Crossings, encounters and homecoming at Holland Festival 2024
The 77th edition of the Holland Festival presents innovative international performing arts with more than 40 productions and over 380 artists at 21 different locations in Amsterdam.
The opening will be on Thursday 6 June with a special programme at the Gashouder, where Stravinsky’s iconic Sacre du printemps will be accompanied by a film by Evangelia Kranioti, and Caroline Shaw’s Music in Common Time by a new film from associate artist Christiane Jatahy. The festival concludes on 29 June with the final hours of the 24-hour performance The Second Woman, a hallucinatory theatre and film experience in which a well-known actress plays the same break-up scene over the course of 24 hours, with constantly changing co-actors.
The more than three weeks in between will feature a wide range of performances, disciplines and artists. Georg Friedrich Haas will bring the monumental 11.000 Saiten, a work for ensemble and 50 pianos. Tiago Rodrigues will present Dans la mesure de l’impossible, a piece based on conversations with humanitarian aid workers. Legendary Brazilian composer and singer Arthur Verocai will perform in the Netherlands for the first time in ages, Forced Entertainment will celebrate its forty-year anniversary and make its festival debut with Signal to Noise, a piece that calls for vigilance without losing sight of the absurdity of life. Trajal Harrell will return to the festival with his large-scale choreography The Romeo, with a kaleidoscopic range of costumes, music and dance styles.
The Holland Festival gives special attention to the weekend programming, when you can soak in performances, talks, workshops and extraordinary parties from morning to night.
Besides the usual festival locations like Muziekgebouw and ITA, this year’s edition will also see events at Mezrab, Koninklijk Theater Tuschinski, Het Sieraad and Nieuw Dakota.
Associate artist: Christiane Jatahy
This year, the festival is collaborating with associate artist Christiane Jatahy, a compelling theatre director and filmmaker whose recurring subject is Brazilian society in all its complexity. She aims to effect connection, dialogue and social change through her work. Her artistic signature involves a cinematic way of working on-stage, in which she uses cameras to create both distance and nearness. Jatahy plays with the role of the spectator, with fact and fiction, and in so doing alters our perspective.
Besides her contribution to the festival opening, Jatahy will present her latest work Hamlet, a Holland Festival co-production in which young Hamlet has become a grown woman similarly plagued by mistakes from past like the original Hamlet, and just as eager to change the future. And, as in all her work, with the underlying question: where does the possibility for social change lie?
There is a literary source at the basis of her piece Depois do silêncio as well: the novel Torto Arado (‘Crooked Plow’) by Itamar Vieira Junior. Three actresses will give voice to this novel about the abolition of slavery in Brazil. Apart from Jatahy’s own field research, other sources include Eduardo Coutinho’s documentary Cabra marcado para morrer. Depois do silêncio is documentary and fiction, a theatre piece and film like an intimate report of an unresolved past that keeps repeating itself in the horrors of Bolsonaro’s Brazil and beyond.
Jatahy sums up the essence of her work in the word ‘Cruzando’, ‘Crossings’ in English: the crossing of paths, the junction where people, ideas and beliefs converge. Specially for the Holland Festival, she develops a project by the same name in which Amsterdam residents and artists have a conversation about the meaning of Home. What is home? Where do I feel at home? How is home linked with my identity?
Brazilian programme
In consultation with Christiane Jatahy, the festival has invited Brazilian artists who give us a glimpse of what is currently happening in Brazil and the rest of the world, in the arts as well as other areas.
In Macacos, Clayton Nascimento brings the story of contemporary Brazil to the stage, from the history of slavery to the present day, where executions of black people by the police go unpunished. In this moving and multi-award-winning monologue, he takes the audience through this history of prejudice, exclusion and violence.
One of the most important and daring dance companies of Brazil, Grupo Cena 11, will also come to the Netherlands for the first time with the energetic performance Eu não sou só eu em mim (‘I am not only me in myself’). This work about identity and uniqueness merges dance, language and artificial intelligence.
Mário Peixote’s Limite is a Brazilian silent film from 1931 that has inspired generations of filmmakers. Metá Metá, a trio who combine jazz, rock, samba and African influences, will perform a live score for this film classic together with members of The Ex.
Night programming
There will be three nights where you can dance at the festival yourself: on 7 June, Lofi will make for a night of Brazilian music, from sound art to baile funk, the music born in the favelas. One week later, on 14 June, following The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, a queer rewriting of world history, an unapologetic night out will feature DJs and special performances at the Muziekgebouw.
And on the third weekend, there will be Frasc at Night, when Frascati’s theatre turns into a dancefloor, leading the audience into the night with surprising pop-up performances.
Durational performances
Apart from The Second Woman, the festival will feature three more durational performances. In Sisyphe, artist Victor Pilon shovels an enormous mountain of sand for 12 days in an attempt at understanding the absurdity of existence. Dries Verhoeven’s Everything Must Go is a living installation about shoplifting as resistance against the late-capitalist system. And lastly, there will be special evening opening hours for the re-performance of Marina Abramović’s The House with the Ocean View at the Stedelijk Museum. The duration of all these four performances requires commitment from the audience.
Carmen
In collaboration with presentation partner Hartwig Art Foundation, Holland Festival presents a special adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen by Wu Tsang and Moves by the Motion in Carré. Together with her team, Tsang will stage this Carmen as a hybrid blend of opera, theatre, video and choreography that also contains horror elements. The music (both Bizet’s and new elements by composer Andrew Yee) will be performed by an orchestra; singers and actors meet in the ring of Royal Theatre Carré, which − in line with the original setting of Carmen − will serve as a bullfighting arena just this once.
Opera and ballet
As usual, Holland Festival is collaborating with the Dutch National Opera and Dutch National Ballet as well. With Stravinsky Fairy Tales, Dutch National Ballet will present two ballets by Alexei Ratmansky, while Dutch National Opera will perform Beethoven’s liberation opera Fidelio directed by Ukrainian Andriy Zholdak.
Discounts
We aim to make the festival accessible for people of different financial means, which is why we offer various discounts. There is a set discount price for students, CJP card holders and Friends of the Holland Festival for most performances, as well as big discounts for people up to 39 years old with the HF Young Favourites. There is also a last-minute newsletter (hollandfestival.nl/newsletter) and rush tickets that will be announced via social media.
On top of this, a number of performances can be visited free of charge: Opera in the park, Crossings, An unapologetic night out, Frasc at Night and the Artist-to-Artist: Christiane Jatahy, Janaina Leite, Carolina Bianchi.
The Holland Festival will present over 40 works by 46 makers, which include 8 world premieres, 23 Dutch premieres and 8 co-productions.
The festival will take place from 6 through 29 June 2024. Tickets may be purchased through www.hollandfestival.nl.
The Holland Festival is made possible with support from production partner Ammodo, main sponsor Fonds 21 and many private donors, funds and businesses.
The whole programme can be found at www.hollandfestival.nl, ticket sales will start on 12 March.
