Oerol: Day One
- by David
- Jun 20, 2018
- 2 min read
We are at the Oerol Festival (https://oerol.nl/) on an island off the coast of the Netherlands called Terschelling.
Oerol (pronounced Ooordle) has been around for years. It started as a few outdoor spectacle theater pieces on the beach that a local produced and has become a huge international gathering of theater, dance and music artists with installations, stages in the woods and fields, pop up bars and coffee shops, and farms and backyards full of tents and intergenerational tan, sporty Dutch and German people.
Long time Redmoon (and other) friends have visited and we've always wanted to go. We're here! We'll be posting about our adventures while here but here's a quick update on Day One.
First things first: Bikes
Our sweet little AirBnB, a modern little postage stamp of a thing that could be in Dwell magazine, provided us with two bikes and we rented a third. Good, solid Dutch bikes: heavy duty frames, saddle bags, chain guards, wide handlebars, super for cruising.
Mingle with the Dutch
We're near one of the festival grounds that can be found on the island. After stocking the fridge with food, we headed over to see what was up and pick up the week's tickets. Funky moving sculptures, open air bars, little tot playground, lounge chairs with audio books to listen to and great food. Who says all festival food has to be fried? How's an argula couscous salad and a 'seaweed burger' sound? Of course, they ALSO have fish n' chips and burgers and beer.
Automata Puppet Heads
Put on a huge cardboard puppet heads and watch beautiful, simple but very moving puppet shows inches from your face.
Nap Hammock Tree
Get into a hammock and put on headphones to listen to some spacey experimental music while you slowly rise and fall with others on a large rotating hammock tree.
Take in the Musicians
From funky supergypsies to Dutch Dad coverbands, to local kids, there are people playing music everywhere.
Dinner in the Dunes
Load up the wicker basket and saddlebags on the bikes with olives and bread and fruit. Put on the windbreakers and merge into the bike traffic on one of the many bike/pedestrian paths that crisscross the islands. Find a little place in the heather to eat.
See Show, See Sea
The first ticketed show we saw was by a Japanese dance troupe. They'd set bleachers overlooking a sheep field and the Waaden Sea. As the dusk came on dancers appeared out of the grass a hundred yards from us beating drums and made their way toward us. They danced and made music, their torsos slowly disappearing as the sun set and only their flowing white skirts moving like birds over the grass. Their lead dancer emerged naked from a flowing, tattered costume in a hearbreaking dance of death and rebirth and then slowly walked backward into the dunes and darkness, her face covered by her long black hair. Then the entire field was shrouded in three massive sheets of flowing white fabric by the remaining dancers.
Bike Home with the Masses
Night time bike traffic? Yes! Tons of grandmothers and kids and shoutinglaughing twenty-year olds making their way home to bed in the dark wind or stopping off at pubs. We got to bed around 1:30AM. Super fun and more to come.
- david
