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Holland Festival

Learning and moving: The Planet, a lament by Garin Nugroho. #HF21

Some art you don't quite understand, but touches you deeply. Paradjanov's films, for instance, or The Planet, a Lament by Garin Nugroho. Nugroho has chosen not to provide his performance with surtitles, so your rational brain has to be sidetracked for a while. What are they singing, what exactly is happening, what is it about? After a few minutes of this same... 

Between Past and Future. Frank Scheffer films a fruitful meeting between East and West #HF21

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.

TIME by Ryuichi Sakomoto: how five quarters can flash by in a thousand years. #HF12

In a legendary episode of the SF series Star Trek, The Next Generation, for fans like me, Captain Picard is hit by a strange light signal from an empty probe. We then switch to a village to which the captain seems to have been teleported and see how he leads quite a life as a village wise and gifted flute player. At the end, he dies... 

The bands were dead, but Kukangendai breathes life into everything. Be it inimitable. #HF21

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... 

Unheimlich and intriguing: Kindertotenlieder by Gisèle Vienne #HF21

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... 

To blaat or not to blaat. FC Bergman puts the sheep on a nice pedestal in The Sheep Song #HF21

Those blessed with the surname 'sheep' not only know that they come from a rich and honourable lineage, but also know by heart all the proverbs, sayings and name jokes, offensive or otherwise. Up to and including comradely blathering chiefs of art. Then the fact that Flemish theatre company FC Bergman is producing a show titled 'The Sheep... 

La Codista is an endearing ode to waiting, with a fine layer underneath #HF21

It is always nice to know that someone is waiting for you. Companies offering rare things, officials who have highly sought-after stamps to put up, all owe their happiness and income to people willing to wait for them. Waiting itself, of course, is also something you can build a life around. There are people... 

Ine Aya: Wodan's state visit to Kalimantan raises quite a few questions #HF21

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... 

Mailles remains in the Holland Festival a closed oyster that does not reveal its pearl.

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... 

At Giselle Vienne's L'Etang, I feel again what I have been missing all this time.

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... 

After a year and a half at home, Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot's Fremdkörper with testing access is pretty tough

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... 

Nerd podcast #13: Emily Ansenk (Holland Festival) is all set: 'Until a week and a half ago, we didn't know if it could go ahead.'

'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 

The 74th edition of the Holland Festival kicks off on 3 June

The Holland Festival kicks off on 3 June with Rudi Stephan's performance Die ersten Menschen by De Nationale Opera, a stream of async at the Park Avenue Armory by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Stephen Nomura Schible, and the first episode of the podcast Soft Valkyrie by David Kanaga. State government permission Last week, the Holland Festival received permission from... 

'This new law means even more obstacles and restrictions for visiting culture.'

Honourable members of the House of Representatives, It is with great concern that we look at the Temporary Test Act that will be voted on in your House on Tuesday 11 May. This new law means even more hurdles and restrictions for visiting culture. Restrictions that will be introduced but where the end date is not given. This new testing law could be a godsend for... 

Holland Festival presents scalable programme: It's about time.  

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 theatre 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... 

HOLLAND FESTIVAL 2021 with associate artists Ryuichi Sakamoto and Gisèle Vienne

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 wide-ranging interests, as evidenced by their collaborations with Hollywood directors, techno artists, visual artists and rock bands. During the... 

Platform BK: Deferred work means deferred money. The artist cannot buy food from that.

What we feared at the beginning of the coronasteun appears to have become reality. The generous support money for culture should also reach the small self-employed in the arts via the institutions, but that is now happening too little. Of course, there are fine examples, such as the large subsidised arts institutions in Groningen and festivals like Boulevard and Holland Festival that support self-employed... 

Everyone saved? Only a few festivals suffered heavy damage.

The total of eight festivals that were given a place in the Basic Cultural Infrastructure thanks to vigorous political lobbying are in the clear. They do not benefit from the extra millions released by the Cabinet on Budget Day to rescue the Performing Arts Fund, because they are not (or no longer) covered by it.

Kaija Saariaho central composer at November Music: subtle timbres paint inky black scenario

Pièce de résistance will be the brand new Reconnaissance (Rusty Mirror Madrigal) for choir, percussion and double bass. Saariaho composed it commissioned by November Music and the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The first performance was scheduled at the German festival, which, however, was also cancelled. - A stroke of luck for November Music.

Culture Council marginally updates opinion, but sticks to controversial decisions

The National Opera had made a mistake in preparing its application. According to the Culture Council, the multi-million-dollar national institution had failed to break down performance data between dance and music. As a result, the company had to come up with an entirely new application before 1 November. Now it turns out that was not so bad. As it turns out, the data... 

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