Like a father talking proudly and with love about his daughter or son, Jeroen Jansen, former creative director of ID&T, speaks about Our House. This immersive electronic music experience is located in the former location of the famous club iT, where in the late 80s/early 90s, just like in club RoXY, there was a lot of pioneering in the dance field. And where, since the beginning of this century, the state-of-the-art club AIR has been located.
Working at ID&T teaches you that the impossible is possible. Jeroen has worked no less than 21 years for the company that crosses boundaries in the broadest sense in the dance field. "Just before the Adam Tower became a given, as creative director I had to make a pitch with my department for the interpretation of that tower. The concept behind Adam was that it should become the epicenter of dance in the Netherlands. With offices of dance music companies, clubs and companies that sold electronic music equipment. And in our eyes that included an experience about dance. Then you have to bring an ode to that culture. Calculations were made and then it was calculated that more money could be made from hotels, etc., so the idea of an experience was shelved. When I left ID&T in 2017, I said to Duncan (Stutterheim, the big boss - MB), 'I'm going to develop that idea for a dance experience the moment I start my own company.'"
Why a museum about electronic dance music has urgency has everything to do with the fact that this music culture is here to stay. Jeroen explains: "You have rock, which has been around for 70/80 years now, and you have the overarching pop music. You also have the relatively younger music cultures, with hip-hop on one side and dance on the other. If you look at dance in terms of cultural perception, we're talking about the late 1970s, with the rise of the drum computer. The question you have to ask then is, "When does something have cultural relevance? As a sixty-something now, you fully embraced dance then, so did I, and my children will be touched by it now and soon. Then we're talking about three generations. So the answer to the question of whether something has cultural relevance and deserves a museum is when a movement transcends generations."
It is easy to answer the question of why exactly Amsterdam is the first city in the world to erect a dance museum. Laughing, Jeroen explains, "I was once asked by foreigners if we have some kind of special greenhouses where DJs grow. Or I got comments like, 'What's in your water?' The fact that we have been producing top international DJs for generations, from Tiësto to Martin Garrix, probably has to do with the fact that we are a small country that always had to look beyond its borders. Dance is in the DNA of the Netherlands. When there was no corona, hundreds of dance festivals took place here in the summer months. That's crazy, of course. When a foreigner thinks of the Netherlands, he or she thinks of clogs, cheese and dance. Therefore, it is completely legitimate, right and deserved that the world's first dance museum is in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Just like that in the Bronx, New York, comes the first, real hip-hop museum."
"We wanted to open the museum in a place with a dance heritage," Jeroen explains. "On the hallowed ground where the iconic club iT used to be, now club AIR, we found the ideal location."
Looking at the social values of a museum, we know the economic value, the experiential value, the connecting value, the collection value, but also the educational value. Jeroen realizes this well. "We have set up our own Academy. With master classes and workshops, that Academy will offer further depth and become an important part of the overall Our House platform. The Netherlands not only has a lot of experience in this scene, but also a lot of knowledge. And we want to start sharing that knowledge with the world."
Finally, if you haven't been there yet, Our House is an ode to dance and the culture surrounding the genre. A sensory-stimulating high-tech experience that takes you on a journey through the history of dance.
Jeroen; "We want you to remember a visit to Our House. More and more people believe in the power of experiences that you will always carry with you. Experiences like Our House."