The Holland Festival invites everyone to celebrate the arts in June, reflect on the current state of the world and experience Amsterdam in new ways.
From June 1 to July 1, 2023, the 76th edition of the Holland Festival takes place with over 200 performances. Leading performances by artists from all over the world can be seen at 20 different venues in Amsterdam. In addition to permanent festival locations, such as the Gashouder, Muziekgebouw, Carré and Het Concertgebouw, there are also new venues such as the Planetarium, Donau and the Gerrit van der Veenstraat. New work can be seen by associate artist ANOHNI and by among others Laurie Anderson, Simon McBurney, Julian Rosefeldt, CocoRosie, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Romeo Castellucci, Susanne Kennedy, Lisaboa Houbrechts, Meredith Monk, Tan Dun, Blixa Bargeld and Sigúr Ros. Artists who, one by one, create alternative worlds, look critically at society and create boundary-pushing work. In De Balie is a new festival center with a special program. For tickets, the full program and more information, see hollandfestival.nl.
Associate artist ANOHNI
Part of the program was created in collaboration with associate artist ANOHNI. Her work consists of music, performance, visual art and activism. With her own performances and her contribution as associate artist, she draws attention to issues such as vulnerability, the destruction of nature and the urgency of formulating a new vision for society. She embraces a diversity of identities and lifestyles and advocates for everyone who is excluded, marginalized and exploited by Western, capitalist society. One question is central to her work: 'What is really going on?'
ANOHNI is present with three projects. The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat) is a free accessible location performance with meditative music by American composer William Basinski, performed by the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest. This event emerged from ANOHNI's personal experience of living in that street briefly as a child. ANOHNI also presents her own visual art in connection with photographs of her most important muse, Dr. Julia Yasuda. The exhibition SHE WHO SAW BEAUTIFUL THINGS is a collaboration with the Amsterdam Museum and can be seen in Huis Willet-Holthuysen.
Future Feminism is a group of artists including ANOHNI, Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine and Bianca and Sierra Casady (CocoRosie). They make proposals for a better, more feminine future. At the Muziekgebouw they present the installation 13 TENETS OF FUTURE FEMINISM, which was first shown in New York in 2014. The installation is accompanied by a series of performances (world premieres) by them, poetic interventions, rituals and conversations that encourage the audience to take a stance and together imagine an equal, feminine world.
Visions of an alternative world
This 76th edition opens with Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, directed by festival favorite Simon McBurney. The performance is based on the novel of the same name by Olga Tokarczuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, and portrays a vision of the world in which animals take revenge on humans. The influence of power, violence and lack of respect for nature is critically examined. Activism is, alongside poetic storytelling with charismatic characters, the driving force behind this radical new view of the world.
A number of large-scale location productions also immerse the audience in alternative worlds. Julian Rosefeldt shows in his spectacular film installation Euphoria in the Centrale Markthal the capitalist system in its full breadth, from consumption to despair, and offers a critical revision of this ideology. Young Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski fantasizes about a utopian society in his six-hour performance Respublika, in which he combines music, theater, rave and performance.
LEMNISKATA is a poetic and large-scale dance performance by Mexican choreographer Lukas Avendaño, in which he focuses on the vulnerability of the muxe. His work stems from a strongly anti-patriarchal vision of society. In EXÓTICA, a new work by Chilean-Mexican Amanda Piña, the choreographer brings a forgotten aspect of the Western history of modern dance to the fore. She puts a number of choreographers and dancers of color who enjoyed much success in the 1920s back in the spotlight.
Multidisciplinary arts experience
In Angela (a strange loop), Susanne Kennedy uses virtual reality to explore the question of what an individual's life looks like from A to Z. In Ribingurumu no Metamorufuoshiu by Japanese theater maker Toshiki Okada and composer Dai Fujikura, the music gradually becomes the lead character itself. British Ed Atkins, who is at the forefront of digital video art, appears twice: as an avatar in his recent video work The worm and live in the performance Epitaph.
For Meredith Monk, a living legend in avant-garde music, creating is a spiritual occupation. Her work Indra's Net is a collective experience with video, movement and music, including vocal experiments. Multidisciplinary can also mean: experiencing art in other ways, for example through participation and sensory stimulation, with the audience as participant rather than consumer. In To Feel A Thing: A Ritual for Emergence by American adrienne maree brown, the participating audience is part of the performance. Australian artist Lynette Wallworth, regarded by ANOHNI as a mentor, combines new technologies to create immersive experiences. She presents three works: the installation Evolution of Fearlessness, the live performance HOW TO LIVE (After You Die) and the 360-degree film Coral: Rekindling Venus.
Between generations
A theme in the program is the interaction between generations. Thus Vake Poes; of hoe God verdween by young Belgian theater maker Lisaboa Houbrechts tells a family story about violence that has been embedded in the lives of individuals for generations. Blixa Bargeld, the legendary frontman of Einstürzende Neubauten, performs in a new project by composer Jamie Man about darkness, performed by and produced in collaboration with Asko|Schönberg.
Wuthering Heights by British director Emma Rice is a contemporary music theater adaptation of Emily Brontë's famous family epic, presented with and at DeLaMar. De Warme Winkel adapts another classic, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and reveals the relevance of this story, in which forbidden desires clash with power relations and normative views on love.
Dragons is a festive show by South Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn. The 60-year-old choreographer presents a vision of the future performed by herself, her company and dancers born in the year of the dragon (2000). For the continuation of the Sustainable Theatre Project started last year, choreographer Jérôme Bel, a legendary figure in contemporary dance, donates a personal story that is adapted and performed by two young makers: Maria Magdalena Kozłowska and Pankaj Tiwari.
Festival center and accessibility
De Balie is this year's festival center, serving as a meeting place, service desk, box office and stage for debates and conversations with artists. For the "do-it-yourselfers" there is the masterclass Writing from the Sprit by adrienne maree brown and workshops by the collective skinship, in which ways of connecting with each other are practiced. The festival is also present online with streams, a podcast series in collaboration with De Groene Amsterdammer and a film program in collaboration with Cinetree. International and local artists come together in a program with online radio station Echobox Radio. Melkweg Expo presents work by photographer David Jack Lyons, which highlights the experience of queer and trans communities in the Amazon region. Among other things, the program around Future Feminism, the Melkweg Expo, the Echobox program, The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat) and the screening of Rusalka by De Nationale Opera in Park Frankendael are free to visit.