Holland Festival 2016

The theme of this year’s programme was Edges of Europe, which only grew in urgency between the publication of the programme and the festival itself. Artists explored what is left of the dream of European unity in politically engaged performances.

 

The festival presented one hundred five performances of forty-five productions in twenty-three days. It drew more than 86,000 visitors and the seat occupancy was over 85%. Work by famous festival artists like Simon McBurney, Louis Andriessen, Akram Khan, and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch caused a sensation. Amsterdam’s cultural life was dominated in June by the Holland Festival, which was held at many locations with shows, concerts, visual art, films, lectures, workshops, discussions and parties. The public came to these activities, and was touched, inspired, or given food for thought. People occasionally got irritated, but that is also part of being a festival with a tradition of innovation which is not afraid of taking artistic risks. Media partners NTR and VPRO screened four television broadcasts of the Holland Festival. The British online art magazine The Arts Desk wrote: ‘... the Holland Festival in a nutshell: quirky, clever, global’. The New York Times devoted attention to the festival in an article entitled ‘Holland Festival Tackles the Enigma That Is Europe.’

 

Europe was also the subject of the festival’s wordless opening performance: Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten. The Estonian directors Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo showed the diversity and tensions in present-day Europe. They did so again in their film Ash and Money. Artists’ collective God’s Entertainment researched how chauvinist the audience really is with its Chauvinism Scanner. Other artists, like Milo Rau from Switzerland, Wael Shawky from Eygpt, and the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha delved into Europe’s turbulent history, and explored the causes of the conflicts facing the continent today. The French theatre director Joël Pommerat did the same. The Holland Festival introduced him to the Netherlands with his political spectacle Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis. It was four and a half hours of dazzling text-based theatre on the prelude to the French Revolution. ‘An experience that was unsettling and soothing in equal parts,’ according to NRC Handelsblad.

 

A highlight of the final week was the concert by The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians, co-produced by the Holland Festival, for which members of the orchestra from Syria and from the Syrian diaspora were reunited to perform with guest artists Damon Albarn, Paul Weller, Bassekou Kouyaté and Malikah. The audience, together with more than four hundred refugees who had been invited, experienced a heart-warming evening in a sold out Royal Theatre Carré. After this world premiere the concert went on a tour, which included the Glastonbury Festival, the Southbank Centre in London and the Cemil Topuzlu open air theatre in Istanbul.

 

The most notable theatrical performances were: Simon McBurney, who captivated the audience for two hours with his audio theatre solo performance The Encounter; Tania El Khoury, who got her audience to unearth the shocking stories of victims of the Syrian civil war in Gardens Speak; and Simon Stone, who made an adaptation of Woody Allen’s film classic Husbands and wives. As a special guest at the Holland Festival, the Dutch actors collective Wunderbaum had four productions. The highlights of the dance programme were Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Nelken, and the Akram Khan Company’s Until the Lions.

 

The music at the Holland Festival this year featured a large number of cross-genre projects. Son Lux’s concert in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s AAA programme blended avant-garde pop with contemporary music by composers such as George Crumb and Andrew Norman. During Safar Nord-Sud in the Meervaart Moroccan Arabo-Andalusian and Gnawa musicians played with each other, a collaboration that had not previously been seen even in Morocco. A special focus programme was dedicated to the Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth’s eclectic compositions. The grand finale was in the Gashouder, where the performance of her latest work Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie by Ensemble intercontemporain was described as ‘masterful’ by Het Parool. There was also high quality musical theatre, with Louis Andriessen’s latest opera, Theatre of the world, Harrison Birtwistle’s The Corridor & The Cure and Theater Basel’s Melancholia.

 

Pop and classical music shared the stage in the final weekend of the festival, at the Holland Festival Proms. This one-day mini-festival at the Concertgebouw – which only cost € 10 per concert – included a performance by singer-songwriter Ben Folds, who was on stage with the ensemble yMusic for the first time in the Netherlands. Africa Express performed the impressive In C Mali by minimalist composer Terry Riley. The Kronos Quartet presented greatest hits and new work. The quartet was also artist in residence at the festival, and in addition to two concerts, it gave four public coaching sessions to talented quartets in the Tolhuistuin. The Holland Festival Proms kicked off in the afternoon with the world premiere of Grand Subphonia voor immens veel fagotten (for the biggest band of bassoons). The festival commissioned Merlijn Twaalfhoven to write a composition for as many bassoonists as possible: both for great soloists like Bram van Sambeek, Alban Wesley and Pascal Gallois, and for professional and amateur bassoonists including absolute beginners. A large number of people signed up for the performance in the Concertgebouw, including many children as well as twenty participants of the Bassoon Crash Course which the festival had organised for absolute beginners. After a few mass rehearsals, 274 bassoonists took part – which was an official Guinness World Record for the largest bassoon ensemble. The concert was the culmination of the Save the Bassoon campaign, which was launched by the Holland Festival last year.

 

The Holland Festival is exploring the various ways in which audiences can be involved more as active and creative participants in performances. For example, in Sketches/Notebook by Meg Stuart, The Walking Forest by Christiane Jatahy, Gardens Speak by Tania El Khoury and Kloing! by the Nadar Ensemble, The coming of Xia by Wunderbaum, and Ça ira (1) Fin de Louis the audience partook in the performances in a natural way. Visual artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, known for using social interaction as his starting point, went the furthest. His installation on Museum Square, Tomorrow is the Question – programmed in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum – consisted of a series of gleaming table tennis tables, on which anyone could play a game of table tennis. The festival commissioned The Transmigration of Morton F., a new, fully digital work by director Sjaron Minailo and composer Anat Spiegel, which was (and still is) accessible free of charge. The spectator takes an interactive route through singer Joan La Barbara’s convoluted subconscious.

 

As usual, the festival was not only held in arts venues. There was the familiar live opera show in Park Frankendael (Pique dame by the Dutch National Opera), as well as lunchtime concerts in the Rijksmuseum passage. It was also possible to watch live streams of introductions, interviews, and Chinese professor Tu Weiming’s entire Europe lecture on the brand new Holland Festival app and on YouTube. Those who wanted additional information on the performances could also download the programme booklets on the app for free. The festival centre in the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam was also a source of in-depth information and context.

 

We look back with pleasure at the highlights of a successful and striking Holland Festival in this review. The festival team is currently working hard on the Holland Festival’s seventieth edition in 2017. We really look forward to welcoming you again next year.