From a neighborhood MJC to the Paris Opera, Mehdi Kerkouche, weightless dancer

2021-02-21T10:28:44.394Z

Revealed during confinement, congratulated by Brigitte Macron, darling of Miss France, the 34-year-old choreographer is one of the sensations of the

“Hello, Mehdi Kerkouche?

It's Brigitte Macron on the camera.

It is May 12, 2020. At the end of the morning, the 34-year-old dancer-choreographer left his cozy little apartment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

Direction Rueil-Malmaison, in Hauts-de-Seine.

His Algerian mother, Zorah, blows out its 67 candles.

His couscous is famous throughout the residence but, this time, it is Mehdi, the last of his three sons, who is cooking him a small dish in the family apartment.

When the iPhone next to the sink vibrates in the modest kitchen, he is peeling potatoes.

He picks up the phone, thinking he'll find the gas technician who has come to fix the meter, and recognizes the first lady's deep voice.

This phone call, Mehdi owes it to his good deed.

He has just collected 18,000 euros thanks to a dance marathon organized on social networks to help caregivers, in association with the Fondation des Hôpitaux de Paris-Hôpitaux de France, chaired by Brigitte Macron.

"You have brought so much dynamism, tone," she confides to him from her office at the Elysée Palace.

When we dance, there is something of the order of hope, it gives us all momentum, it's great.

I wanted to say to you on behalf of the Foundation a very very big thank you, it helps us a lot.

The artist cannot believe it.

"My year 2020 makes no sense," he then quipped.

And for good reason.

He has just experienced a huge buzz on the Internet thanks to a delightful choreography featuring several dancers confined to their homes on a Barry White hit.

And he was far from imagining that, a few months later, he would put on his first show at the Paris Opera and would soon be decorated with the National Order of Merit, while continuing to take care of the Miss France.

VIDEO.

"We were bent over backwards": behind the scenes of a choreography that has gone viral

Sailor Moon and Lara Fabian for good fairies

However, it all started in this modest apartment at the end of the 1990s. “Mehdi has always been hyperactive.

Like today.

He never held still.

He always danced and sang, ”remembers his mother.

In her nursery, Mehdi displays posters of her idols: the manga heroine Sailor Moon and Lara Fabian.

“Her older brothers listened to rap, but he was Dorothée, Dorothée and Dorothy again, I couldn't stand her at the end,” she laughs.

He had few friends because football did not interest him.

He stayed with the girls because he was passionate about the Spice Girls.

»And the dance that goes with it.

The end of the month is not always easy in this divorced family (mum is a domestic worker, dad is a plumber).

Museums and theaters inaccessible due to lack of resources.

So, Mehdi forges his culture through television, in front of TF1's entertainment shows.

Obsessed with glitter and dance steps.

“It was only that that interested him.

I watched him from my window on the second floor.

He was already teaching his girlfriends choreographies… That reassured me.

At least I knew he wasn't doing anything stupid, ”says his mom.

Mehdi Kerkouche is also a dance teacher (here at Studio Harmonic in Paris, in 2003).

“I was already doing it when I was 16, for the little ones in my MJC,” he says.

/ DR

Without him realizing it, the courageous mother sacrifices herself to offer him a private Catholic school and a future.

But little Mehdi doesn't care.

He has only one idea in mind: to go home to dissect the Janet Jackson clips recorded in the morning on a VHS.

“I felt the urgency to start dancing as soon as possible.

As with a sportsman, it only lasts a while and this race against time obsessed me.

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At 16, he started out, after taking some hip-hop lessons at the neighborhood MJC.

"He had made up his mind, I couldn't do anything about it", summarizes Zorah, worried to see him join an environment where he did not know anyone, without the bac in his pocket.

“I never had a plan B, it was a question of survival,” comments Mehdi Kerkouche.

RER A trips take him to Kamel Ouali, the star choreographer of “Star Academy”.

"He must have recognized himself in me, the little Rebeu from the neighborhoods who wanted to dance", laughs Mehdi.

“During a casting, I spotted him straight away,” says Kamel Ouali.

And that was the start of ten years of collaboration.

What has never changed about him is this desire.

His stars in his eyes.

From the moment I met his gaze, I knew he was going to make it.

What is happening to him today does not surprise me at all.

PODCAST.

From neighborhood hip-hop to the Paris Opera, the take-off of choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche

A decisive meeting.

The artist hired him to tour the beaches for NRJ in 2004 and record the DVD “Learning to dance with Kamel Ouali” in a villa overlooking the sea in Cassis.

But above all, still with him, the young man landed a role in the musical “the Sun King” in 2005. “Passing through the entry of the artists of the Palais des Sports, my dream came true.

I cried.

