IRA Festival

IRA is an incoming and outgoing internationalization project that invests in the new generation of artists, supporting their careers and offering them opportunities for visibility in the presence of dozens of directors, curators, and programmers from around the world who are invited to participate.IRA (wrath in English) recalls the first word of the Iliad, a symbol of destructive force, but also of primal creativity. The aesthetics of the project are deconstructed, radical, made up of text, light, and references to classicism and the avant-garde. IRA was born on the margins to create new centers: a horizontal, resistant, cooperative institution; a laboratory in constant mutation.

IRA Festival brings to the stage both national and international productions, and for the first time in Southern Italy, presents choreographers and performers who represent the new trends in contemporary performing arts. The goal is to create opportunities for discovery and perspective, both for audiences and industry professionals. IRA is destruction, vision, and creation — a bridge between territories and generations. It is an attempt to build a new model, to chart a path for the artistic institutions of the future.

One of the fundamental elements of the project is the investment of financial and human resources in networking and collaboration with other entities and institutions in the regional, national, and international artistic and cultural system. In this sense, IRA Festival has two subsections: IRA Residencies and IRA Platform. The first of the two projects, that is a proper program running all the year, involves offering residencies to support the creative work of young choreographers, with a performance during the festival (into the Open Studios section), in addition to the normal program, in front of more than 50 artistic directors and producers from around the world, who will have the opportunity to view the progress of the individual works and evaluate possible support for the artists participating in IRA Residencies.

Soverato is not just the place that hosts IRA — it is part of its identity. Overlooking the Ionian Sea, with its crystal-clear waters and strong tourist vocation, Soverato is a vibrant city in transformation, ready to welcome new visions.IRA moves across theaters, open-air arenas, abandoned buildings, seaside hotels, and urban corners, transforming space into stage, encounter, and possibility.The natural and human landscapes intertwine, becoming the living material of the performative experience.The territory is not a backdrop — it is a co-protagonist.