As the festival is nearly upon us, we wanted to take a moment to shine some light on a special part of the weekend: the festival's opening evening programme on Thursday 3 April.

Just after 20:00, a free concert is being hosted on The Hague's iconic inner-city body of water: Alvin Curran presents Maritime Rites on the Hofvijver. This free-to-attend event showcases a canonical work by Curran – whom Rewire is hosting a focus programme around at this year's edition. Maritime Rites has been evolving since the 1970s across many iterations and changes – always relating anew to Curran's life-long enjoyment of bodies of water. Playing with the minimal splendour of the foghorn as its basis, Maritime Rites contorts and stretches its familiar howls into something astonishing and encompassing multitudes – of timbres and of meaning. This unmissable performance sees numerous musicians in different boats performing for and with one another in front of onlookers from the sides of the Hofvijver.

Following Curran's performance, a small walk away, the opening programme continues at 21:15  in one of the Netherlands' oldest theatres: Koninklijke Schouwburg hosts two exceptional works. First, Kianí Del Valle Performance Group, Hamill Industries & Tayhana present the Dutch premiere of CORTEX – an audiovisual and choreographed performance that takes the human brain as its subject matter, with particular focus on gamma waves and the temporal lobe as avenues to study and understand consciousness and codified memories. The project’s ethos is rooted in fluidity and equitable collaboration, allowing each dancer’s unique history and interpretation of death to enrich the overall collective process. This dissolution of hierarchies cultivates a space where individual and communal expression converge, enhancing the potential of movement as a medium for the profound exploration of identity. In CORTEX, people’s unique ways of mourning and processing are made tangible through dance, music, and light.

After that, the renowned Italian musician, producer, composer, and instrument builder Alessandro Cortini presents the ever-evolving immersive audio-visual performance Nati Infiniti. Cortini is a crafter of haunting atmospheres with hopeful horizons. Whether in the fuzzed out moments of synth jubilation or the slow, warm flushes of ambient noise, these tones and textures harbour a sentient nature. Cortini summons breath from his machines. The colour of Cortini’s synthesis paves the way for strange things to emerge from its frequencies; he creates a multidimensional sound that leaks out of the bounds of its medium into the arenas of movement and visuality. 

Throughout Thursday there is a wealth of other things to catch and see as part of Rewire's context programme and the Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy exhibition programme, developed with iii. See the full time-table to start planning the perfect start to your festival weekend.

Photo CORTEX by Camille Blake