April 13, 2016 · Team HG
At the end of this summer, for the 26e once again, the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen will take place in Groningen's Noorderplantsoen. Every year, the festival introduces visitors to a wide range of performances from global cultures and countries. From Thursday, August 18 to Sunday, August 28, 2016, the park will once again be the stage for the artistic festival.
In 2016, Noorderzon presents a program of European and non-European makers who all tell urgent stories about their own culture and environment in their performances – including stories of Noorderzon visitors. Stories told in an innovative language, rooted in the present and the past. In doing so, Noorderzon offers a contemporary window on the worldNoorderzon proudly presents the first names from the main program for the next edition of the festival.
– Opening performance: Dead Center | Chekhov's First Play (Ireland/England)
The young company Dead Centre comes with Chekhov's First Play Going to Noorderzon for the first time, to do injustice to a great playwright. Visitors wear headphones throughout the entire performance, through which live commentary is provided in a bizarre and funny way on what is being played on stage.
– El Conde de Torrefiel | Guerrilla (Spain)
A Spanish collective of writers, musicians, dancers, and video artists present Guerrilla, for which no fewer than 80 volunteer local actors are needed, whom Noorderzon will soon recruit.
– Mats Staub | 21 – Memories of Growing Up (Switzerland)
When did you turn 21? What happened that year? And did you really feel grown up then? Swiss artist Mats Staub discussed these questions with a large group of people of all ages. For Noorderzon, he is collecting eight new portraits of visitors, the first of which will be shot soon.
– Taoufiq Izzediou/Cie Anania | And Alert (Morocco)
A solo dance performance based on the natural attraction of the divine or the spiritual in our current societies. During his residency in Groningen in February, Izeddiou further explored his concept and took the first steps towards a performance that you can come and see at Noorderzon 2016.
– Sarah Vanhee/CAMPO | Oblivion (Belgium)
For her latest show, OblivionFor a year, Sara Vanhee kept everything she would otherwise have thrown away, working and living, and created a performance with it.
– Edit Kaldor | Web of Trust (Hungary/Netherlands)
Edit Kaldors Web of Trust attempts to establish a new online platform: a ‘trust network’. This brings people from all over the world together online and forms a social movement based on respect and equality. Web of Trust brings the internet into the theater and offers the opportunity to transform passive dissatisfaction into active engagement.
– Berlin | ZVIZDAL – Holocene [#6] [Chernobyl – so far so close] (Belgium)
The year is 1986: some 90 towns around the city of Pripyat are evacuated; the lives of the inhabitants take a drastic turn due to the failure of a nuclear test. They leave their homes never to return. Pétro and Nadia, a 60-year-old couple born and raised in Zvizdal, refuse the evacuation. Zvizdal is a portrait of loneliness, survival, poverty, hope, and love between two older people.
– Penny Arcade (United States)
None other than Andy Warhol recruited Penny Arcade, the Queen of Underground Performance, in the 1960s after her stand-up shows at The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous. Now – in her sixties – she is just as relevant as she was then. Last year she made a big impression at the Edinburgh Festival, and now she is coming to Groningen for an extremely urgent late-night show.
– First name music program: Daniel Norgren (Sweden)
Until recently Sweden's best-kept musical secret, but the man himself has changed that over the past few years. As a one-man band, he has toured criss-cross Europe for the past few years. He writes painfully beautiful, languid blues songs: battered, battered, and full of influences from country, gospel, jazz, and rock.
More information and ticket sales
In addition to the main program, Noorderzon offers a wide selection of sub-programs. From a rock-solid international music program and dozens of performances in shipping containers to a mini-literature festival. From a playground full of hands-on activities and performances for children to visual art throughout the festival grounds. More names for the program will be announced in the coming weeks and months. Keep an eye on the website Keep an eye on Noorderzon Performing Arts Groningen.
Early Bird ticket sales for Noorderzon 2016 start on Monday, June 20 via this website and regular ticket sales start on Monday, July 25, also via the website and at a ticket sales point in the city of Groningen.
Photo: Dead Center – (c) Jose Miguel Jimenez
