PARIS.- Mehdi Kerkouche was born in the Cité Jardin neighborhood of Suresnes, on the western edge of Paris. It’s not terribly far from the Palais Garnier, the city’s gilded opera house, but it might as well have been on another planet for a small boy growing up in modest circumstances in a public housing complex.
And yet, in a video made in 2021, there he is, threading his way across the elaborate mosaic-patterned floor of a circular gallery at the Palais Garnier with his distinctive movement style — tiny nods of the head, sudden swerves of the torso and ceaselessly gesticulating hands. It’s an introduction to a piece he created for the Paris Opera Ballet, a commission from its then-director, Aurélie Dupont, that surprised him as much as anyone else.
“Are you sure you mean me?” Kerkouche said, describing his encounter with Dupont in an interview here last month. It was just a couple of weeks after he had taken another unlikely step: At the start of this year, he became the director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne, one of the government-supported choreographic centers dotted around the country that have changed the dance landscape in France since their founding in the 1980s.
He felt strongly that he had a contribution to make. “Dance is so often inaccessible to people,” he said, “and I understand that because of my background.”
His motto for the new job? “Create, share, unite.”
Before the Paris Opera commission, Kerkouche, who has wild curly hair and a beaming smile, had been a prolific presence in the commercial dance world — and found himself a viral sensation online early in the pandemic. But he had made only one concert dance.
In the past, this would have made his appointment in Créteil — a working-class town whose proximity to Paris makes the center a particularly prestigious and visible one — even more improbable. Brigitte Lefèvre, the former Paris Opera Ballet director, who as a delegate for dance at France’s culture ministry was involved in the creation of many of France’s national choreographic centers, said that Kerkouche wasn’t “in the line of choreographers that have been appointed in the past, but he is an extremely interesting, creative person who has a great relationship with the public.”
The centers were intended to take dance out of Paris and to the regions. (There are 19 now, each receiving federal, regional and city funding.) Mostly run by established names, including Alwin Nikolais, Maguy Marin and Angelin Preljocaj, they allowed choreographers to employ permanent troupes and give them a long-term home.
“The focus then was on creation,” said Ariane Bavelier, the deputy culture editor of the French newspaper Le Figaro. “But even if it’s not official, the goal has changed. Now there is a strong demand for directors to do educational programs, work in schools, prisons, hospitals, to make up for a deficiency of cultural activity in national education.” Because of that, she said, the role can be an opportunity for choreographers at an earlier stage of their careers.
The central purpose of choreographic centers is still the creation of new work, said Laurent Vinauger, the head of the culture ministry’s dance delegation. But he agreed that “complementary objectives” — involving school programs, master classes and outreach — were now just as important and that potential candidates might feel these obligations detract from the focus on making dances.
Kerkouche exemplifies a new generation of choreographic center directors who embrace those social objectives, like the artistic collective La Horde in Marseille, and contemporary dance-makers Noé Soulier in Angers and Maud Le Pladec in Orleans.
Le Pladec, who had been choreographing for just six years when she was appointed in Orleans, said “people may think Mehdi came from the internet to a choreographic center,” when instead “he just worked in different networks.”
In France, she added, there is a large barrier between work for public institutions and commercial work. But she said she found Kerkouche’s mix of the two “super inspiring,” adding that “he clearly has the skills they wanted in Créteil.”
Kerkouche, 36, was raised mostly by his mother, a domestic worker, after his parents divorced. He was the youngest of three brothers and “always dancing,” he said; he would tape television appearances by Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Aaliyah and Britney Spears and memorize the choreography.
Dancing was an escape from his unhappiness at his private Catholic high school. “I didn’t understand the sacrifices my parents made for that,” he said. “I was the little Muslim from the projects. I sang, I danced. Homophobia, racism, everything gets mixed up with kids. Dance was my outlet.”
He discovered a community center hip-hop class, then began to teach neighborhood children, and used the money to take different kinds of dance classes in Paris. “I never wanted to be a purist,” he said. “I wanted to study and borrow from everything: jazz, contemporary, African dance.”
