Mehdi Kerkouche

MEHDI KERKHOUCE INTERVIEW — Friday

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “Kerkouche: Portrait means portrait. What does it portray?”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “A family. What is more complicated and necessary than that place where individuals must coexist even if they have not chosen each other? The Portrait tribe consists of interpreters ranging from 19 to 68 years old, and their lives can 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 can be shattered into duets and solos, or in other passages it is reunited into collective paintings. An old woman dominates the environment. Is it grandma? Is it the mother? You spectators decide.”

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “Do dancers have a common dance language?”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “No. They come from different worlds: hip hop, street jazz, cabaret, break dance, acrobatic circus, tap dance, free dance... I like this swirling mix of styles, immersed in the electro-pop soundtrack by Lucie Antunes, which is a vibrant enchantment. Lucie was born musically as a percussionist, and this pulsation can be felt in her tracks.”

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “How did you meet the dance?”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “I've always been in it. When I was six years old, I was constantly jumping around the house, and my mother enrolled me in a modern jazz course to calm me down. I studied for a while and loved to do it, but my parents didn't have the means to keep me going. We lived in a suburb of Paris. I have two brothers, a plumber father, a domestic mother. I decided to start trying to learn dance on my own while watching television: I used the videos of Michael Jackson, Prince, Britney Spears as a model... Then as a teenager, I attended the free hip hop courses that were held in the neighborhood, and the teacher took me under his protection. At 16 I started teaching courses and soon after I was dancing in musical comedies such as Le Roi Soleil and Cléopatre. At 18 I joined the National Dance Academy in Paris and had a professional training in classical ballet and modern jazz. Early on, I started creating choreography for television programs, from Miss France to Eurovision mega-concerts. Among many things, I was in charge of the staging of the tour by the singer Angèle, who collaborated with Mahmood.”

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “Her strong pop identity has not prevented the director of the Paris Opéra dance Aurélie Dupont from offering her, in the midst of a pandemic, a creation for the aristocratic theater company.”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “I edited ET SI, a shady and dark piece that ends up finding light and hope in the future. It is a hymn to survival that is realized thanks to the support of the members of the pack.”

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “His family is of Algerian origin. Is this root reflected in your nature as an artist?”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “Sure! I was born in Paris and grew up in the dialogue between French and Arab culture, and when I was a child in my neighborhood, very mixed, 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 have experienced my dual culture as a wealth, and I know that an Algerian substance is an omnipresent fact in my personality. Algeria is a sunny and Mediterranean dimension of great generosity that lives naturally in me. I did a choreography called Dabkeh that reconnected me to this core. It is a traditional dance that is performed in Palestine at wedding parties, and I have explored it from a contemporary perspective.”

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Leonetta Bentivoglio: “Social media launched it into a viral success.”

Mehdi Kerkouche: “During the lockdown, I gave online courses, inviting people to make donations for hospitals: I collected tens of thousands of euros. I edited videos and organized festivals to get people to dance at home. 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 must spread, infect, spread, run through everyday life. This is why it needs to expand everywhere, not just in theaters. It is an expression of self that has to do with pleasure and sharing. I believe very much in its aggregating power.”

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