Mehdi Kerkouche

 (born May 29, 1986), formerly know as Yanis is a french choreographer, dancer, actor and singer, most know for works like Just Dance and Let's Dance. He is also the founder of EMKA, a dance company from Paris, France, and a dance instructor on Académie Internationale De La Dans, Studio Harmonic and LAX Studio.

Early Life
Mehdi was born on May 29, 1986, on Suresnes, France. Since the six years old he got interested on dancing, and eventually joined to jazz dance lessons.

2005-2009: Start as a dancer and singer
On January 2005, he joined the Académie Internationale De La Danse (International Academy of Dance, AID). He will also appear later on the DVD: Danse Avec Kamel Ouali.

From September 2005 to June 2006, Kerkouche was on the musical The Sun King as a dancer, during this time he also replaced Christophe Maé in the character of Monsieur for a short time due to a accident.

On October 30, 2006, Kerkouche released the song Ne T'en Fais Pas Pour Moi through RCA under the name Yanis. He also planned to release a studio album in either 2006 or 2007, but the project ended cancelled for unknown reasons.

In 2009, he joined the comedy musical Cléopatre La Dernière Reine D'Egypte as Ptolemy, Cléopatra spouse.

2011-2016: Just Dance and Mis France
Mehdi joined the list of choreographers and dancers of Ubisoft game Just Dance, he has been on the franchise since 2011. He also auditioned for The X Factor France in the same year.

In 2016, Kerkouche started doing choreographies for Miss France starting with the 2016 Edition.

Kerkouche did a choreography for Zaho music video for the song Tant de choses, the music video was released on November 10, 2016 on Youtube. He has also created some choreographies for Christine And The Queens.

2017-present: EMKA and Let's Dance
For both 2017 and 2018, Kerkouche did choreographies for MIKA's songs: Rain, Relax and It's My House, as well for Alma's Eurovision performance and FÊTE DE LA MUSIQUE presentation for Requiem.

In 2017, he founded the dance company EMKA, which operates on Paris, France, he is the artistic director and choreographer of the company.

From 2018 to 2019, Kerkouche was recording the movie Let's Dance, where he portrays the character Karim.

Personal Life
Mehdi Kerkouche is openly Gay, as he mentioned on both Twitter and Instagram.

Gallery
The gallery can be found here.