artistic & business Director
Brigitte van Hagen is a Dutch soprano based in Amsterdam. Alongside a successful career in classical music she searches for new sounds and social meaning in music and other art forms. She has collaborated with a diverse range of artists such as Children of the Light, Daan Roosegaarde, Sibyl Heijnen and Minyeshu, melting together different art forms resulting in installations, recordings and live performances.
Since 2020 she is an artistic director at House of Makers, where she initiates and directs new interdisciplinary projects. She is aware of the times we live in and responds or reflects through the creation of new work, and encourages audiences to experience art from more than one perspective.
Alongside her work with House of Makers, Brigitte performs internationally as a soprano, with an annual return engagements in China since 2024. Her opera roles include Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Gece in Meriç Artaç's The Arrival of Mr. Z, and she performed in A Postcard from Aleppo, a project by Merlijn Twaalfhoven and Abdelkader Benali with musicians who fled Syria. She is a regular soloist in oratorio repertoire, including Bach's Matthäus and Johannes Passion, Mozart's Requiem, and Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten. NRC praised how she commanded the high registers with a butterfly-light touch and great refinement.
Peter Leung — Artistic Director
Peter Leung is a choreographer, stage director and concept developer. He received his dance training at The Royal Ballet School. Over the last years, Peter has been building an oeuvre of choreographic work which breaks down classical barriers. He has directed the Johannes Passion for the IJ-Salon and the International Bach Festival, and co-directed Dutch National Opera & Ballet's annual International Young Patrons Gala.
Alongside his work with House of Makers, Peter works independently as a multidisciplinary artist across stage direction, choreography, and stage design. In 2016 he created Night Fall for Dutch National Ballet, the first virtual reality ballet in the world, called "a key moment in dance history" by De Volkskrant. His choreography for Brandi Carlile's official music video "The Joke," featuring Michaela DePrince, has been viewed over 12.5 million times. Recent work includes Figure, with Lisa Konno for Dutch National Opera & Ballet, profiled in the New York Times, and Waves of Will, an independent research project developed with former dancer Breanna Olson exploring how brainwave technology can restore artistic agency to performers living with motor neuron disease. His work in inclusive practice also includes choreographing and directing a duet for a wheelchair dancer and a professional ballet dancer for Holland Dance's Mixed Doubles programme.
Peter teaches, coaches, and mentors widely across the field: at the Dutch National Ballet Academy, for Dag in de Branding, De Tuin, Stichting Kunstendialoog, and Muziekzomer Gelderland, and from September 2026 he teaches Collaborative Leadership at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag. He has presented work internationally at venues including the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Sadler's Wells, and the International Bach Festival in Gran Canaria.
Founders (2012)
House of Makers was founded in 2012 by Matthew Pawlicki-Sinclair, and Sterre van Rossem and Peter Leung,
Matthew is a choreographer, teacher and collaborator. A former Soloist with Oregon Ballet Theatre, Grand Sujet with Dutch National Ballet, and dancer with Kansas City Ballet, he has created choreographic work for Oregon Ballet Theatre 2, Ballet Northwest, and Dutch National Ballet's young choreographers programme New Moves, with pieces taken into the company's repertoire and performed at Lowlands Festival. He currently teaches at the Lucia Marthas Institute for Performing Arts.
Sterre is a storyteller and connector who brings together disciplines and people through text. She studied Literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she co-founded the student association Fabula Rasa and its sister magazine Pre-Fab, and later completed a Master's in Cultural Analysis. She published a book of short stories with Prometheus in 2010, and co-founded the writers' collective De Jagers with author Eva Meijer. For House of Makers she writes fiction, prose, poetry, and creative concepts. She has been Head of Content at PUPMAG, Head Editor of Opera Forward, and a cultural editor at Vogue, and now focuses on content with positive environmental and emancipatory impact.