Algeria Moves! Music, Dance, and Women's Resilience
Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech 190 Alumni Mall, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060
Courtesy Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech
A rendezvous of music, voice, and danced stories highlight the artistry and spirit of Algeria — an often underrepresented yet deeply rich cultural landscape.
Performer and educator Esraa Warda is a pioneer of traditional Algerian dance, specializing in traditional and popular forms like Raï, Chaoui, and Assimi. In performance, Warda harnesses the Algerian body and traditional feminine form to embody decoloniality and boldly subvert the cliches of the North African woman.
For Algeria Moves!, Warda is joined directly from Algeria by her band, Kaièn — five gifted musicians (Youcef Grim, percussion; Youva Bessa, bass; Rami Bekhouche, piano; Omar Bourai: violin/strings; and Toufik Aoun, lead singer) — for an evening rooted in the revival of Algerian heritage music, celebrating the powerful intersection of heritage, performance, and social progress through the universal language of music and dance.
About the Performance
“With Kaièn's performance in Algeria Moves!, my dance becomes a doorway — inviting U.S. audiences into the power and poetry of Algerian sound, many for the first time. It’s a rare moment where Algerian music and dance simply take space, fully and on their own terms. Every act of Algerian artists on stage is a step closer to the decolonization of our image, and of all people from North Africa. The most invigorating part of this curatorship journey has been building community around this event. With each visit to Virginia Tech, the energy grows — momentum, support, and most beautifully, curiosity. That quiet anticipation, the kind, genuine care, has been the heart of it all.” — Esraa Warda, guest curator
Tickets: $25 general admission | $10 students with ID and youth 18 and under
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