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Trajal Harrell associate artist Holland Festival 2025

The associate artist for the 78th edition of the Holland Festival in June 2025 is American choreographer Trajal Harrell (Douglas, Georgia, USA, 1973). Harrell is one of the most important international contemporary choreographers. His unique style incorporates elements from various dance traditions, fashion, music and visual art. With universal human emotions and themes of connection, tragedy, tenderness and vulnerability, Harrell's... 

November Music presents festival sections FAQ and MOODZ

With a large number of composition commissions and some 100 concerts, November Music will showcase the diversity and vitality of cutting-edge music during its 32nd edition. November Music 2024 will take place from 8 to 17 November at various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch. With the festival sections FAQ (8 to 11 November) and MOODZ (Fri 15 Nov), there will also be a stimulating range of... 

November Music presents MusiMatrix on 15 September and MusicRoute on Sunday 10 November in 's-Hertogenbosch

With a large number of composition commissions and some 100 concerts, the 32nd edition of November Music shows how diverse and vital cutting-edge music is. November Music 2024 will take place from 8 to 17 November at various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch. This year, the annual MusicRoute is on Sunday 10 November. In MusiMatrix, you will discover the brand new Theater aan de Parade... 

Festival Circolo 2024: more intimate than ever before

Netherlands' largest circus festival launches programme 14th edition From 18 to 27 October, Tilburg's Spoorpark will once again transform into the vibrant festival heart of Festival Circolo. For ten days, the largest circus festival in the Netherlands will present top-level contemporary circus. Today, Festival Circolo launches the programme of its 14th edition, in which it seeks intimacy between visitor and performer.... 

Cloudless 40th edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard

The return to downtown Bossche, the beautiful weather, 48,000 visitors to performances (37,000 tickets sold, 11,000 visitors to the free programme) and a total of 100,000 visitors to the festival crowned the 40th anniversary of Theatre Festival Boulevard. 'A homecoming experienced by the team, artists and visitors. The central location of the festival centre on the Parade... 

'Paris' was wonderful, but has everything to gain when you add 'Den Bosch'. 

Going over the edge, exploring and pushing boundaries, pushing the limits of bystanders' comprehension, performing feats no one expects. And seeing gnomes walking through a forest. Or reading things in water. Seeing half a boy save the world. The first 11 days of August 2024 were legendary, never to be forgotten. And all in the... 

The Dancers sought depth with Club Gewalt, delivering a highlight of Boulevard

"How nice it would have been if, as a (male) viewer, I had really been taken out of my comfort zone by the fact that the anger was not so obviously played and commented on. How thought-provoking I would have been when they weren't making goofy faces at their Rudi Carell-German that - if implemented consistently - would have made me laugh.... 

Boulevard diary #3: basil connects the world

The nice thing about festivals like Boulevard in Den Bosch is that after a few days, you automatically make connections between everything you experience. Not that everything starts to look alike, like in sport. There, a single chromosome or hundredth of a second determines the difference between world peace or the apocalypse. There, everything has to be so similar that over... 

Boulevard diary #2: Bossche street culture is different

Right by St John's, next to the Tower Stage where Theatre Festival Boulevard holds its talk shows and free live concerts, is 'Tent Purple'. That tent is different, this year. Outside, kids in baggy trainers are doing break moves, inside it is steaming hot. For ten days, Tent Purple is Cypher HQ, the home of Bossche hip-hop and street culture, also known as... 

Boulevard diary #1: Den Bosch has a cosy village in it

Yesterday, someone from Amsterdam told me that he had long thought Boulevard was a provincial version of an Amsterdam rosé party: lots of conviviality, food, drink and mediocre art. Fortunately, after just one visit he was convinced that something has grown in Den Bosch over the past forty years that cannot be compared to other Dutch festivals. There... 

A giant water giant, the world's biggest spinning top and joyful bicycle acrobatics at Porto Circolo 2024

Street theatre festival in Tilburg's Piushaven is about to start Festival Circolo is proud to present the second edition of Porto Circolo, the free street theatre festival taking place during the Tilburg Fair. On Saturday 20 July and Sunday 21 July, the Piushaven in Tilburg will be transformed into a vibrant stage for circus, dance and theatre, suitable for young and old. Throughout the weekend,... 

Director Tessa Smeulers leaves Boulevard after 15 years

This summer, the fortieth edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard will be celebrated in 's-Hertogenbosch, with new names and old acquaintances. For director-director Tessa Smeulers, this special anniversary year is a moment to change her tack. After 15 years, she will bid farewell to Boulevard on 1 September. Head and heart "For years, my head and heart have been linked to Theatre Festival Boulevard. With great... 

Boulevard on the Parade

Positive opinions for Theatre Festival Boulevard

This week, Fonds Podiumkunsten and the Province of North Brabant announced that Theatre Festival Boulevard will also receive subsidies for the next four years. On Wednesday 3 July, the Performing Arts Fund issued its advice on national cultural subsidies for the period 2025-2028. Theatre Festival Boulevard is extremely proud of the Fund's positive advice. Thank you to the committee who gave us... 

