Esraa Warda is a performance and teaching artist that preserves and transmits traditional Moroccan and Algerian dance forms through movement workshops and interactive performances. A young talent of Algerian origin, Warda is a community-taught dancer under the mentorship of women elders in her family and artists from Morocco and Algeria. She is a firm advocate in the power of intergenerational transmission, women-led traditions, and decolonizing euro-centricity, Orientalism, and oppressed bodies in dance.
Mark Balahadia is a Filipino American dancer specializing in the dances of Iraq and the Khaleej). Check out his earlier episode published on July 10!
For this episode, we were joined by Esraa and Mark to discuss ways of pushing back against cultural appropriation in dance, about ways of engaging in dance forms in a way that is respectful to the culture from which they stem, and we got to hear about each of their own dance careers.
