Esraa Warda is a New York based Algerian-American dance artist and educator of heritage Algerian dance forms like Raï, Chaoui, and Assimi. She sees her body and practice as a living archive—a revival of Algerian cultural memory and movement aesthetics, a reclamation of decolonial identity, and an ongoing process of embodying a liberated tradition.

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She is also a curator, cultural projects manager and producer, occasional tour manager, and first-time filmmaker working on her debut documentary in Algeria set to be released late 2025.

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Living Room Teaching Pedagogy:

Dance serves as a vital thread in the fabric of identity; that learning a cultural dance form is reenacting a living archive of a people.  Warda’s dance teaching pedagogy (which is always evolving) is creating integrated “embodiment” of the dance form, by modeling the foundation of where she learned to dance as a child - her family’s living room. 

 

In North African communities, dance is typically learned not through “formal instruction”, but through communal mentorship, muscle memory, and collective sensory knowledge. It emerges organically in living rooms, weddings, and public gatherings—informal, inclusive spaces where people learn by dancing with and among one another. How can we carry that method into the dance studio? How can we implement this brilliant indigenous knowledge in more formalized dance learning?

 

It is through an intentional nurturing of muscle memory - physically, intuitively, musically, and rhythmically. It is an immersive practice where everyone becomes a mirror to each other, embodying the dance together in the same space. 

 

When Warda’s students learn dance, they are invited into an honest approach—one that reveals the truths behind the movement: the music, the rituals, the social codes, and the sociopolitical and historical context, without orientalization or romanticization.

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Performance Pedagogy:

Warda’s performances bring grassroots Algerian movement vocabularies and aesthetics to the stage—infused with a bold, unmistakable New York flair. She prioritizes live musical collaboration and composition, understanding the dancer as someone who gives form to sound. Often working within traditional formats—featuring singers and traditional & modern Algerian instrumentation—she roots the audience in cultural specificity while expanding their frame of reference.

For Warda, the body becomes a vessel to subvert cliché narratives through movement and visuals and it is an open invitations for others to do the same.

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She has garnered recognition from esteemed publications such as the New York Times, VOGUE Arabia, AZEEMA Magazine, and The Metric, and even earned her a nomination as one of BBC's 100 Women in 2022. Today, you can find Warda on television on a PBS episode of Bare Feet by Michela Malozzi speaking about the movement and history of Algerian Rai dance or performing on NPR’s Tiny Desk with Bnat el Houariyat, an all women’s band from Marrakech.

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Warda's performances and teachings have graced prestigious venues in the US and around the world such as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, Old Town School of Folk Music, OXY Arts, Georgetown University, New York University, University of Ottawa, The Movement Lab at Barnard College, Rich Mix (UK), Mosaic Rooms (UK), and La Fleche D’or (FR), FGO Barbara (FR), TivoliVredenburg (NL),Casa Arabe (ES) ,Teatro Retazos (CUBA), Opera D’Alger (AL), and many more. She has also done residencies at the Toronto Dance Theater, Kaatsban Cultural Park, Silver Sun, and more. 

 

Warda is currently the Guest Curator at Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech University, a Heritage Ambassador Fellow at the Brooklyn Public Library, an artist in the competitive Joe's Pub Working Group Fellowship at the Public Theater, a 2024/2025 recipient of the New York State Council of the Arts Artist Grant, and is currently fiscally sponsored and supported by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance.​​​​