Het Holland Festival is het meest toonaangevende festival van Nederland, en toont het beste wat er internationaal en nationaal op de grotere podia wordt gemaakt.
'For me, the world of Wotan equals the world of Putin.' Christopher Ruping, director of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen to be shown in Amsterdam in June, makes no bones about it: 'Siegfried [central character of Wagner's monster production, ws] is a very problematic character. He kills the dragon without asking questions. We give the dragon...
The comparison with the Derksen affair cited in this article no longer holds true as of this date, as the TV personality has been restored to full glory by the television station that previously 'cancelled' him. From Monday, 16 May, he will return to his old role as a 'grumpy old man' in Today Inside. See the link here.
Once upon a time, Ben Frost started out as a composer of laden ambient music. Not necessarily upbeat, more contemplative and just a little depressing of the kind that can be used to add some colour to a dip. Take the piece "You, Me and the End of Everything," which can be found on YouTube. Compared to the score of The Murder of Halit Yozgat,...
'For the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to play all the notes written by Chekhov. It was an intellectual and artistic challenge to really work with Chekhov. I could really let Chekhov be one of the authors of the play, which is very unusual for me. After all, I'm used to writing plays to...
Euphoria vervalt als gevolg van de situatie in Oekraïne – Intentie om te verschuiven naar Holland Festival 2023 Met pijn in het hart is het Holland Festival genoodzaakt om te melden dat de spectaculaire filminstallatie Euphoria van Julian Rosefeldt niet naar Amsterdam komt in juni 2022. Voor de 75e editie van het Holland Festival stond de wereldpremière van de nieuwe…
We can already chalk up Angélique Kidjo as one of the most disarming appearances at the 2022 Holland Festival. The Benin-born singer is this year's associate artist, together with German director Nicolas Stemann. On Wednesday 9 March, she performed as a commanding speaker at the press conference with which the Holland Festival opens its public relations offensive each year. It was a...
Admittedly, I was never a fan, but how I hated those planes last night. I was walking through a dark, nocturnal forest between Lage Vuursche and Hilversum. Where, in the silence, I could have listened extra carefully to creaking twigs, shuffling insects, whispering trees and the occasional owl, I heard above all how happy we all are that after corona we have another...
In Electra, one of the finest tragedies handed down to us by the ancient Greeks, there is at least one piece of text that made history. It is the account of a horse race. You see nothing, but the language puts your imagination to work. 25 centuries later, they tried to turn the images described into real images for the...
There is a direct, inverse, link between musical talent and acting ability. The techniques needed to play a musical instrument are completely different from the registers you need - physically and mentally - for acting. So the better you master your instrument, the worse the acting. The musicians of Klangforum Wien master their instrument at the very, very...
'...this (final) image, in which really I saw what I never saw before. That was so insane where I started to doubt my own perception. Interesting sensation that for me is separate from interpretation.' I quote here a visitor I know from the performance Transverse Orientation, one of the toppers of this year's Holland Festival. She was sitting three metres...
Sommige kunst begrijp je niet helemaal, maar raakt je diep. De films van Paradjanov bijvoorbeeld, of The Planet, a Lament van Garin Nugroho. Nugroho heeft ervoor gekozen om zijn voorstelling niet van boventitels te voorzien, zodat je rationele brein even op een zijspoor moet. Wat zingen ze, wat gebeurt er precies, waar gaat het over? Na een paar minuten ditzelfde…
Saturday 26 June at the Holland Festival, a special evening around two music films by Frank Scheffer: the documentary Inner Landscape and the opera film Si Fan. Supplemented by a short live performance by Chinese musician Wu Wei. This will present a musical journey from the seventh-century Tang Dynasty to contemporary electronic music. An evening with unexpected perspectives.
