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2025-2026: Esraa Warda

2025-2026 season Moss Arts Center guest curator Esraa Warda, an Algerian American dance performer with long curly dark brown hair. She wear gold earrings and a black jumpsuit and sits in front of a red backdrop.

Launched in 2022, the independent performing arts curator program brings new perspectives to the Moss Arts Center. The guest curator handpicks a selection of performances to be included in the center’s season. To help inform her contributions to the 2025-2026 season, Esraa Warda will make her second visit to Virginia Tech in February to connect with the campus and regional community.

Dance with the Guest Curator

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    2025-2026 season Moss Arts Center guest curator Esraa Warda, an Algerian American dance performer with long curly dark brown hair. She wear gold earrings and rings and shows the palms of her hands to the camera, each fingertip and a circle in the center of each palm painted red.
    Algerian Raï Dance Workshop , article

    TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 6 PM: Dance with the 2025-2026 season guest curator, Esraa Warda, in this free immersive Raï workshop. Open to all experience levels.

About Esraa Warda

Esraa Warda is a prominent Algerian-American dance performer and educator based in New York, specializing in traditional and popular Algerian dance forms like Raï, Chaoui, and Assimi. Warda’s work operates from a decolonial Indigenous body knowledge, sexuality, and North African feminism(s) framework. Her teaching pedagogy blends traditional embodied formats and community-based learning with a systematic approach to Algerian dance vocabulary.

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

Warda's performances and teachings have graced prestigious venues in the U.S. and around the world, including 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 (U.K.), Mosaic Rooms (U.K.), La Fleche D’or (France), FGO Barbara (France), TivoliVredenburg (the Netherlands), Casa Arabe (Spain), Danza Teatro Retazos (Cuba), Opera D’Alger (Algeria), and many more.

Warda is the 2025-2026 guest curator at the Moss Arts Center, 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 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.