With ten different performances and a film brunch in a full closing weekend, the 78th Holland Festival concluded on Sunday, 29th June. The weekend was a good reflection of the entire festival, which ranged from the individual opera experience From Dust to a 7-hour theatre marathon The Seasons and intimate solos to the last concert film by former associate artist Ryuichi Sakamoto in Welcome to Asbestos Hall and the overwhelming multimedia performance ROHTKO with a pounding score.
Emily Ansenk, director of the Holland Festival: ‘This edition once again showed what the Holland Festival stands for: offering a platform to artists who question and shape their time. We presented work that often combines beauty and experiment with urgent themes. Makers from all over the world brought compelling perspectives on art, freedom, loss, resistance and vulnerability. Especially in a world that is under pressure, it is essential that there is room for art that confronts, comforts and connects.’
At the request of Trajal Harrell, applause was only allowed at the last Visit, in a series of five in his temporary artist studio. It marked the end of his years of research into the Japanese dance form butoh. And with it came an end to his 18-day artist studio Welcome to Asbestos Hall . In the spirit of Tatsumi Hijikata’s original Asbestos Studio , this project was all about artistic experiment and encounter with Visits, guest performances, parties and surprising exchanges such as a ‘blind date’ with jazz pianist Craig Taborn, who Harrell afterwards called ‘the pinnacle of my career’. In addition to butoh, vulnerability, not to be confused with victimhood, is a recurring element in Harrell’s work. This was expressed in the form of the entire project: it showed courage and openness to let the audience share in a creative process and to show work that is not yet finished, not yet a performance. Makers and audience stepped outside their comfort zone by diving in at the deep end together.
“I still believe that the greatest power of art is that it can evoke a kind of proximity that cannot be expressed in numbers. It cannot be measured,” said associate artist Trajal Harrell in his opening speech at the beginning of the festival.
This idea formed a clear guideline in this year’s festival. In Welcome to Asbestos Hall , visitors were given the unique opportunity to get close to Trajal Harrell and his dancers and to get to know various other makers such as Carolina Bianchi and former associate artist Gisèle Vienne through intimate workshops and pop-up talks. In Frascati, there were also intimate performances. There, makers such as Ola Maciejewska, DD Dorvillier, Geumhyung Jeong and Marc Vanrunxt presented groundbreaking solos at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Under the heading #radicalmovement, they showed how dance breaks free from conventions and tackles all dance dogmas with contrary energy. In the Stedelijk Museum, visitors once again got close to Trajal Harrell during his performances Caen Amour and Sister or He Buried the Body. In a different way, Het Paraorchestra provided proximity. This orchestra, half of which consists of people with a physical disability, made its debut in the Netherlands. The chairs were removed in Het Concertgebouw for a concert in which the audience was allowed to walk around, sit and lie down among the musicians and thus develop a very personal connection with the music and its creators. And also the VR opera From Dust by Michel van der Aa, in which avatars sang to you privately, provided a special and personal experience.
