Press release
Amsterdam, 18 March 2025
Butoh, attention for the fragile body, an extraordinary three-week project and a performance in The Hague
Holland Festival 2025 opens on 11 June at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw with the European premiere of Cyber Subin by Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun. Dancers and avatars will dance together in a choreography made in part by AI that reinterprets traditional Khon dance from Thailand.
For the first time in 25 years, the Holland Festival will be back in The Hague (Amare), this time with Star Returning by visionary Samoan theatre maker Lemi Ponifasio. The timeless stories of the Chinese Yi people come to life in Ponifasio’s characteristically stylised, musical theatre language.
The festival’s closing weekend will feature no less than ten eye-catching performances, including ROHTKO by Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski, Extra Life by previous associate artist Gisèle Vienne, and the world premiere of Eric de Vroedt’s De seizoenen (The Seasons), a seven-hour theatrical experience based on the novels by Ali Smith.
In the weeks between, the extraordinary project Welcome to Asbestos Hall by associate artist Trajal Harrell and Michel van der Aa’s VR opera From Dust can be visited nearly every day. Co-productions include the long-awaited Trilogia Cadela Força – Capítulo II: The Brotherhood by Brazilian maker Carolina Bianchi, which explores men’s behavioural codes, and Romeo Castellucci’s Bérénice, an unforgettable monologue by Isabelle Huppert.
The Holland Festival’s 78th edition will feature a total of 43 groundbreaking productions, with 143 performances at 17 different locations. These include 16 co-productions, 4 own productions, 14 world premieres and 22 Dutch premieres, with 22 makers making their debut at the festival: everything from large productions with numerous cast members to intimate solos close to the audience.
The whole programme is available now at www.hollandfestival.nl
Associate Artist 2025 Trajal Harrell presents Welcome to Asbestos Hall
Since 2019, the festival has worked with associate artists who present their own work and talk with the programme team about possibilities for expanding and deepening the programme. 2025’s associate artist is American choreographer Trajal Harrell (Douglas, Georgia, 1973).
’’Through butoh, which embraces old age and decay as a part of life, I found that I want to talk about weakness. … Fragility is not victimhood; it can be present at the same time as strength... I want to show weakness as a fundamental quality that unites all human beings.’
- Trajal Harrell
Since 2013, Harrell has been exploring the relationship between modern dance and butoh, a post-war minimalist and socio-politically engaged form of dance from Japan in which the imperfect body, pain and mortality are at the centre. He will be bringing his study of butoh to a close in 2025 with Welcome to Asbestos Hall, inspired by the original cultural meeting place and studio Asbestos Hall of butoh pioneer Tatsumi Hijikata in 1960s Tokyo. At Welcome to Asbestos Hall, Harrell will share new work in different phases of development and involve visitors in the creative process with so-called ‘Visits’.
There will also be a comprehensive programme with guest performances, talks and workshops. Besides this exciting new project, Harrell also suggested several like-minded artists and makers who inspired him: DD Dorvillier, Takao Kawaguchi and composer and jazz musician Craig Taborn. The Amsterdam pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama will take care of a special programme with local residents: We Are The House: Salon.
Welcome to Asbestos Hall takes place at Likeminds, Amsterdam North. Harrell will also be showing existing work at the Stedelijk Museum: Caen Amour (2016) and Sister or He Buried the Body (2022).
Dance and fragile bodies as a means of artistic expression
The Holland Festival’s focus this year is on dance, movement, fluidity and the body as a means of artistic expression. When does movement become dance? What is the guiding, inspiring mechanism behind it? Artists challenge the notion of the perfect (dancing) body in various ways, and counter it with radical expression.
The fragility of the body plays a key role in the performances of Gisèle Vienne and Carolina Bianchi. Dividing lines between a block of ice and the human body dissolve in Ola Maciejewska’s The Second Body. And the musicians of Asko|Schönberg become part of the choreography themselves in Tero Saarinen’s Study for Life, a homage to composer Kaija Saariaho. The Paraorchestra is a collective of musicians, both with and without disabilities. They will be performing in the Netherlands for the first time with The Anatomy of the Orchestra - Drone Refractions at The Concertgebouw, where the audience can move among the musicians. Lebanese choreographer Ali Chahrour’s dance performance Told by My Mother highlights the emotional burden mothers carry in their bodies and voices.
Cultural cross-pollination
This year’s festival will once again feature a rich palette of international exchange and cross-pollination. In One Ocean, artists from islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, united in the Small Island Big Song collective, will bring an ode to the resilience and culture of their habitat. In Ring of Our Time, by the Amsterdam-based World Opera Lab, forty artists from Nigeria, Iraq, Indonesia, Mexico and Northern Europe present a new opera. Composer Joël Bons’ Atlas Orkest brings forty top musicians from Asia, the Middle East and Europe together for the first time on one stage. Forbidden Echoes by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Kurdish singer Hani Mojtahedy, German producer Andi Toma and compositions by Golfam Khayam and Nader Adabnejad promises to be a concert full of wistfulness, beauty and fierce protest.
Art about art
Paintings, a sculpture and a choreographer’s legacy: these form the inspiration for several works at the festival (#artaboutart). Takao Kawaguchi uses archive footage of choreographer and butoh pioneer Kazuo Ohno as its basis. Marc Vanrunxt’s Freie Form takes Frans West’s sculpture of the same name as its starting point. Otemba – Daring Women by Misato Mochizuki, Jan van den Berg and Janine Brogt is based on a 17th-century painting by Jacob Coeman; Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROHTKO draws on the spectacular case of a forged Mark Rothko painting.
Nightlife
Like previous years, the festival will offer a comprehensive night-time programme. Besides the house DJs and a grand opening party at Welcome to Asbestos Hall, this will include a club night at Parallel where Holland Festival and Africadelic celebrate 750 years of Amsterdam while also reflecting on 50 years of in-dependence (1975-2025) of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé & Príncipe, Comoros and Surinam with various live performances and DJ sets.
Familiar and renewed collaborations
This year’s Holland Festival once more features performances by the Dutch National Opera & National Ballet on the programme. The Dutch National Opera will be performing Boris Godoenov, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. The Dutch National Ballet is bringing no less than two productions to the festival: Other Dances, with choreographies by Jerome Robbins, Ted Brandsen and David Dawson, and In C by Sasha Waltz.
The renewed collaboration with NTR ZaterdagMatinee at the Concertgebouw will result in two performances. When We Were Trees is a concert by Ensemble Resonanz with cellist and born performer Abel Selaocoe, which includes own work by Selaocoe and a world premiere by Kate Moore. The world premiere of Atlas Orchestra is an initiative of Joël Bons realised in collaboration with the Oranjewoud Festival.
Accessibility and ticket sales
The Holland Festival aims to be accessible to everyone. For this reason, the festival offers a range of discounts for young people through the HF Young Favourites; students and CJP cardholders can also get discounts on various performances. There are last-minute and rush tickets, which are announced via social media. And, like every year, there will be free events, like Opera in the Park and parts of Welcome to Asbestos Hall.
The Holland Festival takes place from 11 through 29 June 2025. Tickets go on sale from 1 April at www.hollandfestival.nl. Friends can order tickets starting 18 March. The full programme is available on the website.
The Holland Festival is realised with support from production partner Ammodo, main sponsor Fonds 21, the Hartwig Art Foundation and many private donors, funds and businesses.