After successfully auditioning for fashion and television shows, Kerkouche left high school, promising his parents that he would home-school. (“I never did it,” he said, slightly sheepishly.) He worked steadily as a dancer and singer in musicals and on TV, and taught. By 2008, he was ready to try making his own work.
After posting a short piece online, Kerkouche got a call from the shoe designer Christian Louboutin, asking him to choreograph an event for a boutique opening. It was his first real job as a choreographer. Others soon followed — for fashion shows, musicals and television spectacles like “The Voice,” the Miss France competition and the Eurovision Song Contest.
He also began to dance with a small pop group called Christine and the Queens. “Then her first album exploded and suddenly we were at Coachella and on Jimmy Fallon,” Kerkouche said. “The choreographer was Marion Motin and it was a very contemporary, minimalist approach, much less pop, which was a big influence on me.”
After touring with the group for three years and choreographing shows for others, Kerkouche felt ready to strike out on his own. “It had been 15 years of working for other people, where my own vision wasn’t central,” he said. “I felt I had things to say.” He formed his own company of seven dancers in 2017, calling it Emka (the sound, in French, of his initials). It wasn’t easy.
“My friends in TV said, ‘Good luck, it’s not possible,’” he said. “My friends in contemporary dance said the same.”
“In France, people love to put you in boxes,” said Alexandra Trovato, one of Kerkouche’s first dancers and now his choreographic assistant. “It’s the future to mix styles and genres. Mehdi reflects a new generation. Contemporary means new, not what people think — that it has to be serious, with people dancing naked.”
He had made one work, “Dabkeh,” with his company in 2019, before COVID and lockdown arrived. Stuck in his small apartment in early 2020, Kerkouche told his dancers they would rehearse every day online. He soon posted a split-screen video on Facebook of a short piece they had created. “In one day we had a million views; after a while it got to 4 million across social media,” he said. “The news was so bleak and scary. I think it gave people a lift.”
The news media picked up the video, and Kerkouche and his company were suddenly in the public eye, later presenting an online daylong dance marathon, “On Danse Chez Vous,” or “Dancing at Your House,” involving 70 artists and raising 15,000 euros for a hospital foundation.
Then came an Instagram message from Dupont, asking to meet. Kerkouche “didn’t really know anything about ballet,” having seen only one, “La Sylphide.” But when Dupont offered him a commission for the end of 2020, he recalled seeing the name of contemporary dance choreographer Angelin Preljocaj on a poster for the Paris Opera Ballet. “I remember thinking, ‘I could do this, too,’” he said.
Dupont had become aware of Kerkouche’s work when she saw extracts from “Dabkeh” online. “I thought it was really well choreographed,” she said in a phone interview, “and that there were dancers at the Opera who would be ready to take on his vocabulary and style. He really succeeded in melding a hip-hop with a contemporary style: very grounded, with an incredible energy. It was a fantastic experience for the dancers.”
For Kerkouche, too. “Before that I was just making do, cobbling things together,” he said. “Suddenly I had an original score, a lighting designer, rehearsal space and those fantastic dancers. I discovered I was making art!”
A second lockdown prevented a live premiere, so the work, “Et Si,” was presented online and on television. Kerkouche returned to working with his dancers, presenting a live version of his “On Danse Chez Vous” festival and creating a group piece, “Portrait,” which offers an idiosyncratic mix of dancers in a fluid blend of dance styles, suggesting a family of sorts through its imagery and occasional text.
When he heard that Mourad Merzouki, the former head of the Créteil choreographic center, was leaving, he applied.
“There is no doubt that other candidates were better versed in that universe,” he said. “People who perhaps fit in better.”
But Kerkouche felt he had a lot to offer, and a lot to gain from the institutional support. “This kind of position, with the support it has,” he said, “can allow you to really reach a wide public, to support emerging choreographers, to create not just on stages but in public places and digitally.”
After a laborious and bureaucratic selection process — he described it as “hell” — Kerkouche heard in early September that he had the job. He was excited, he said, rather than daunted by the responsibilities.
For him the mission is clear: “I want to incorporate as many styles and influences as possible, make work that will reach as wide a public as possible. We are a generation that is open and expressive; we have craft and passion.” He halted the flood of words, but then added one more thought: “I don’t think popular means vulgar.”
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