In een voor fans zoals ik legendarische aflevering van de SF-serie Star Trek, The Next Generation, wordt kapitein Picard geraakt door een vreemd lichtsignaal uit een lege sonde. Daarna schakelen we naar een dorp waar de kapitein heen schijnt te zijn geteleporteerd en zien we hoe hij een heel leven leidt als dorpswijze en begenadigd fluitspeler. Aan het eind sterft…
Someone cried the other day that bands were dead. That in a world of digital convenience, loop apps and samples, there was no place left for boys and girls with a guitar, a rickety drum kit and possibly a piano. Last night, while real men were watching football, I sat in Amsterdam's BIM house watching a band. It made me overjoyed. Kukangendai, on...
A boy is a guest at his own funeral where a black metal band is playing a funeral concert. The killer, his best friend, is also there, along with anonymous black metal fans. The light is harsh, there is snow on the ground. To the right at the side of the stage, a wall has been built with crates of beer, to the left is what I am in...
Wie gezegend is met de achternaam ‘schaap’ weet niet alleen dat hij uit een rijk en eerbaar geslacht stamt, maar kent ook alle spreekwoorden, gezegden en al dan niet beledigend bedoelde naamgrappen uit het hoofd. Tot en met kameraadschappelijk blatende chefs kunst. Dan is het feit dat het Vlaamse theatergezelschap FC Bergman een voorstelling maakt met als titel ‘The Sheep…
Het is altijd fijn om te weten dat er iemand op je wacht. Bedrijven die zeldzame dingen aanbieden, ambtenaren die zeer gewilde stempels te zetten hebben, allemaal hebben ze hun geluk en hun inkomen te danken aan mensen die op hen willen wachten. Het wachten zelf is natuurlijk ook iets waar je een leven omheen kunt bouwen. Er zijn mensen…
After three centuries of colonial oppression and exploitation, it is now pay-back time. However, we, the progeny of the navy that came to get nutmeg there, are not so good at it. Because we come back to Indonesia with mass tourism, cheap clothing dyers and multinationals like Unilever. We do little else but drain the place further. Economically, but also culturally. This can be subject...
Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly didn't quite become clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode. The great hall of the building that I just don't...
England is closed. The culture minister happily reports that artists can tour Europe again, as long as they do not go outside Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. We've always taken an ambitious approach in negotiations on touring artists, including in my meeting with @AbidRaja last month. Delighted that our new trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein will allow musicians, performers...
There are reasons not to live in Belgium, but yesterday I was intensely longing for an evening with my southern neighbours. After all, they have 'testing for admission' in the cultural sector just a little better regulated than here. When I attended a 'testing for access' performance in Antwerp, there was a tent in front of the theatre entrance where I walked in, with a time appointment, a...
'Are we ready? Yes. Is everything ready? No, far from it, because it is all very complex. But in the end the jubilation now prevails, because until a week and a half ago we didn't even know if we were allowed.' In this Nerd podcast, Emily Ansenk, director of the Holland Festival for the second year, tells Marijn Lems and Wijbrand
A night walk where, for once, it is not about talking to each other, or exercising the muscles, but about being very aware of where you are. Mindfulness as a theatrical experience, then, and if all the coronagraph remains against us, the only part of the Holland Festival that can go on live because of sufficient distance and outside. It needs to be that bad...
From 3 to 27 June 2021, the 74th edition of the Holland Festival will take place in and around Amsterdam. This year's associate artists are American-Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and French-Austrian theatre-maker Gisèle Vienne - notable artists with broad interests, as evidenced by their collaborations with Hollywood directors, techno artists, visual artists and rock bands. During the...
De Raad van Toezicht van het Holland Festival stelt Carolien Gehrels aan per 1 maart 2021 als zijn nieuwe voorzitter. Carolien Gehrels (1967) is een goede bekende van het Holland Festival als regelmatige bezoeker van voorstellingen en concerten en door haar rol als wethouder van Amsterdam verantwoordelijk voor kunst en cultuur van 2006 tot 2014.
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