Post-Congress Option

To register for this optional travel opportunity, download the special registration form (in Word or PDF format)

The Holland Festival is The Netherlands’ largest and leading arts festival since 1947. It was conceived to restore the cultural life of post-war Holland, and to put Dutch artists on the international map again. In its rich and successful history, the festival has indeed succeeded, and continues to do just that. Thousands of visitors every year enjoy this one-month summer festival, traditionally held in June, tens of thousands more watch and listen to the broadcasting of festival events on TV and radio. Under the direction of Pierre Audi, it has become a foremost  meeting place for artists from all-over the world, in a wide span of genres and art forms such as dance, music (classical, contemporary, world music and popular music), theatre, film and more recently, multimedia art.

n 2007 the Holland Festival will celebrate it’s 60th birthday, an occasion which will be marked with a panoply of special large-scale cultural events in and around the capital of Amsterdam. Special projects will include an opera coproduction between the Holland Festival and the Wiener Festwochen, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the festival of Aix-en-Provence, putting on stage a new production of Janácek’s From the House of the Dead with stage director Patrice Chéreau and conductor Pierre Boulez, their first collaboration since the now legendary Ring cycle at Bayreuth 30 years ago.

The Holland Festival cordially invites all ISPA Brussels 2007 delegates for a post-conference visit to this major cultural event to meet with the festival team and the participating artists. We’ll offer a three day program that includes both performances and meetings with Dutch artists and ensembles.  

Programme Sunday 10 June
Daytime: Transport from Brussels ISPA to Amsterdam

Evening: 8.00 pm
Doctor Atomic
Composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellars are well known for their collaboration for Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. Doctor Atomic deals with one of the most spectacular moments in the life of Robert Opppenheimer, the inventor of the Atomic bomb. Both moral and private implications of testing the bomb are being represented in a mix of electronic and live music. This European premiere of Doctor Atomic is a coproduction of De Nederlandse Opera with San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago.  (photo San Francisco Opera © Terrence McCarthy)

Monday 11 June
Daytime:  Guided tour Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. This landmark venue contains two great concert halls, rehearsal spaces, a jazz club and offices and is home to many of the leading ensembles and arts organisations of Amsterdam, inclu-ding the Holland Festival itself.

Evening – choice between:

• 8.00 pm    Wagner Dream In this new opera leading uk composer Jonathan Harvey explores an intriguing twist towards Buddhism that Richard Wagner would have made in the last days of his life. Festival director Pierre Audi stages this work, commissioned by Dutch National Opera, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg and the Holland Festival.
• 8.00 pm    Pichet Klunchun and myself French choreographer Jerôme Bel was invited to Thailand to make a production with traditional Khon dancer Pichet Klunchun. Time was short and the cultural differences substantial; they ended up with a piece of work that constitutes both interview and lecture/demonstration, an exploration of eastern and western dance culture.
• 8.15 pm    Babel Babel is the second text, after Bambiland, which Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek wrote about the war in Iraq and the way it is transmitted to us by the media. Babel starts with Falludja and Abu Ghraib, for a cultural and antropological travel in the abyss of humanity and the interweaving of sex, violence and religion. The Wiener Burg-theater, under direction of Nicolas Stemann, convincingly brings about the relation between mothers and sons and the influence this relation has on the way the world turns...

Tuesday 12 June
Daytime:  Lunch meeting with Holland Festival direction and major Dutch art institutes.

Evening – choice between:

• 8.00 pm    Wagner Dream In this new opera leading uk composer Jonathan Harvey explores an intriguing twist towards Buddhism that Richard Wagner would have made in the last days of his life. Festival director Pierre Audi stages this work, commissioned by Dutch National Opera, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg and the Holland Festival.
• 8.00 pm    Fama – Klangforum Wien Opera for a sound-building, ensemble, eight voices and an actress. Composer Beat Furrer has created a gigantic instrument which harnesses and transforms the sounds of the orchestra and chorus situated on the outside. A space within a space, an immense box with moving sides in which the listener is situated, a space crossed by far-away sounds, an architecture designed by the composer in association with the playwright Christoph Marthaler.
• 8.30 pm    Song About the Bad Boys and the News – A John Adams Programme A lighthearted tribute to John Adams, conducted by the maestro himself, with the Metropole jazz orchestra playing swing jazz from the era of Oppenheimer, juxtaposed with Adams’ own work interpreted by young New York ensemble Alarm Will Sound, on their first ever international tour.

Practicalities
The Holland Festival offers you a 3-day event including three performances in the Holland Festival programme, transportation and your hotel booking.

• One-way trip from Brussels to Amsterdam
• Three performances (one per day)
• Day programme (tour & lunch)

REGISTER NOW!
To register for this optional travel opportunity, download the special registration form (in Word or PDF format).