Gouâl combines a traditional dance of the Maghreb, alaoui, to a more contemporary form of choreographic writing. Choreographer Filipe Lourenço wants to restore these dances’ original intensity, to go beyond some of the simplifications that have turned them into a generic commercial folklore. Alaoui was originally a war dance performed by men in the north of Morocco and in the western part of Algeria, but this performance will include female dancers to deconstruct the binary gender opposition – rather than to overturn it altogether, in order to subvert the many restrictions to the female gaze and their exclusion from the transmission process of these traditions. The choreographic writing of Filipe Lourenço has a strong political and critical component and relies on the full commitment of bodies and artists and a desire to modernize ancestral traditions.

Source: programme of the CND

Dancer and choreographer, Filipe Lourenço was born in 1976, in Bourges.
 After studying the lute and Andalusian-style Arabic music, he played many concerts with the El Albaycin orchestra for several years. During that same period, he practiced and then taught traditional North African folk dancing. In 1997, he entered the Centre national de danse contemporaine in Angers (CNDC), then signed his first contract in 1999 with Olivier Bodin. Since then, he has worked with different choreographers like Patrick le Doaré, Catherine Diverrès (new version of San,and original productions of Cantieri, Solides, Echo and Blowin), Georges Appaix, Joëlle Bouvier, Nasser Martin-Gousset (Péplum, Comedy, I Want You and Pacifique), Michèle Noiret and Olivier Dubois. In 2009, with the performers Laurie Young and Giota Kallimani, he created The Plant Collective, and produced two dance pieces, Trente and Double Take. 

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).