On September 10, 11, and 12, 2025, Transposition, the new multimedia performance by Vladlena Sandu, will be presented at DOOR OPEN SPACE during the Amsterdam Fringe Festival. In this moving piece, a musician couple shares their story of fleeing to the Netherlands.
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Transposition is a documentary spoken opera. A musician couple with two babies goes through forced emigration, rupture, and loss. Throughout the long journey to Amsterdam, with nothing left but each other and music, they face the question: how can we create art when everything is in ruins — when the world is falling down?
“Transposition” is a timely and compelling artistic statement about migration, exile, the search for identity, and new beginnings in a fractured, crisis-ridden world. Through a synthesis of contemporary music, spoken word grooves, dance, and video, the performance offers audiences a powerful experience, transforming documentary story into a contemporary spoken opera.
The show will premiere at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival and brings together a remarkable team of artists with different origins. The author and director, Vladlena Sandu, is known for turning today’s documentary stories into contemporary artistic forms. Her socially charged works have been featured at numerous film and theatre festivals, establishing her as a distinctive voice on the European art scene. In 2023, she won the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, and her new film “Memory” is premiering at the Venice Film Festival as an opening film of the «Giornate degli Autori» program in August 2025.
The carriers of the story and performers are pianist Maria Nemtsova and saxophonist Vitaly Vatulya (VitaDuo). Founders of Music for Peace and the Festival of Contemporary Music Re:Formers, they have performed in more than 20 countries, bringing music to post-conflict regions on both sides of divides and building cultural bridges through art. Vitaly Vatulya is a member of the renowned Amstel Quartet and a docent at the Groningen Conservatory.
Maria Nemtsova has performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and many others.
The collaboration with Jacob ter Veldhuis (JacobTV), one of the most prominent composers in the Netherlands, also carries profound meaning. His socially engaged compositions — blending speech grooves, electronics, and live instruments — address urgent political and humanitarian issues. It was JacobTV’s music that was performed during the anti-war concert by VitaDuo and other musicians on February 24, 2022, making this collaboration especially Symbolic.
The choreographer of the production, Konstantin Koval, is an internationally acclaimed contemporary dance choreographer performing on global stages. Among his projects is the choreography for Tommy Cash’s viral Eurovision performance Espresso Macchiato.
The libretto was co-written by director Alina Kotova, the project’s creative collaborator, whose practice actively explores the boundaries of contemporary opera, blending experimental forms with acute social sensitivity.
This production of Stichting Music Bridges perfectly embodies the spirit of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival: a platform for new, independent, and boundary-pushing work. Together, the Transposition team creates a resonant and relevant artistic statement — one that reflects and rethinks the fractured world we live in today, and chooses within it a path of creation — a path of art, declaring: art = resilience.
Libretto: Alina Kotova & Vladlena Sandu
Director: Vladlena Sandu (Best of Fringe Award 2023)
Composer: Jacob ter Veldhuis (JacobTV)
Performers: VitaDuo – Vitaly Vatulya & Maria Nemtsova (saxophone, piano)
Choreography: Konstantin Koval
Dancers: Cristel de Frankrijker; Luigi Nardone
Costume Design: Anna Chistova
Artistic Collaborator: Alina Kotova
Production: Stichting Music Bridges
Production assistant: Polina Mirovskaya
Dates & Times:
September 10 – 8 p.m.
September 11 – 8 p.m.
September 12 – 6.30 & 9:30 p.m.
Venue: DOOR OPEN SPACE, Amsterdam
Language: English
Duration: approx. 60 minutes
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible
Tickets…
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