A lonely dancer is outside to welcome the public for the opening of Holland Dance Festival.
The 2009 festival is entirely dedicated to the Netherlands Dance Theater‘s 50ieth anniversary and Jiri Kilian’s departure as the resident choreographer of NDT in The Hague.
The president of the Board of Trustees of Holland Dance Festifal, Mr Gilbert Monod de Froideville welcomed the public.
Dutch Minister of Culture, R. Plasterk opens Holland Dance Festival officially.
I’m sorry the photos are not as sharp as I would have liked.
Yesterday, like today, it was gorgeous weather. Around 06.00 PM I jumped on my bike (yes, sometimes I do bike) to visit the TodaysArt festival in The Hague City Center. From my bike I took this photo of the Big Church of The Hague and you can see how crisp the air was.
Maison de Bonneterie, A fashion temple right in the The Hague City Center shopping area.
I arrived at Spuiplein, the center of TodaysArt festival just before it taking off.
Spuiplein is the huge square next to The Hague Town Hall and in front of the music hall (the building with the red triangle) named after Anton Philips. The Lucent Dance Theater is adjacent to Anton Phillips Hall and to its right. The two buildings in the back are Dutch Government offices and the blue building to the right is the The Hague Mercure hotel.
Hiroaki Umeda is a pluridisciplinary artist: choreographer, dancer, sound, image and lighting designer with roots in hip-hop, classical dance and photography. He was born in 1977 and currently lives and works in Tokyo. In 2000 Hiroaki Umeda founded his own company “S20″ and since he has started making own pieces. His work is minimal and radical, subtle and violent, and is created to be ‘experienced’. He is now recognized more as a visual artist rather than a choreographer, a mover rather than a dancer. By using projections, Umeda becomes one with his environment, controlling sound and light with his movements.
A late – sure, he would insist on the “late”! – Baby Boomer Friend threw a party. He had invited Johnny and the Gangsters of Love to do a gig.
Johnny and the Gangsters of Love Jumping Around
There we were with the whole bunch of Baby Boomers standing on the street in front of my friend’s house, when Johnny and the Gangsters of Love came around the corner in their 60ies Pontiac Bonville, installed the sound and started rocking and rolling from and on the Pontiac.
If you watch their trailer footage, you’ll understand why your’s truly got so excited that he started to Rock and Roll with – who else than – Dancegirl, Daughter # 2. He tried to throw her in a proper 360 degrees backward head over swing over his hip, lost his equilibrium and fell flat on his face. Not only that. As Dancegirl was just in the 180 degrees position of her swing, she also fell flat on her shoulder and face.
Luckily, apart from some bruises, scratches and blue spots, nothing serious happened.
But to realize you have to stop doing 360ies while rocking and rolling because your getting too old, hurts your ego! It HURTS deeply!
They performed Glow, one of the best dance performances I have ever seen!
About Chunky Move
Founded by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek in 1995, Chunky Move has earned an enviable reputation for producing a distinct yet unpredictable brand of genre-defying dance performance. In the performance Glow, the latest in interactive video technologies is used to generate a digital landscape in real time in response to the dancers’ movements. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states.