Granting multiannual subsidy Fonds Podiumkunsten for Delft Fringe Festival

Delft Fringe Festival receives positive advice for policy period 2025 - 2028 by Fonds Podiumkunsten Delft, Thursday 4 July, 2024 - On Wednesday 3 July, the opinions of the Council for Culture and the State Cultural Funds were published. Delft Fringe Festival received a positive advice for the policy period 2025 - 2028 by Fonds Podiumkunsten. This means a four-year grant award.... 

November Music 2024: 8 to 17 November in 's-Hertogenbosch

With a large number of composition commissions and some 100 concerts, the 32nd edition of November Music shows how diverse and vital cutting-edge music is. November Music 2024 will take place from 8 to 17 November at various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch. Two top Dutch orchestras, Concertgebouw Orchestra and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra are coming to the festival for the first time and there are... 

Marieke Hopman new artistic director November Music

Marieke Hopman will be appointed November Music's new artistic director from 1 August 2024. She succeeds Bert Palinckx, who has been associated with the festival since 1999. Together with business director Theo van Dooremalen, Hopman will form November Music's board of directors. 'We are very happy with Marieke's arrival,' says board chairman Karen Neervoort. 'She has a lot of... 

Holland Festival 2024 concluded with successful 24-hour The Second Woman 

The 77th edition of the Holland Festival closed on 29 June with a minute-long standing ovation for Georgina Verbaan who showed a phenomenal acting performance in the The Second Woman, a performance by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, in which she played the same break-up scene for a full 24 hours with a hundred most non-professional counterparts. The day before, Victor Pilon closed... 

Stage photo Second Woman by Heidrun Lohr

Rineke Dijkstra captures 24-hour theatre marathon with Georgina Verbaan  

Today, the Holland Festival presents the groundbreaking performance The Second Woman by Australian theatre-makers Anna Breckon and Nat Randall. In this theatre marathon, actress Georgina Verbaan plays the same break-up scene no less than 100 times over the course of 24 hours, each time with a different opponent. This extraordinary performance will take place on the stage of ITA (Internationaal Theater Amsterdam) and will be streamed live at Pathé... 

The Romeo. © Orpheas Emirzas

Trajal Harrell's The Romeo is the laid-back performance you need right now @Holland Festival. 

"I didn't hear a song I didn't know." Over white wine after Trajal Harrell's The Romeo, the lady was quite grumpy. I might add that I hadn't seen a move I couldn't have made myself. And yet that did not make me cranky. On the contrary: rarely have I been so happy and relaxed... 

Once maligned Brazilian hero Verocai conquers the Holland Festival.

This is what charisma looks like. Arthur Verocai, now 79, tall and lean, stylish jacket around bony shoulders, only has to look into the hall once to overwhelm the audience. In the Concertgebouw's main hall on Tuesday night, the Brazilian legend stood in front of the Metropole Orchestra to belt out work from his scarce albums. He hardly needed to... 

Image from Sisyphe. © Louis-Daniel Vallée

Hear what Maaike Muis experienced from a man moving sand at the Holland Festival

One of the lesser-known and therefore hidden gems of this Holland Festival can be found in the Transformatorhuis of Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek. In that space, a single artist spends six hours every day shovelling 40 tonnes of sand from one pile to another. It sounds strange, but those who are there make something very special 

Katia Ledoux in Carmen. © Inés Manai

Carmen adaptation by Wu Tsang shows how to combine respect and topicality

Probably the most famous murder of a woman for what she is is that of the fictional Carmen, a free-spirited young Spanish woman with a fear of commitment. Opera composer Georges Bizet immortalised this character from a French story by Prosper de Merimée, making the crime of passionel a common term for what is none other than femicide. That habit of men killing women... 

Eleven thousand strings in a round temple: Holland Festival highlight, but also missed opportunity?

Jet fighters, drones, thunderstorms with accompanying flooding and lovely babbling brooks with the occasional bird in a pine tree. All of Austria descended on the Gashouder at Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds this weekend and it is what it promised: spectacle as only Austrian music spectacle can be. Georg Friedrich Haas's work 11000 Saiten is a great superlative: surround with emdr and... 

Melencolia by Ensemble Modern at Holland Festival: Unreal music theatre about the end of everything

Future health minister and deputy prime minister Fleur Agema graduated as an architect early this century with a study on the ideal prison. Artist Jonas Staal re-examined her graduation design a few years ago. Agema appears to have an extremely dystopian vision of the world in which prisoners and guards must pass through a disorienting, inky-black, concrete hell to... 

Boulevard on the Parade

Announcement full programme 40th Boulevard

The full programme of the anniversary edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard goes online today at noon. Regular ticket sales start Tuesday 25 June at noon. Friends of Boulevard can buy tickets as early as today. At the same time, the free Boulevard Magazine No 2 will be published, again with many background articles and interviews. Experiencing together Experiencing a spectacle together, which only exists in... 

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