Filipe Lourenço

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.

Filipe Lourenço is a Portuguese and French choreographer who started dancing with the association “Songs and Dance from the Maghreb” in Bourges (now Al Qantara), in 1984. He trained in Maghreb folkloric dance for 15 years before becoming a teacher himself in that same association. In addition to dancing, he started learning Arabic-Andalusian music in 1988 and playing the ‘Oud (the Arabic luth) with the El Albaycin orchestra, where he played for 12 years. He joined the Angers CNDC in 1997 and started working with choreographer Olivier Bodin. He has since worked with various artists such as Patrick le Doaré, Catherine Diverrès, Georges Appaix, Joëlle Bouvier, Nasser Martin-Gousset, Michèle Noiret, Olivier Dubois, Christian Rizzo, and Boris Charmatz.

Filipe created his first show, Homo Furens, in 2016 with his company Plan-K, then Pulse(s) in 2018, and Gouâl in 2021. He is currently working on a new creation called Cheb which will premiere in the Fall of 2023.