Mehdi Kerkouche

From the young to the old

Is a dancing tribe

Interview by Leonetta Bentivoglio - The friday of Republic

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Portrait means portrait. What does it portray?

"A family. What could be more complicated and necessary than that place where individuals must coexist even though they have not chosen each other? Portrait's tribe is made up of performers ranging in age from 19 to 68, and their lives may be uncomfortable, happy, angry, toxic, affectionate or supportive, in a succession of tableaux along which relationships gradually fall apart or intensify, in the sign of a persistent evolution of emotions. This mass may shatter into duets and solos, or in other passages rejoin in collective paintings. An elderly woman dominates the environment. Is she the grandmother? Is she the mother? You viewers decide."

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Do dancers have a common dance language?

"No. They come from different worlds: hip hop, street jazz, cabaret, break dance, acrobatic circus, tap, free dance... I like this swirling mix of styles, immersed in Lucie Antunes' electro-pop soundtrack, which is a vibrant spell. Lucie was born musically as a percussionist, and that pulse can be felt in her tracks."

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How did you encounter dance?

"I'm in it from all the time. to six years old I was constantly jumping around the house, and my mother to appease me enrolled me to a modern jazz class. I studied for a while and loved doing it, but my parents didn't have the means to keep me going. We lived in a banlieue in Paris. I had two brothers, a father who was a plumber, a mother who was a maid. I decided to put myself to try to learn dance from just by watching television: I used to take to model the videos of Michael Jackson, Prince, Britney Spears... Then from teenager, I attended the free hip hop classes that were held in the neighborhood, and the teacher took me under her tutelage. to 16 I started to giving classes and soon after danced in musical comedies like Le Roi Soleil and Cléopatre. to 18 I entered the National Academy of Dance in Paris and had professional training in classical ballet and modern jazz. I started early to creating choreography for television programs, from Miss France to Eurovision mega-concerts. Among many other things, I supervised the staging of the tour of singer Angèle, who collaborated with Mahmood."

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Her strong pop identity did not stop Paris Opera ballet director Aurélie Dupont from offering her, at the height of the pandemic, a creation for the theater's aristocratic company

"I edited ET SI, a shadowy and dark piece that ends up finding light and hope in the future. It is an ode to survival that is realized through support among the members of the pack."

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His family is of Algerian descent. Is this root reflected in your character as an artist?

"Of course! I was born to Paris and grew up in the dialogue between French and Arab culture, and when I was a child in my very mixed neighborhood, there was a climate of tolerance that now, with all the labels imposed by society, is being lost. Blacks and whites, Jews and Arabs, everyone mixed without barriers. I experienced my dual culture as an asset, and I know that an Algerian substance is a ubiquitous fact in my personality. Algeria is a sunny, Mediterranean dimension of great generosity that lives in me naturally. I did a choreography called Dabkeh that reconnected me to this core. It is a traditional dance that is performed in Palestine in wedding celebrations, and I explored it from a contemporary perspective."

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Social media launched it into viral success

"During the lockdown I was giving classes online, inviting people to to make donations for hospitals-I raised tens of thousands. I edited videos and organized festivals to get people to dancing in their homes. Now we have finished a month of performances at the Louvre, where my artists performed every morning dancing in the halls of the museum for groups of sixty spectators a day. Dance needs to sweep, to infect, to spread, to run inside everyday life. That's why it needs to expand everywhere, not just in theaters. It is an expression of self that has to to do with pleasure and sharing. I believe very much in its aggregating power."

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