IRA FESTIVAL

**IRA Festival Returns to Soverato, June 18-21: Four Days of Contemporary Dance, Theatre, and International Performances.**

The IRA Festival returns to Soverato for its second edition: four days of contemporary dance, theatre, and performances along the Calabrian coast from June 18 to 21, 2026. This event reaffirms its international vocation and its role as a privileged platform for the creation and presentation of new works. IRA Festival returns to Soverato and confirms itself as a meeting place for artists, audiences, and communities, enhancing diverse urban spaces — theatres, courtyards, corridors, basketball courts, parish halls, and even a hotel room — transformed into performative settings for four intense days of programming. As always, the program revolves around two complementary aspects: Open Studios — moments of public engagement with creative processes as part of the IRA Residencies Program — and Performances, featuring nationally and internationally significant productions.

**THE PROGRAM**

**THURSDAY, JUNE 18**
The opening night features two great names of Italian dance.
Piergiorgio Milano opens the festival at 7:30 PM at the Teatro sul mare with *Fortuna* — subtitled *Shipwreck in Reverse* — a creation that blends dance and contemporary circus. A self-supporting structure becomes a boat in the midst of a storm, while two performers narrate, accompanied by live music, the story of a shipwreck in reverse: from the depths of the seabed to the moment of departure. Milano, trained between Italy, Belgium, and France, boasts collaborations with James Thierrée, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and David Zambrano; since 2024, he has been an associate artist at Orbita|Spellbound. Following this, at 9:30 PM at the Teatro Comunale, *Amazzoni* by Silvia Gribaudi is presented. Ippolita, Penthesilea, Antiope, and the other Amazons have returned — not to tell a myth, but to traverse it. Five performers train for freedom, transforming resistance into rhythm and exhaustion into celebration. A co-production between Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale and Le Gymnase CDCN of Roubaix, with music by Matteo Franceschini. Gribaudi, associate artist at the Teatro Stabile di Torino (2025-2027), is one of the most recognizable voices in the European choreographic scene.

**FRIDAY, JUNE 19**
The second day opens in the afternoon with three Open Studio appointments (IRA Residencies Program):
● **4:30 PM** — Matteo Sedda, *The Perfect Moment* — Don Bosco, Sala Don Pilla. Inspired by the universe of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the choreographic duo explores the power play between gaze, eros, and death. Sedda, a Sardinian choreographer based in Brussels, pursues research marked by his own experience with HIV, in a constant dialogue between historical memory and artistic reinterpretation.
● **5:15 PM** — Nicola Galli, *DILUVIO* — Don Bosco, Corridoio Vetrato. Loosely inspired by *Lord of the Flies* by William Golding, this work traverses techno, trance, and alternative rock sounds to transform the scene into a nightclub at the twilight of the world. A sensory vortex of lights, sounds, bodies, and sweat. A production by TIR Danza / Orbita|Spellbound, co-produced with MilanOltre.
● **6:00 PM** — Gianmaria Borzillo / corpoceleste_C.C.oo#, *E la bella stanza è vuota* — Istituto Maria Ausiliatrice, Teatro. Born from listening to *Diamond Jubilee* by Cindy Lee, this work intertwines memory, photography, and relations through four transforming performers. Borzillo, a graduate of the Paolo Grassi School in Milan, received a Special Mention at the Under 30 Directors call from the Venice Biennale.
The evening then presents two major premieres:
● **7:30 PM** — Preview — Giorgia Lolli, *Body Sweats (for Elsa)* — Don Bosco, Courtyard with Platform. A tribute to Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927), poet and pioneer of the Dada movement. Dance, lecture performance, poetry reading, and workout: sweat as a pathway to explore the intertwining of effort and pleasure, in striped bodysuits. Lolli, holder of a Master's in Choreography from Helsinki Uniarts, is on the list of mentions for Aerowaves 2026.
● **9:30 PM** — National premiere — Benjamin Kahn, *Focu Meu* — Teatro Comunale. *Focu Meu*, in Calabrian dialect, means "the fire," "the burning in the chest." The first group work by the Belgian choreographer of Franco-Canadian origin explores the tensions between individuality and choir, between intimate screams and collective polyphony. Co-produced by Charleroi Danse, Les Brigittines, Le Carreau du Temple, Atelier de Paris/CDCN, and IRA Institute.

