The opening of the exhibition of photographs by Cas Oorthuys at the Plein Theater in Amsterdam will be on 17 April at 17:00. It concerns work Cas Oorthuys made during the Second World War. Head of technology at the Plein Theatre, his son Frank Oorthuys, is exhibiting the photos in the foyer of our theatre as part of 80 years of...
From 21 to 30 March, the Kaboom Animation Festival takes place in Utrecht, Amsterdam and online. Provocation is the main theme this year, with films about rebellious women and work in free-spirited animation styles. There are competitions for long and short films, Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa is artist in focus, and there is a special focus on Belgian animation.
Welcome to this festive celebration of the Amazigh New Year, the beginning of Yennayer 2975. This special evening is dedicated to the rich and diverse culture of the Imazigh people, the original inhabitants of North Africa, with a special focus on the Amazigh regions of Morocco. The programme offers a unique blend of music, song and dance. Artists perform stories and traditions from different Amazigh regions, including the Rif, the Middle Atlas, the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas. These stories and traditions feature authentic Amazigh melodies, traditional rhythms and dances, which together bring to life the rich culture of the Imazigh people.
5-8 December, Digital Theatre During the past Holland Festival, 79-year-old Brazilian music legend Arthur Verocai presented a memorable concert in a packed Concertgebouw. Together with the Metropole Orchestra and guest artists, he performed the music from his iconic 1972 debut album: a mix of bossa nova, samba, jazz, psychedelia and funk. Early this century, major hip-hop artists such as Snoop Dogg,...
Sales of the first four performances of the 78th Holland Festival will start on 26 November via www.hollandfestival.nl: two performances inspired by paintings and two matinees in The Concertgebouw. On 18 March 2025, the full programme will be announced, including the projectWelcome to Asbestos Hall that associate artist and choreographer Trajal Harrell will develop especially for the festival. Director...
This Christmas break, our Soft Winter Festival features a heartwarming programme at the Plein Theatre for all ages! The festival includes puppet theatre performances for the whole family, delicious and affordable food from Aunt Peggy, a comedy night, the Amsterdam Winterstal at OBA Oosterdok and a connecting end-of-year drink for the whole neighbourhood. We would like to end 2024 ultra-soft with local residents,...
Eye Filmmuseum turns the spotlight on the American avant-garde film of the 1960s this autumn. An explosion of form experiments in a turbulent era. A movement that still inspires.
Nieuwe Noten Amsterdam celebrates its fifth anniversary this season! To celebrate, we have a special offer: students and professional musicians and composers can go to any Nieuwe Noten concert for only €10. Every month in Plein Theater, you get the unique chance to experience new music in an intimate setting. Nieuwe Noten Amsterdam offers a stage for contemporary chamber music....
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...
Staff from city museums around the world come to Amsterdam This year, the Amsterdam Museum, together with Imagine IC, is organising the International Conference of City Museums and Contemporary Heritage Practice. This event is initiated from ICOM, the International Council of Museums. Each year, a different museum gets the honour of hosting the event. After Moscow (2015), Mexico City (2017),...
At 1 hour and 50 minutes, it happens. That's when Nicolien van Vroonhoven, culture spokesperson for the governing NSC party, makes it clear what the fuss is about. "The cultural sector should also take a look at itself, because there are whole groups in society that have nothing to do with culture." Venue: pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam; the occasion: a church early...
ZID Theatre enthusiastically launches the fourth edition of FATE, the talent development programme for young, creative newcomers and creators with a refugee or migration background! Ambitious performing artists up to 30 years old are given the chance to develop their talents and realise their artistic dreams through flexible training, coaching and unique presentation opportunities. FATE opens doors to the Dutch arts and cultural landscape and offers a springboard to professional careers. Do you know any talents? Share this initiative and make sure they sign up for this special programme soon!
Plein Theater provides a stage for contemporary music. Adventurous and small-scale performances, new compositions and leading musicians; in the Nieuwe Noten Amsterdam series, audiences are given monthly opportunities to experience this unique concept in an intimate setting. In the summer of 2024, Plein Theater will open its doors wide. In the Summer of Music in and around...
Soon to be seen at ZID Theatre HISTORIA: A Journey through Cultures and Time HISTORIA is choreographer and dancer Issam Zemmouri's first dance solo. With a background in dance from Morocco and France, Zemmouri has been a regular at ZID Theatre in the Netherlands for over five years now. He was also an active participant in the FATE training programme (Future Academy...
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...
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...
One of the lesser-known and thus 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
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...
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' work 11000 Saiten is a great superlative: surround with emdr and...
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...
Live music in the theatre, I long for it more and more. Performances in which actors are accompanied by a soundtrack, amplified with or without transmitter microphones, always only half captivate. You soon find yourself watching a kind of live performed film. But without the comfort of a cinema and the technical capabilities of the camera.... Sunday 9 June sat in...
That's where Christiane Jatahy had me for a moment. When during her directed and devised story 'Despois do Silencio', one of the actresses falls into a Winti-like delirium, and her colleagues try to keep her from colliding unceremoniously with spectators in the front row, I briefly think it is real. That's how used to reality we are by now...
It was busy at Amsterdam's Westergas area, this Thursday, 6 June. Fantastic, of course, that not only do you have a couple of excellent running restaurants and clubs there, and the evening four-day march passes by while there is a big salsa party at the club near the world-famous Gashouder, but then it still feels a bit weird that the royal opening of the...
Tonight, the 77th edition of the Holland Festival opened in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix. In the opening speech, festival director Emily Ansenk said that "the world's most urgent groundbreaking performing arts come together in June in Amsterdam.It may be here in all its multiformity. If you are 77 years old, and have lived through all sorts of eras, developments and governments, then...
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Holland Festival had a reputation for being elitist. The festival, which was founded in 1947 to get the culturally starved Netherlands back on track after World War II, had a bit of that about it because, for a long time, "being elitist" was also completely...
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