When Dance Meets Soccer, Creative Alchemy Happens on Stage

Isabelle Calabre

In France, soccer has been inspiring choreographers to create innovative performances that are drawing new audiences and challenging assumptions about the relationship between art and sport. The result? A growing movement that proves these seemingly different disciplines have more in common than meets the eye.

In April 2016, Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley, then co-directors of the Centre Chorégraphique National in Nancy, staged something unprecedented with Discofoot on the Place Stanislas, as part of the UEFA Tournament. For nearly an hour – complete with halftime – all 24 dancers from the Ballet de Lorraine split into opposing teams and battled to a propulsive DJ set. Their mission? To score goals under traditional soccer rules, but instead of running, they followed a pre-written choreographic framework while adding improvisations mid-game. The overall score tallied artistic points alongside goals in the net. 

One year later, at the Théâtre Louis Aragon in Tremblay-en-France, choreographer Mickaël Phelippeau had a different goal in mind. While Jacobsson and Caley aimed to “blast the rules of soccer with free-style choreographies,” Phelippeau set out to deconstruct masculine stereotypes by showcasing ten female soccer players aged 18 to 57. In Footballeuses the women shared stories of the sexism they routinely encounter, while also celebrating their passion for a sport whose codes and symbols – the jersey, the ball, the warm-up – became the choreographic and symbolic elements of a dance performance. By moving the conversation from field to stage, they dismantled stereotypes while creating an entirely new art form.

For hip-hop trained dance-maker Fouad Boussouf, combining freestyle soccer – a discipline featuring acrobatic ball tricks – with violin music serves as a way of breaking down barriers between disciplines. It’s also meant to challenge preconceived notions about an instrument that supposedly embodies elitist culture and about a sport deemed too popular and too physical to have anything in common with art.

In his duet Up°, created in 2025, he has performer Paul Molina juggle with a soccer ball – itself an actual character in the piece – and with the bow of violinist Gabriel Majou. Majou, who composed the show’s score, also guides Molina through both dialogue and gestures. “Molina pushes physicality to the extreme,” explains Boussouf, who directs the Centre Chorégraphique National in Le Havre. “So I directed him on stage as a dancing body, counterbalancing his intense relationship with the ball with the presence of an equally virtuoso musician.” The result is a show that imaginatively taps into a child-like fascination with games and is accessible to a wide audience.

In Goal, Fantaisie pour passement de jambes, longtime choreographic partners Héla Fattoumi and Éric Lamoureux play with soccer’s symbols and explore parallels to the world of dance. In a four-sided set-up reminiscent of a football field, the production incorporates all the elements of soccer fan culture, from flags and waves to chants integrated into the soundtrack. The movement draws from both worlds. “Soccer players, like dancers, are always off-balance on their supporting leg,” explains Fattoumi. “And a volley can easily end in a pirouette!” The aim, however, is to “move from an efficient body to a poetic body by decontextualizing movement.” The choreographers used soccer balls only in rehearsals, not during performances.

They also broadened the scope by having dancers switch to guitar, evoking how sports venues double as concert halls. “It’s playful and has a theme that speaks to everyone,” says Fattoumi of the 2024 piece that is also a nod to their shared history. The son of a soccer club manager, Lamoureux was once a soccer player himself. As a sports major at university, he intended to go pro until he met Fattoumi, who introduced him to the world of dance. As for their assistant choreographer, Mohamed Chniti, he was himself on the Tunisian national soccer team. 

This year, Boussouf held the final open rehearsals of Up° during a residency in Morocco, where audience reactions during a workshop performance bode well for hist French debut. It seems to be a winning formula for what he says began as “a passion project he pursued for fun.” His recipe for success combines elements meant to resonate with mass audiences – the soccer ball, athletic skills, popular music – with a unique creative vision and high caliber artistic performance. Meanwhile, freestyle soccer is evolving from an acrobatic sports discipline into a new form of dance. Fifty years ago, another street-born movement followed a similar path ... hip hop!

Isabelle Calabre is a journalist specializing in culture and dance, who works with several magazines: Danza&Danza, CN D Magazine and Le Parisien Week-end. She is the author of the book Hip hop et Cies, 1993-2012 as well as the YA book Je danse à l’Opéra (ed. Parigramme). Additionally, she has conducted research on West Indian and Guyanese quadrilles that has led to an essay submitted to the CN D in 2023, as well as an inventory of theses Creole social dances for their inclusion in France’s Universal Cultural Heritage list. In 2024, with Caraïbéditions, she launched a new collection showcasing the diversity of dances and the children who practice them. Already published: Moi aussi je danse le quadrille, Moi aussi je danse le hip-hop.

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Choreography: Fouad Boussouf
June 1, 2025 at Phare, CCN du Havre Normandie (76), Parc de la maison municipale de Caucriauville as part of the Plein Phare Out festival
October 24, 2025 at Centre Juliobona à Lillebonne (76)
December 16-20, 2025 at Chaillot théâtre national de la danse à Paris
February 7, 2026 at La confluence in Betton (35), Waterproof festival
February 18 and 19, 2026 at La Merise in Trappes (78)
March 5 and 6, 2026 at Opéra de Limoges (87)
March 15 to 17, 2026 at Théâtre Charles Dullin - Le Grand-Quevilly  (76)
April 7, 2026 at Centre culturel Jacques Prévert, Villeparisis (77)
May 23 and June 6, 2026 at L'Arsenic in Marminiac (46)