{"id":2846,"date":"2020-01-07T10:58:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T10:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/?p=2846"},"modified":"2020-01-07T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:04:13","slug":"a-truly-awe-inspiring-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/a-truly-awe-inspiring-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"A Truly Awe-Inspiring Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Walking into the small venue inside Theater Rotterdam on Thursday, 19 December, for the premiere of Ons Wereldrijk<\/em>\u00a0(Our Empire<\/em>) by Hotel Modern and Arthur Sauer, the first association is that of an elaborate miniature filmset.\u00a0It is like walking into a cross between Madurodam and Universal Studios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are miniature villages and jungles, a model of a palace and a ship,\nand hundreds of small puppets no more than eight centimetres tall. The three\nperformers and puppeteers (Herman Helle, Arl\u00e8ne Hoornweg, Pauline Kalker) are\nstanding at the ready. Seated to the left is composer Arthur Sauer who will\naccompany the action with live sound effects (which will involve lots of\ncelery). The scenes are captured on camera and projected on a large screen at\nthe back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than twenty years  Hotel Modern has brought miniature worlds\nto life in the theatre. The worlds may be small; the themes Hotel Modern tackle\nare anything but. One of their biggest international hits was De Grote\nOorlog<\/em> (The Great War), first performed in 2001. Kamp<\/em> (Camp) from\n2005, which covers a day and a night in Nazi concentration camp\nAuschwitz-Birkenau, will return to theatres in 2020. In Ons Wereldrijk<\/em>\n(Our Empire) the exposition is given in Dutch, but it is easy to imagine it\nbeing performed abroad in English or with English subtitles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ons Wereldrijk<\/em> focuses on the fraught relationship\nbetween the Netherlands and Indonesia. Most readers will know how the\ncolonization of Indonesia by the Dutch \u2013 who gave it the moniker Dutch East\nIndies \u2013 ended: with the Indonesian National Revolution in 1949. But how did\nthe \u2018relationship\u2019 start?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ons Wereldrijk<\/em> covers the period between 1600 and\n1680. The VOC Dutch East India Company, a trading company, was at the height of\nits power. The Dutch were the top traders of the era. And they had set their\nsights on exotic spices like cloves, nutmeg and mace. Back then, cloves were\nworth even more than their weight in gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These precious spices\nabound in the archipelago. Which made the Dutch more than willing to help the\nIndonesians fight those pesky Portuguese traders, or help Sultan Amangkurat II\nvanquish his biggest competition. The Dutch merchants had only one condition: sign\nyour name on the dotted line, promising that in future you will trade\nexclusively with them. If the inhabitants were unfortunate enough to break the\nagreement \u2013 the Dutch really loved their contracts \u2013 the Dutch retaliated with\nbloody and ruthless force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ons Wereldrijk<\/em> doesn\u2019t shy away from uncomfortable\ntruths. We watch as, sanctioned by the Dutch, women are raped, babies are\nspeared, people are beheaded, blood pouring from their now exposed arteries.\nYet, miraculously, the performance never gets too heavy-handed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a delicate balancing\nact. By using puppets to re-enact the atrocities and adding dashes of humour\nhere and there, the creators manage to create some distance, which is even\nfurther enhanced by giving the figurines fantastical features. While the\nfigurines representing the original inhabitants of Indonesia look most like\nhumans, the faces of the Dutch resemble those of sheep. The Sultan has the head\nof a great hornbill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The confidence with which the performers and technicians bring these worlds to live, the love and attention that has gone into the creation of the puppets and the models, is truly awe-inspiring. Ons Wereldrijk<\/em> is not only a one of a kind experience, it is also labour of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6-1-2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The confidence with which the performers and technicians bring these worlds to live, the love and attention that has gone into the creation of the puppets and the models, is truly awe-inspiring. Our Empire is not only a one of a kind experience, it is also labour of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[26,25,17,28,31,27,22],"class_list":["post-2846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press","tag-colonial-history","tag-dutch-east-indies","tag-hotel-modern","tag-miniatures","tag-puppet-theatre","tag-puppets","tag-theater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2850,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions\/2850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotelmodern.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}