During the preparations for this festival, ANOHNI expressed her desire to pay special attention to the relationship between artists and the audience. Instead of artworks just being received "consumptively," she wants to establish deeper connections. She expressed a desire to harness the cultural value and insight of older members of Dutch society, especially older women from diverse backgrounds who have experienced life in the Netherlands over several generations. Thus was born the project The Elders, inspired by traditional and historical models of the role of elders in society, as educators of younger generations, as transmitters of knowledge and as keepers of deep-rooted values and stories.
The interventions are curated by the elders themselves, at a performance they have an affinity for. Such a gesture never lasts longer than a few minutes and can range from a poem or song, to a speech, to a (rhetorical) question to the audience. In some cases it will have been prepared in advance, often it happens live. In any case, it is intended to enhance the experience of the performance - as a mutual and vulnerable exchange between audience members and artists.
Any intervention by an Elder takes place in close consultation with the creator(s) of the performance in question, who, after all, must provide space for the elder. For practical and artistic reasons, the elders do not appear at all festival performances.
The elders have been invited by the Holland Festival team in consultation with ANOHNI. Some of the people who will participate are: Winnie Sorgdrager (former Dutch politician, lawyer and civil servant), Noraly Beyer (former editor-newsreader, theater maker and writer), Ernestine Comvalius (former director Bijlmer Parktheater, writer, speaker) and Eddy de Clerq (DJ and pioneer of Dutch dance culture). Several more names will be announced during the festival.
Elder Ernestine Comvalius: "Even though I am an elder, it is the older elders I look up to for comfort and advice".
Associate artist ANOHNI:
"Older people often have more insight, especially older women. In my life, older femmes and older women have been my guide. Many women have an underused gift of clarifying things, using a balanced combination of rational, intuitive and empathic action. (...) In Western societies, older people are increasingly put away, have lost their usefulness. But it is precisely their age that makes them eminently valuable, for they remember the larger stories about who we really are. Perhaps they remember things their grandparents told. Those stories and oral histories are windows into deeper values; values that predate and transcend the virulent culture in which most of us now live. We can learn a lot by asking our grandmothers what is really going on today, by seeing things in a broader context. So I feel obliged to listen attentively to the elders among us, especially the oldest women people.
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The Elders
At the initiative of associate artist ANOHNI, a number of performances during this festival edition begin with a small intervention in the form of a poem, personal reflection or dialogue, brought by an 'elder.' These 'elders' are older, and well-respected individuals from Dutch society who, in a casual, self-chosen way, hope to deepen the bond between artist and audience, make the audience aware of their responsibility to the artist, validate the urgency of the performance, and place all in attendance in the here and now of a unique, shared moment.