Ronald Ligtenberg

In 2004, a friend gave me the debut album of the English guitar rock band, Razorlight. I was immediately struck by the energy of the music. Enthusiastic music, every song getting to a wild climax. 3 years later, they released their second album and this time the music press caught them and wrote them up to the sky. They became very popular and played all over the world in ten-thousand-people halls. A promising future ahead of 4 young musicians. Now, 5 years later, the press has dropped them already, (they found new heroes) and Razorlight does not even sell out the 1,000-person venue where I am watching them tonight.

But still… their music is full of energy, the musicians play like every song is their last song, like the have to give all their energy. The crowd hardly moves, the audience doesn’t sing the songs along like they did 2 years ago, but still… they are playing like this could be their last contribution to the world.   Read more...

After lots of media attention, radio interviews, spreading fliers and inviting looooots of people, the 19th Sencity event takes place!

The day is 40 degrees Celsius with no wind, but our crew keeps working to have everything set up. After liters of water, sun block and many many jokes being told, we open only 5 minutes after the scheduled time, 8 pm, which is a world record for us!

Immediately the crowd comes in—900 people will show up. Half are deaf, half hearing; half white, half black; half rich, half township.   Read more...

Now that the first round of HIV awareness workshops is over, we go full speed ahead towards the event.

Full speed ahead, that means as far as the weather will allow us. They are expecting 40° Celsius, and hardly any wind. Therefore, we all woke up at 6 am - which is a weird idea for a northern European production team, knowing that we will go on till 8 am the next day. But knowing that you will take a swim in the Antarctic cold ocean in the afternoon while you might have 2000 visitors at 9 pm, gives an extra thrill as well.

So here I am again: next trip, next continent.

This time in South Africa. Another Sencity event, another music event for deaf people - and hearing people. Together with an aromajockey, videojockey, vibrating floors, light artists, signdancers and several other artists, we are going to create an amazing experience in the center of Capetown. One year of preparation is about to come to a climax. A team of three project leaders has been working for 6 months together with the local community and deaf society to turn this event to a big success.   Read more...

Poverty, scarcity, minority, lack of... there are all kinds of ways to emphasize the not being enough of something. And most of the times, that is considered as a problem; There shouldn’t be poverty of this something. And this something has even more variations. If we look at world issues you can see poverty of food, money, fresh water, resources, love, understanding. All of them are big issues and millions of smart and not so smart people have been thinking about solutions to get rid of this poverty of whatsoever.

Problem is, most of the people who are thinking about solutions do not experience the poverty themselves. They are not the victim, and even worse, they consider the person is impoverished as the victim. I could and would like to say a million things about that, but at least, they are talking about it, while there are even more people who are not thinking about that at all. They have given up, are cynical, resigned and bored to death because "it will never work, go away, make a difference or solve anything."   Read more...

"I’M IN!!!" was the first thing Leonie said, when I told her about my idea about a music event for deaf people. Making the impossible possible was her drive, just as mine.

I met her at a party in the Summer of 2002, she was then 28 years old. We started creating this event and with vibrating floors, aroma’s, video projections, dancers, light effect, taste sensations and sign interpreters it was done! People came from everywhere around the world and they wanted more!   Read more...

So now its Sunday, departure day. Our party on Saturday evening was awesome. The audience loved the dancers, were amazed by the AromaJockey, and intrigued by the Visual Jockey. The dancers danced in a way that was easy to follow for the party-people. We ended up in some hip, urban version of line dancing. Great to see how proud the people were when they left the dance floor! It went the way we wanted it, this is what we offer: a good vibe that causes people to dance, in some cases for the first time in their lives   Read more...

Friday felt like a glorious day. We got the opportunity to participate in an event on the upper deck of the cruise boat. As I told you yesterday, the stage manager of that party was fully cooperative and after we had told him what we normally do in Europe at our events, he decided to give us carte blanche so we could go all the way. We get the control over the DJ's schedule and I even get to become the host of the evening. Yeah, always wanted to be an MC!

Since we already did a performance on Wednesday, we all knew we could do it, and that from our side everything was fully checked. Every idea that poped up got worked out. When we tried to find an interpreter for my MC-ing we find one the best self expressed interpreters. When we are looked for a fan for the Aroma Jockey, we found one of the most fancy fans we have ever seen. The captain tries to challenge us a little bit by announcing that there might be some rain this evening but in the end it didn’t rain at all. All the conditions were there for a blast of a party!   Read more...

Thursday - Jamaica
We used this Thursday to lick our wounds. Everybody did whatever they wanted to do, some went diving in the seas of Jamaica, some saw the waterfalls, some of us went to a Bob Marley Museum, some of us did some other typical Jamaican stuff…

My tour manager had a call with the entertainment cruise director. He apologized for the breakdowns of the night before and offered us two new opportunities. The deaf dancers and the sign dancers can dance on Friday night, when there is a Miami Nightclub party on the deck. And on top of that, we get another chance on Saturday night in the Crypt, which is the nightclub on the ship. Although only 150 people fit in there, and there is not a real stage, it is more a Sencity-like place as our whole concept started in this kind of music venue. Possibilities are growing again!   Read more...

I left you all at Wednesday morning 9 am, here is what happened after that.

10 pm
We are supposed to have a meeting. ‘Supposed’ to because again ‘something’ came up at the cruise management and the meeting gets postponed till 4 pm. That means we will not really be able to check out the Cayman Islands, the current location of the cruise ship. For the first time the vibe in the team declines and a numbness is comes over us.   Read more...

Tonight we will have our party going on! The smaller version of what we had planned will take place at the ice skating rink. Now, remember, we are traveling through the Caribbean, but yes there is an ice skating rink! Not that anybody is skating…..

The Sencity crew is very excited. After several breakdowns and some restrictions from the cruise director, they want to show them what they are capable of. They are so driven that I’m starting to like the idea of having all these restrictions. I might work with that ‘concept’ more often.   Read more...

It’s a weird thing, communication. You might think, on a boat with 6,000 deaf and hearing people, there will be a lot of miscommunication or non-communication.

I wanted to write about that in the first place. At the airport we had some interesting examples of prejudices against deaf people. At the custom service I told the employee that the next people in line were deaf. He looked at them and then asked me: ‘do you know who is mentoring them?’ While I was thinking why on earth deaf people should need mentors anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to tell it to next custom officer again. Behind me, Serhat, one of our deaf dancers was waiting. Still the employee started mumbling to him, without looking at him, asking to take off his jacket. I repeated that he was deaf. She looked surprised and said, ‘Ohhhh, but he looked so cool, I thought, he cannot be.....’   Read more...

So here I am, waiting at the Amsterdam Airport. I am about to fly to Miami harbor to meet the members of my team, including an Aroma Jockey, an Experience Jockey from Miami, 3 deaf dancers, 3 sign dancers from Canada, 2 instructors, 1 producer, and 2 assistants. Tomorrow we will board on one of the biggest cruise ships in the world. For 3 days we will entertain 4,000 deaf visitors on this cruise, the biggest event ever in deaf history.   Read more...