**SATURDAY, JUNE 20**
The day is marked by an extraordinary durational performance.
From 4:00 PM every 30 minutes, at the Hotel San Domenico, the duo Gaetano Palermo / Michele Petrosino presents *Stanza (Soverato)* in its absolute premiere — a one-on-one performance in which the performer occupies a room for eight hours with eyes closed, voluntarily surrendering between collapse and sleep. The audience enters one by one, sharing an intimate and suspended space: a sensitive threshold between refuge, exposure, and control. A project of the blOOm network, developed with Santarcangelo Festival, Triennale Milano Teatro, Fondazione Armunia, IRA Festival, and Sardegna Teatro. The performance will also take place on Sunday, June 21.
The afternoon’s Open Studios include:
● **4:30 PM** — Parini Secondo, *MALIA – studio sull'incanto* — Teatro del Grillo. The Bologna-based company, associate artist of Piccolo Teatro di Milano, presents a hypnotic work intertwining trance music and black metal, esoteric literature, and digital seduction. Stroboscopic lights.
● **5:15 PM** — Davide Tagliavini, *Special K* — Don Bosco, Basketball Court. In collaboration with Piemonte dal vivo.
● **6:00 PM** — Silvia Viviani, *Daughter of the Factory* — Don Bosco, Sala Don Pilla. A performative research on the body as social and productive material, investigating how much the factory system shapes our thoughts and transforms the body into an extension of labor. A production by Gledališče Glej (Ljubljana). Residency funded by the European Union EFFEA Discovery program.
The evening then presents:
● **7:30 PM** — Jacopo Jenna, *MANIFESTUS* — Teatro sul mare. The Latin term *manifestus* (clear, evident) contains the word *manus* (hand). A choreography for three dancers drawing on the codes of street dance — tutting, popping, waving, voguing, flexing — to construct a complex energetic space in constant transformation. Production by KLm.
● **9:30 PM** — Italian premiere — Luka Piletič, *Under Control* — Teatro del Grillo. Luka does everything possible to keep things under control: he answers emails on time, takes cold showers, eats healthy. But how much are we willing to endure to maintain control? A clown who has forgotten how to be funny, a performer who cannot be serious. Production by Via Negativa / Moment (Slovenia).

**SUNDAY, JUNE 21**
The concluding day again hosts *Stanza* by Palermo/Petrosino (from 4:00 PM) and the last Open Studios:
● **4:30 PM** — María Catalina Jorquera / Proyecto Nuclio, *Chucao: Sensitive Interface Biome* — Istituto Maria Ausiliatrice, Gymnasium. Two performers inhabit a sound ecosystem built around the song of the Chucao, a bird endemic to the Australian forests of Chile. Body and generative music activate each other in a real-time loop, keeping alive a connection with the living beyond the territorial distance.
● **5:15 PM** — Casagrande // Giorgini, *Vorreië ca scisse la lunë* (I wish the moon would come out) — Don Bosco, Basketball Court. A performative concert born from research on Abruzzo farming songs: the practice of singing, starting from a single voice, layers into a choral texture to create an immersive sound landscape, with live music. Winner of the Nuovo Grand Tour 2025 call (MiC/MAECI).
● **6:00 PM** — Virginia Spallarossa, *NU* — Don Bosco, Sala Don Pilla. In collaboration with Piemonte dal Vivo.
The major premieres of the concluding evening:
● **7:30 PM** — Absolute premiere — Giovanfrancesco Giannini / Körper, *Nico. Desertshore* — Don Bosco, Courtyard with Platform. A site-specific outdoor dance concert conceived specifically for the IRA Festival, inspired by the music and universe of Nico (Christa Päffgen). The tracks of *Desertshore* (1970) compose the sound score in which two figures never touch, immersed in a dimension suspended between memory, poetry, and solitude. Production by Körper | National Center for Dance Production.
● **9:30 PM** — European premiere — Juan Pablo Galimberti / *Todo lo que me falta, Todo lo que me falta* — Teatro Comunale. A man tattoos the body of his beloved and begins to want to become her. Love erases and reconstructs image and identity through the power of the needle and ink. Dramaturgy and performance by Pablo Dos Reis, original music by Valentino Sampaoli, direction and set design by Galimberti. Teatro del Mundo 2024 award for dramaturgy.
Web: irafestival.it/