emBLADy: embodying the Blad {homeland}

emBLADy: embodying the Blad {homeland}

Danced interviews with Women of the Algerian Diaspora in NYC

Exhibition by Esraa Warda

Photography by Muyassar Kurdi

City Lore Gallery

April 17th, 2026 – June 7th, 2026

New York, New York -- City Lore is pleased to present an exhibition curated and conceived by Algerian-American dance artist and curator Estraa Warda comprised of photography and video by Muyassar Kurdi.  Since its inception City Lore has worked to document and present the grassroots culture, traditions, and stories of immigrant communities. The exhibition continues this tradition. Created by and featuring Algerian women, it celebrates individual movement stories open for interpretation and does not claim to represent the entirety of Algerian stories or its dances. Rather, it centers the power of muscle memory as a practice of cultural remembrance. The City Lore Gallery is located at 56 East First Street in Manhattan. Gallery hours are: Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00 – 6:00 pm and by appointment, 212-529-1955 ext. 22.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

For Esraa Warda, dance can transform the body into a vessel for narrative. What can we learn about a person’s story and their people, culture, and history from observing their movements? Can dance be an embodied archive, a record of cultural continuity, a decolonial way to store memory for people from formerly colonized lands? Can the knowledge stored in the body be preserved as an artifact as meaningfully as a written record?

To attempt to answer these questions, Warda collaborated with multidisciplinary artist Muyassar Kurdi to film and photograph six Algerian women across New York City in the intimacy of their homes, documenting their dances in traditional forms. The women were encouraged to be themselves, dress as they wish, and move to their favorite songs. Warda captured audio reflections from each woman and has transcribed key excerpts into text, presented in the exhibition alongside each embodied story. 

The six women, a mix of immigrants and first-generation, encompass diverse ages, body types, careers, and life paths, and originate from different cities across Algeria, though primarily from the North. Each video displayed offers a deeply personal and unfiltered extension of the woman’s body and dance. It invites observation without judgment and reveals the cultural language her movements carry: a language that insists on being heard. In addition to the six danced interviews, a projection features Warda’s 101 video tutorial, introducing traditional Algerian dances, their aesthetics, postures, and basic movement vocabulary for viewers to follow along in the space. Warda incorporates this informational component to underscore the complexity and specificity of these heritage dances, the rigor required to master them, and to challenge their reduction to vague labels such as “Arab dance” or “belly dance.”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ESRAA WARDA

Esraa Warda is a New York based Algerian American dance artist, educator, and cultural worker specializing in heritage Algerian forms including Raï, Chaoui, and Assimi. She approaches the dancing body as a living archive: one that holds, transmits, and rearticulates Algerian cultural memory and movement vocabularies in real time. Warda’s work has been recognized by The New York Times, VOGUE Arabia, AZEEMA Magazine, The Metric, and BBC’s 100 Women. She has appeared on PBS and NPR’s Tiny Desk and presented work at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, and institutions across the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Caribbean. She is currently a Cultural Ambassador and Curator at City Lore, Guest Curator at the Center for Arts at Virginia Tech, a Mellon Foundation grantee, and a resident artist at The Floor at Atlantic. She is also a multiple-time recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts Folk/Traditional Artist Fellowship, and her community organization, The Châab Lab, is fiscally sponsored by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance/NYSCA. She currently developing her debut documentary in Algeria, set for release in 2027.  For more information: https://www.esraawarda.com/about-me-contact

Muyassar Kurdi

Muyassar Kurdi is a Palestinian-American, New York City–based interdisciplinary artist. Her work encompasses sound art, voice, movement, painting, analog photography, and film. Her practice honors both the futuristic and the ancient through meditative movement and sonic exploration. Centered on embodiment and a non-linear approach rooted in improvisation, she explores memory, displacement, and the body in relation to nature. Kurdi has received support from NYFA’s Women’s Fund for Music, the American Composer Forum’s Create, and the Brooklyn Arts Fund, among others, including grants from the Queens Fund for New Works, NYFA City Artist Corps, and the Puffin Foundation. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Combined Disciplines and has been commissioned by Roulette Intermedium, with additional residency support from the Jerome Foundation. Her work has been developed through residencies at Harvestworks, The Watermill Center, and Tilal Utique (Tunisia, supported by Kamel Lazaar Foundation). Love is Blue, her solo interdisciplinary exhibition, opened in Fall 2023 at La MaMa Gallery in New York City. In 2025, she performed durational works of voice and movement within Otobong Nkanga’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her LP Mountains of Poetry was released in Fall 2025 with Bilna’es. Forthcoming residencies include Alkinois (Athens, Greece). For more information: https://www.muyassarkurdi.com/bio

About City Lore Gallery – The City Lore Gallery is a cultural hub that celebrates New York City's vibrant cultural atmosphere and provides a platform for the myriad voices that comprise the city. The gallery presents exhibitions and events on all the things that make New York "New York." From the golden age of graffiti, to endangered languages and activist comics, City Lore finds the art in everyday life.

About City Lore - Founded in 1985, and now an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, City Lore’s mission is to foster New York City – and America’s – living cultural heritage through education and public programs.  We document, present, and advocate for New York City’s grassroots cultures to ensure their living legacy in stories and histories, places and traditions.  We work in four cultural domains:  urban folklore and history; preservation; arts education; and grassroots poetry traditions. In each of these realms, we see ourselves as furthering cultural equity and modeling a better world with projects as dynamic and diverse as New York City itself.  For more info: http://www.citylore.org.

City Lore is made possible with support from: Foundations: The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, La Vida Feliz Foundation, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, and The Sherman Foundation Public: The Institute of Museum and Library Services, The New York State Council on the Arts with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and generous individual donors. # # # #