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Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis, Joël Pommerat, foto: Elisabeth Carecchio.

On the edge of Europe, Holland Festival attracts 86,000 visitors #HF16

Ruth Mackenzie has brought new impetus to the Holland Festival. Not that her predecessor Pierre Audi did badly, but the British organisational talent has brought topicality and urgency to the programme. When she devised her programme theme, she too will not have suspected that the concept of 'Edges of Europe' would take on such a charge. After all, simultaneously with the last weekend of the festival, the English people decided, against the wishes of everyone but the Welsh, to leave the European Union behind. The Netherlands suddenly found itself on the far edge of Europe, with only a view of distant Ireland.

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Wunderbaum sends you into the night with a smile #HF16

This year's Holland Festival spotlights Rotterdam-based theatre collective Wunderbaum with the revival of 'The Coming of Xia', premieres of 'Privacy' and 'The Future of Sex' and the film 'Stop acting now'. With this film, Wunderbaum concludes their four-year project 'The New Forest', a 'Platform for social change', according to Wunderbaum, "The New Forest depicts transition and casts a... 

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Stella actors Oscar Batterham and Richard Cant © Matthew Hargraves

Neil Bartlett's Stella: so perfect it's a bit irritating #HF16

The smallest details speak for themselves. For the second time during this edition of the Holland Festival, the legendary BBC series This Life comes along. Richard Cant, who plays a flawless lead role in Neil Bartlett's play Stella, was previously seen in This Life, the series that set the standard for the modern docusoap in 1996. So now live, up close, in De Brakke Grond's Red Hall, the man who also played a solid role in Midsomer Murders.

Read More "Neil Bartlett's Stella: so perfect it's a bit irritating #HF16

Olga Neuwirth sticks to old avant-garde #HF16

It is good that the Holland Festival dares to stick its neck out, by making Olga Neuwirth (1968), unknown here, its focus composer this year. On reflection, by the way, I would have preferred to hear her high-profile opera Bählamms Fest in a staged version once, rather than Le Encantadas. This piece composed last year did not quite manage to live up to the high expectations... 

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Bombarie on Bombarie? New festival in Utrecht has broad profile

In our participatory society, Community Art 'hip, hot & happening'. Consequently, there are many projects and initiatives that bring amateurs and professionals together. Fortunately, because the more widely art practice and experience is shared and supported by as many people as possible, the more beautiful the world becomes, so I think.

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Pascal Gallois: formidable champion of the bassoon #HF16

Bassoonist Pascal Gallois gets laughs when he tries in vain to insert the flowers he has just received into the tube of his instrument. Also in the now classic Dialogue de l'ombre double by Pierre Boulez, he manages to make the audience chuckle on Sunday 19 June, when he produces a kind of elephant-like trumpet with much misfiring. His performance is part of the ''Save the bassoon', which will conclude on Sunday 25 June with a concert at the Holland Festival Proms at the Concertgebouw. For this hundreds of (amateur) bassoonists ON. Action successful, in other words.

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The Dark Ages: beautiful investigative theatre by Milo Rau. #HF16

When we think of 'The Dark Ages', we think of the rough raw dark Middle Ages, with church and king and no hygiene. However, Swiss director Milo Rau's performance, now at the Holland Festival, refers to a much more recent piece of European history. In a recent interview With the Culture Press, he said:

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Gardens Speak ©-Tania-El-Khoury-1-

Digging in the earth stays on the surface in Gardens Speak #HF16

There I am. Next to Holland Festival director Ruth Mackenzie, on a grave, as part of the installation Gardens Speak on the stage of the main hall of Theatre Bellevue in Amsterdam. There is nothing to see, little to hear. Tone lights suggest a rising sun after a few minutes. I get up together with the ten other visitors. Quite a shame, because I was actually quite comfortable lying there.

The programme booklet sounded promising:

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Olga Neuwirth: Weltkatzenmusik or acoustic preservation? #HF16

Austrian politician Jörg Haider labelled its work Weltkatzenmusik. When his far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs joined the government in 2000, it led to mass protests. At one such rally, Olga Neuwirth (Graz, 1968), under the title 'Ich lass mich nicht wegjodeln', denounced his anti-intellectual and anti-cultural agenda. The rest is history: Haider drove himself to pieces in 2008, Neuwirth... 

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Melancholia-Bryony-Dwyer-junges-theater-basel-©-Sandra-Then

All 18 gloomy: Melancholia is concert for sour old men #HF16

We are all going to die! We already have that certainty in. And since the dawn of mankind, every new generation invariably knows that it is going to happen to them now. After all: their successors have never prospered anywhere like today's youth. Nice premise for a concert, thought German director Sebastian Nübling[hints]Nuling was a guest at the Holland Festival last year with an adaptation of Hebbel's play Nibelungen, read the review and a interview.[/hints], good idea to programme, thought the Holland Festival. I seriously wonder why.

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Film fails to lift Die Schöpfung to higher plane at Holland Festival #HF16

Full of religious inspiration, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) wrote the oratorio Die Schöpfung, his famous musical ode to the Biblical creation story. Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b 1965) reflects on Haydn's masterpiece with an aesthetic film that shows how humans bend the world to their will. During the Holland Festival this film was screened at a live performance of the music by Collegium Vocale Gent and baroque orchestra B'Rock led by conductor René Jacobs. Got Die Schöpfung an extra charge by this film, which largely consists of people in white suits walking around sandy landscapes?

