The Holland Festival is the Netherlands' leading festival, showcasing the best of what is being made internationally and nationally on the bigger stages.
With its latest retrospective If We Ever Get To Heaven, EYE again convincingly and confidently presents itself as a museum that looks beyond film history. This was already evident in previous exhibitions such as Expanded Cinema, which showcased visual artists working at the intersection of film and art. Now William Kentridge has been given the honour of...
The Holland Festival got a completely unknown new director in the person of Britain's Ruth Mackenzie. At least, to us. The flamboyant, artistically exceptional opera director Pierre Audi makes way for a woman who has presented herself mainly as a manager of festivals and cultural institutions, but whose ideas are anyone's guess. When she was presented, none of the...
Princess Beatrix can take a punch in contemporary theatre. Just two years ago, she was in the audience (as queen) at The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic, and this year at The Crimson House by Lemi Ponifasio / MAU. Just about one of the most radical - because loud, raw and rather unfathomable - performances of this edition of the Holland Festival. We didn't quite get there, by the way, but
From 2007, video artist Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) and composer Jonathan Bepler on a free adaptation of Norman Mailer's most maligned book Ancient Evenings. To Mailer's mythology of ancient Egypt, they added the equally mythical American automobile industry in an ambitious and operatesque film project with a demanding length of 5 hours 11 minutes.
From February River of Fundament on world tour and the Holland Festival
Every Holland Festival there is at least 1 performance which a lot of people wonder why it is programmed. This year, that honour falls to 'Bestiaire d'Amour' by and starring Isabella Rosselini. We take a moment to look for answers.
Topical again, now that Toneelgroep Amsterdam is reviving the play, my review from 2014. This week, the stage adaptation of The Fountainhead premiered. The book is terrible, the performance rattles, the actors win only narrowly. The content, however, creates even more confusion, which is why I won't stop you from going to see it. And Hans Kesting, of course. I put it this way.
Visitors to the film Napoleon, last Sunday at Ziggo Dome, who had thought of booking dinner at one of the intervals, will get their money back. This was decided by the Holland Festival after a commotion arose on the internet, and beyond, about the caterer's lousy service, and the rather poor quality of what was on offer. Visitor Marc Veerkamp said the following on facebook:
Nice 'old-fashioned' Holland Festival: a special set-up that confronts the audience with the implications of their own position and viewing behaviour. And that's just as well with Fassbinder's 'Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant'. Melodrama was no stranger to the German theatre and film wizard. The bitter tears are of a fashion queen and her entourage, clinical is the setting, wafer-thin the story, and yet unusually exciting how this lady drama develops.
Language is music. Sometimes we forget that. Then we think language is a way of conveying objective meanings. Kind of silly. Language is food for all the senses. No strumming is needed under that. That's pure opera without embellishments. The English-language performance 'tis Pity she's a whore' I saw at the Holland Festival yesterday proves that. Even if you don't understand the seventeenth-century phrases, it is a joy to listen to.
Saturday, June 14, went off in a flood of evening gowns, dinner jackets, Dutch celebrities and Gooische Tanks War Horse premiered. A play about a war in which the Netherlands was neutral, and of which there are memorial stones in every village in the rest of the world. You can go and see it. Or not. We have listed six arguments.
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
The Holland Festival presents Abel Gance's restored film epic on Sunday Napoleon, with live orchestra. A rare event, for the first time in this form on mainland Europe. In 1927, Gance had performed with Napoleon delivered a groundbreaking and monumental piece of work that made unusual demands on the projection (three canvases) and went out into the world in a variety of severely shortened versions after the first performances.
Napoleon at Ziggo Dome promises to be spectacular, but who was That ambitious loner Abel Gance?
Like many of my contemporaries, I have played Jeff Buckley's CDs grey, but know next to nothing about Pakistani Sufi music. Except that it's great. And that Abida Parveen is the queen of that genre. Tonight, this Voice of God and her ensemble are on stage at the National Opera & Ballet.
Breaking new ground in theatre is the aim of Canadian director Robert Lepage and his group Ex Machina. It seems like everything is unusual about 'Playing Cards: Spades': playing floor, lighting, seating around the stage, the stories, the acting and the surprising denouement.
It seems like a statement, opening the latest Holland Festival under Pierre Audi's direction with 'Vortex Temporum'. The collaboration between the two top Belgian ensembles Rosas and Ictus does everything that is scarce in the present day.
The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.
Payments are made via iDeal, Paypal, Credit Card, Bancontact or Direct Debit. If you prefer to pay manually, based on an invoice in advance, we charge a 10€ administration fee
*Only for annual membership or after 12 monthly payments
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.