Meet the associate artist: Trajal Harrell

Meet Trajall Harrell, an American groundbreaking choreographer, and this year’s Holland Festival associate artist. By combining and adapting postmodern dance, voguing, the Japanese dance-theatre form butoh, runaway fashion and visuals arts, Harrell has created been building and international one-of-a-kind oeuvre over the last 20 years. Looking at sources of inspiration and his own work, moderator Maarten van Hinte will speak with Trajall Harrell about pushing the boundaries of modern dance traditions, taking risks as a renowned artist, and building new connections with your audience.

I always try and apply to my work something that Toni Morrison once said: If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Trajall Harrell (Douglas, Georgia, 1973) is one of the major contemporary choreographer interntionally. With universal human emotions and themes like interconnection, tragedy, tenderness and vulnerability, Harrell’s pieces often move audiences on a deeply personal level. Harrell became internationally known from 2009 with his Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church, a series of works in which voguing − a dance style that came out of Harlem’s ballroom scene of the 1980s – and early postmodern dance form the basis. In his recent work Harrell weaves theoretical elements from voguing with movements and ideas from early modern dance and butoh, a minimalist and socially engaged form of dance from post-war Japan that was developed by Japanese dancer and choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1996) in the late 1950s.

Trajal Harrell is the associate artist for the 78th edition of the Holland Festival in June 2025.