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We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16

There are countries in the world, where the boundaries between art disciplines are not as sharply drawn as they are here. The Holland Festival, under the new leadership of Ruth MacKenzie, is catching us up. She is bringing events here where the boundaries between visual art, performance, video, film and performing arts can no longer be drawn. Events that generate meaning in ways that are quite new to us, such as The Encounter, last week, and Gardens Speak, later this week.

Read More "We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16

'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16

Swiss playwright Milo Rau created a theatrical trilogy about the demise of the European ideal. The second part The Dark Ages is now at the Holland Festival. Rau combined his actors' painful, personal life stories with themes from the works of Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies. With a Freudian sauce: 'Countless people who are The Dark Ages have seen ask me: 'Milo, is something wrong with your father?'

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Ça Ira: political theatre with the allure of House of Cards #HF16

Over four hours long Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis, a performance by French director Joël Pommerat, to be seen this weekend at the Holland Festival. He reconstructed events in France between 1789 and 1794, better known as The French Revolution. What begins as a sometimes hard-to-follow, animated history lesson culminates in an impressive 'whodunnit', balancing between re-enactment and live television.

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'Theatre of the World' (2): an island that remains distant. #hf16

Maarten Baanders saw an opera that remained an island. An omnivore was Athanasius Kircher (1602 - 1680). No phenomenon in the universe could escape his urge to investigate. A universal scholar he was, but also a fantasist. Hence, he did not count in science. But for a grotesque opera, you can hardly imagine a more attractive protagonist. Louis... 

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Theatre of The World (1): Design by Quay Brothers tastes like more #hf16

Carré's history and programming make it an odd duck in the Holland Festival pie. Programmed for next year are a boxing memorial, Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Ali B. The sawdust for dressage horses never seems very far away. It doesn't seem the most obvious place for a postmodern opera, or rather a grotesque in nine scenes. But now it is here: Theatre of the World. An event so big that we have two reviews and an interview to it.

Helen Westerik discusses the design of this opera.

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As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.

Read More "As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Tantalising intimacy porn in 'Privacy' raises relevant questions #HF16

Wine Dierickx ( Wunderbaum) and Ward Weemhoff (The Hot Shop) are an artist couple and we will know it. Engaging and with humour, they take us into their private lives or that which we think that is their private life. Know after all, we don't do it.

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McBurney's The Encounter points visitor #HF16 to a different way of life

The Encounter, a large-scale solo performance by British multi-talent Simon McBurney, had its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on Thursday. The Encounter combines the dramatic power of a Hollywood blockbuster with the polished simplicity of 20th-century, stripped-down, edited - call it Brechtian - theatre.

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Secrets of Karbala: The Crusades in oriental light and glass marionettes #hf16

How can you rewrite an intensely complicated history from a different perspective? By using grotesque glass puppets and not actors. This revolutionary invention was shown at the Holland Festival on 8 June, and can still be experienced there 9 June. In that film, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky takes us back to bygone centuries and shows us... 

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The Walking Forest is performance you definitely want to watch twice (HF16)

Brazil's Christiane Jatahy was already with the play last year What If they went to Moscow at the Holland Festival. She came, saw and conquered. This year, she comes with the final part in the trilogy of stage adaptations, The Walking Forest. The title refers to the three witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, who foretell his rise and fall. The play was the starting point for a performance with four video screens, a bar, an actress, a dead fish and, oh yes, an audience.

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Anneke Brassinga, Jeet Thayil, Laura Accerboni: now live at Poetry International

The poetry readings are at the heart of Poetry International festival. Anneke Brassinga, Laura Accerboni and Jeet Thayil read all the poems they have brought for the Poetry International Festival. The translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected simultaneously with the reading, so you won't miss a word. Prior to their readings, the poets will be briefly... 

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Opening night Poetry International showcases sprightly poetry #PIFR

Perhaps the first words man ever uttered were poems. In any case, man will have sung first, before using words. If we can at least describe the primal sound expressed at the time to indicate that that dove is really yours after all as singing. The fact remains, Poetry International the festival that had a wonderful opening night yesterday, is dedicated to one of the oldest art forms in the world: poetry. But just how sprightly is that art?

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Holland Festival goes Nuclear: Atomic by Mark Cousins

Anyone who can remember the fall of the wall has grown up with the threat of nuclear attack. And with that comes the idiotic government advice to get under the table in case of a nuclear explosion, preferably with a colander on your head. And to keep plenty of canned food and water on hand.

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Documentary on Remco Campert gets preview at Poetry (PI16)

It promises to be a beautiful portrait, the film director John Albert Jansen is making about poet Remco Campert. Poetry International (from 7 to 11 June in Rotterdam) is already screening a preview. 'I find it moving to see that there is still a certain shyness in Remco, as if the little boy is still hidden under the surface. That comes across very nicely.'

Read More "Documentary on Remco Campert gets preview at Poetry (PI16)

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