AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

The Holland Festival - one of the oldest and most established large theater/music festivals in Europe is every June in Amsterdam and featured an international cadre of performance/music/dance and experimental work - hollandfestival.nl

Dance

The brilliant choreographer William Forsythe is an American choreographer who settled in Germany long ago and started his own company in Frankfurt. His brilliant work Decreation was exactly that - a melting piece of choreography as dancers distorted their bodies and voices and used an incredible sound design to highlight their rapid dialogues and descent.

A ritual around a table at the end created a strange conclusion as one dancer writhed on the table with another lighting matches - making flames under the table - to the words of an essay about god and the soul. It was an unpredictable evening - riveting however in its stark and strong commitment.

Music

I became a fan of Messiaen a modern classical composer (1908-1992) who used birdsounds and stretched instruments to their limits - when my friend Paul Festa made a film about one of his pieces and played at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (Paulfesta.com) for the Messian centenary. The piece I saw in the festival at an intimate little church/performance space called Orgelpark blew me away. It was composed in 1941 during the Netherlands occupation by the Nazis - while Messiaen was a prisoner of war(!) and first played for fellow prisoners and Nazi officers "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension." Quartet for the End of Time - Quatuor pour la fin du temps. With only a clarinet, piano, violin and cello the dynamics make the piece riveting from a dramatic burst of the clarinet in the beginning to the barely hovering on the string violin at the end - i loved it.

The last piece I saw Sifters Dinge by German composer Heiner Goebbels was a 'Music w/o musicians - Theater w/o actors' - a completely automated landscape with pianos playing by themselves and stage effects through computers and machines dictating the action. The best effects were with the water poured onto the stage - brought to heat and bubbles and fog and every chemical reaction until the entire set up moved automatically towards the audience gliding over it. Voices in different languages from Malcolm X to Indian chants and French poetry - this was about a pure poetic theatrical landscape. The setting at the Muziekgebouw theater on the River IJ add to the poetry.

Till next June!

Beste wensen - best wishes!

Federico in Amsterdam