Dancer since the age of six, revealed online during confinement, this bulimic for creation, solicited two years ago by the Paris Opera, dreams of a world where dance would be accessible to all.

"I, Minister of Education, would impose dance without hesitation in all schools!" jokes the 36-year-old artist.

"We must allow people to continue to dream and escape."

Of Algerian origin and from a modest background, he himself began to dream of dancing by going to the Théâtre de Suresnes Jean Vilar (Hauts-de-Seine), located very close to his childhood home, in Rueil-Malmaison.

"One of the first shows I went to see? It was here!", at the time when his parents could not afford this kind of outing, remembers the curly-haired choreographer.

Back to basics

It is precisely in this theater that he inaugurated the Suresnes Cités Danse Festival on Friday with "Portrait", his latest creation, after nine weeks of rehearsals.

A "Portrait" with several faces, that of a family.

Nine dancers of all ages and backgrounds, dressed in shades of gray to embody a generational mix to the haunting music of Lucie Antunes.

"They find themselves around a table and have to converse despite everything. For me, that's exactly what happens in a family," he explains.

The creation turned out to be "very strange, and very intimate", especially since he returned to work in his childhood room and drew inspiration from his experience to talk about universal feelings such as rejection or absence.

"It is by laying bare that as an artist we are in the right."

Throughout his "success story", Mehdi Kerkouche has constantly defended dance as a "vital letting go" for society.

Driven by this desire, the choreographer took over the management of the National Choreographic Center (CCN) in Créteil and Val-de-Marne at the beginning of January and says he embraces his new responsibilities with "confidence" and "ambition".

His artistic project is simple: "I will continue to develop everything I have done with my company EMKA", created in 2017, he says.

Namely, "to highlight artists, both confirmed and emerging, to make creation accessible to all", but also "to support choreographers who need to develop their work but who do not necessarily have the tools".

Initially, it will renew the festival "On danse chez vous!", the last edition of which was marked by improvised dances and dance lessons.

"At a good place"

Mehdi Kerkouche became known during confinement, when his video montages made the buzz on social networks.

He organized an online dance marathon which raised 15,000 euros for the Paris Hospital Foundation and received a phone call from Brigitte Macron to congratulate him.

An up-to-date artist, he naturally foresees his project both "in the living and in the virtual" over the next four years, the duration of his mission, which he intends to take "arm-to-body".

He also collaborates with singing stars like Angèle, whom he accompanies on the tour of his latest album "Nonante-Cinq".

The choreographies of the Victories of Classical Music or the César 2022, it is also him.

This beautiful rise, he owes it to the dance, but not only.

"I'm just very curious and passionate. And everything I've gone through in my career, namely musical comedy, hip-hop, singing or pedagogy, have built the multidisciplinary artist that I am today. “, he explains.

And it is now, in this place, that he says he feels "in the right place".

© 2023 AFP