The fall of Maé marks the rise of Mehdi

The show is a triumph.

He launched the career of Christophe Maé.

"Mehdi was only a trainee, but we already saw him a lot on stage because, at the time, he took the light", remembers the interpreter of "On attaches".

"And I kissed him more than once because his character was part of my court, that of the king's brother", laughs the singer again.

“Christophe was the only actor not to have an understudy, remembers Bruno Berberes, in charge of the casting.

He wanted to play so badly that he would have come on a stretcher.

But one evening, Maé is going to give Mehdi a chance.

“In full performance, I sprained an ankle while landing with my high heels after a jump on a trampoline in the first act.

I gave him my wig and my clothes during intermission while I was in the infirmary.

We had roughly the same size, and he went straight.

He knew everything by heart, the texts, the songs without having repeated them!

Mehdi finds its place in a few representations.

“For a career to take off, fate must also get involved, philosopher Bruno Berberes.

And if he hadn't replaced Christophe, we wouldn't have spotted him.

Paris, February 24, 2009. Mehdi Kerkouche plays Ptolemy in the musical “Cleopatra”, alongside Sofia Essaïdi in the title role (right).

/ LP / Olivier Corsan

In the meantime, Mehdi tries his hand at song, on the advice of Dove Attia, the producer of the "Sun King", who offers him lessons.

Kamel Ouali produced an album for him at Sony under the name of… Yanis.

"Mehdi's first name was already registered and I wanted to keep an Arabic sounding", laughs the person concerned.

His single, despite a clip, "Do not worry", will not take.

But he landed the role of Ptolemy, Cleopatra's brother, played by Sofia Essaïdi, with the nose and beard of a certain Slimane, then unknown and future winner of “The Voice”.

This pharaonic project, in every sense of the word, will be his war machine.

Fan blogs are born to recount his journey and a promotional tour even takes him to the foot of the real pyramids of Egypt.

“It was crazy because my favorite clip is

Remember the Time

by Michael Jackson, which takes place in Egypt and where he is the pharaoh.

It is also at this time that he comes out.

“In the professional world, there has never been any problem.

It was more complicated with my family, even though my parents accepted it.

I haven't had a role model and I don't want young homosexuals growing up in neighborhoods to think that being gay isn't normal.

Of all the great TV shows

So there was a before and after “Cleopatra”.

From there, Mehdi Kerkouche does not stop working.

"He regularly forgets to sleep," plague his mother.

"He transformed his boundless energy into a workforce," says director Stéphane Jarny.

This close friend of Kamel Ouali became his mentor and offered him his first job as a choreographer in his musical “Salut les copains”, in 2012.

Mehdi Kerkouche (center, wearing a green hoodie) starred in the comedy “Let's Dance”, by Ladislas Chollat, in 2019. / Pathé

“He has the ability to adapt the gestures to all styles.

"He's a chameleon", agrees Marion Motin, his choreographer friend, to whom he owes his place as a dancer in the first triumphant tour of Christine and The Queens.

“But I met him when he was dancing with Lââm,” she teases.

We had gone to New York for a secret casting for Madonna.

But we didn't get that hooked.

He came out of musicals and me, I came from rap, I was pissed off all the time.

We met later.

We had apartment parties until the end of the night when, in general, Mehdi ended up dressing up as Britney Spears and doing the show.

A tireless artist, Kerkouche is also a dance teacher.

“I was already doing it at 16, for the little ones in my MJC.

Being a teacher is professional security if one day everything collapses, ”he explains.

Yet her prom diary is full.

In addition to his company Emka and his lessons, he is in all the big TV productions.

With the director Stéphane Jarny, he works on the Victoires de la musique, “Mask Singer”… or the Miss France contest.

For eight years, he has been teaching candidates to move on the big night of the election.

"He transmits the rigor to the girls, always with kindness," says Sylvie Tellier, the grand popess of the competition.

Two years ago in Marseille, he gave us a hilarious private show that everyone remembers.

»That year, the Misses even gave him a Mister Chaton scarf and a tiara, still treasured in his room.

VIDEO.

After Instagram, choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche brings hip-hop to the Paris Opera

And it is thanks to one of his delusions that Mehdi Kerkouche was one of the first feelings of confinement with his video choreography on Barry White.

"When he has an idea, everyone follows him", explains Alex Trovato, a dancer friend.

The clip has been seen 4 million times, notably by Aurélie Dupont, the star who became director of the Paris Opera, who offered him an exceptional creation at the Palais Garnier.

“I wanted to open up to lesser-known choreographers who are not devoid of talent,” she explains.

In his show, available on France.tv, the choreographer drew on the faces of the dancers traditional Arabic signs that his grandmother wore.

Like a nod to the small family apartment in Rueil-Malmaison.