The Romaeuropa Festival inaugurates Ultra Ref, a dedicated program within its larger framework that throws open its doors to innovation, creativity, and experimentation. To mark its fortieth anniversary, Romaeuropa is powerfully re-establishing Rome’s Mattatoio as a crossroads of artistic languages, aesthetics, and new immersive experiences. Through a collaboration with Roma Capitale and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, La Pelanda returns as the festival’s pulsating heart and a laboratory for its most innovative, hybrid, and cross-disciplinary sections.
The doors open on September 20th with a double concert that immediately expresses the soul of the entire program. It features the futurist folk of Lyra Pramuk, a leading figure in global avant-pop, alongside Isabelle Lewis, a project that fuses electronics with classical influences. This is followed by Ultra Club, a new section concentrating the festival’s pop music and technological research into a single week. Five days of music begin on September 23rd with a selection of winners from the raster.call soundtrack Europe 20-25, continue with female Italian singer-songwriters for “Le parole delle canzoni – Treccani,” and conclude with the most radical indie music in a special showcase by Dischi Sotterranei.
Musical events continue with the live performance of “San Damiano,” a documentary presented at the 2024 Rome Film Festival, now performed live by Cosimo Damiano and Pietro Pompei. There is also a special appointment blending installation, music, and performance (“Tempo reale”) in homage to Luciano Berio.
Ultra Club also focuses on digital experimentation, innovation, and accessible language and technology labs. Meanwhile, Flesh Ar(t) Attack brings digital art to the ex-Mattatoio with augmented reality works by 25 students from the Fine Arts academies.
For the third consecutive year, Design Talks returns to the Mattatoio for a day dedicated to design. Then, from September 30th to October 5th, Ultra Ref opens a window onto the Lithuanian scene in collaboration with the Lithuanian Culture Institute, the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the Embassy of Lithuania in Italy. This will feature a concert by Merope, an international collective with musicians from Lithuania, Belgium, and Spain, which unites Baltic roots, Mediterranean sounds, and experimental research.
On October 7th and 8th, the space dedicated to the African choreographic scene opens, inaugurated by the “Bambu” project—a bridge between Italy and Africa through contemporary dance and theatre performances.
However, it is from October 15th to 19th that Ultra Ref is fully immersed in dance with Dancing Days. This review is dedicated to new choreographic languages, selecting the most innovative proposals from the contemporary scene—many presented as national premieres—and valorizing young generations through collaborations with the European Aerowaves network and DNAppunti Coreografici, a project supporting choreographers under 35. The review opens with Armin Hokmi’s “Shiraz,” a show inspired by the historic Shiraz Arts Festival that transformed Iran into a hub of international artistic experimentation in the 1960s and 70s.
Ultra Ref also features hybrid theatrical scenes where contamination, dialogue, and encounter become the vocabulary for a new generation of creatives. Significant in this context is the national premiere on October 8th and 9th of Marina Carr’s “iGirl,” translated by Monica Capuani and Valentina Rapetti and staged by Federica Rosellini.