that leaves the audience dizzy.

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

Twee geconcentreerde kippen en iets met Tsjechov op @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Meeuw, een vroeg toneelstuk van Anton Tsjechov, gaat over toneel zoals zijn al even beroemde toneelstuk Kersentuin over kersenteelt of vastgoedfraude gaat. Niet dus. Het lijkt een fout die toneelkunstenaars wel vaker maken en die Tsjechov in zijn 115 jaar oude stuk aanhaalt: denken dat alles altijd over jou gaat. Daarom is het Thomas Ostermeier, gelauwerd Duitsch regisseur, niet zo kwalijk te nemen dat zijn regie van De Meeuw bij Toneelgroep Amsterdam over theater gaat.

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Sonic Youth-gitarist Lee Ranaldo stelt teleur met stormschilderij op @hollandfestival

Er bestaat dus figuratieve muziek. Muziek die, net als een figuratief schilderij, een tamelijk accurate afbeelding van de werkelijkheid biedt. De compositie ‘Hurricane Transcriptions’ van Sonic Youth-gitarist Lee Ranaldo is zo’n plaatje:

Read More "Sonic Youth-gitarist Lee Ranaldo stelt teleur met stormschilderij op @hollandfestival

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 go from a free country to a country like Guatemala.
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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 'This is how you will disappear' (2010), starring a dark forest, were only seen in a few places in the Netherlands. Hopefully, this performance at the Holland Festival will change that. Gisèle Vienne once studied harp, then philosophy and eventually trained as a puppeteer. But Vienne sees herself primarily as a visual artist working with time, on a stage, where different rhythms, motifs and figures come together.

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

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.

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'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 B-Boyz from the streets, but also the son of a ballet teacher from Algiers participated. This year, French choreographer Abou Lagraa, his wife Nawal Ait Benalla and much of the Algerian cast returned to the Holland Festival with a piece in which women also dance.

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

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.

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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.

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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].
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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 sounds. And we are not even halfway through.

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

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.

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

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