Holland Festival, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and NDT launch Digitaal Theater platform

Holland Festival, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and Nederlands Dans Theater have joined forces to jointly innovate in digitisation, engaging online with broad and new audiences and archiving and unlocking cultural heritage. By joining forces, the Digitaal Theater platform has been realised. In the future, this platform will also be available to other organisations within the performing arts.

In order to strengthen each other and the sector, the three organisations, with the support of Fonds21, jointly started looking for an innovative and sustainable way to offer digital content. Executive Director Willemijn Maas (Nederlands Dans Theater): “The pandemic accelerated digitalisation, both nationally and internationally. With that, we also learned more about new possibilities, including the artistic added value that presenting dance online can offer. We think it is important to share the knowledge from all the experiments in the past period, but also the knowledge we will still gain from this platform, with each other and with other cultural organisations.”

Besides offering live streams and video on demand (VOD), the platform offers more possibilities. It meets internal and educational needs, for instance as part of teaching programmes for schools and training courses. Also, it enables (live) streaming of talks and debates which allows both online audiences and live audiences to actively participate. Each organisation retains its own look and feel on the platform. The platform will be further developed with more functionalities in the next phase.

The Digitaal Theater platform allows cultural organisations to use a shared technical infrastructure. Research into optimising the visitor experience, rights and archiving of online offerings continues. Director Emily Ansenk (Holland Festival): “The past three editions we have experimented with different forms of audience interaction, we will continue to do so in order to optimise the online experience. This way, we can properly connect makers, companies and visitors from around the world with our programming and our wide audience.”

The three organisations are convinced that digital cultural offerings will continue to have a permanent place, but explicitly alongside and in addition to physical performances. Research shows that the platform meets a need among existing and new audiences. Director Clayde Menso (Internationaal Theater Amsterdam): “It is fantastic to experience that a larger and more diverse audience can be reached with live streams. And not only for audiences from abroad, also for those who cannot physically be present in the auditorium. Audiences need to become even more familiar with all cultural digital offerings, with the arrival of this platform we will continue to invest in that.”

End of press release.
For additional information, contact:

Holland Festival
Gertjan Pruim — Communicatie & Marketing

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
Maurits Musch — Hoofd Communicatie en Development

Nederlands Dans Theater
Judith Vrancken — Press officer