“We’re all lumped together in the same category, and therefore also in the same stereotype,” Warda said of dancers from the Middle East and North Africa. It is the object of the desires of the times.”
Warda was referring to the dance clichés of the region found in Western literature, paintings and photography. After the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 (Tunisia in her 1881 and Morocco in her 1907), an industry developed around female dancers and European photographers began to wonder what their art was about. I was paying to pose in irrelevant provocative poses. They were used to create “the illusion of an oriental woman,” writes Marek Aroura in his “Colonial Harlem.” (1981) — Immature, uncultured, and sexually available.
Even after Algeria won its independence in 1962, this legacy of exploitation surrounding dance remained and was stigmatized in many circles. “My dance is about trying to overcome the reasons I’ve been told not to dance, about overcoming the internalized shame that many women grow up with,” Warda said.
Although there are several regional dance troupes, Lai, Chabi, and hundreds of other dance styles are considered part of everyday culture and are often used to celebrate family occasions rather than promote national heritage. It is used.
In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Warda grew up, her profession as a dance artist and educator has received mixed reactions from her family’s Algerian-American community. ’,” she said. “Is rye taught in dance classes? That’s ridiculous.
Warda, 29, didn’t grow up believing she could perform or teach these dances because nobody was dancing them at the time. Her father, who immigrated in the 1990s, worked as a food vendor on 53rd Street and Lexington, and her mother was a caretaker. Both encouraged her to pursue her traditional career path. Yet, whenever she visited her family in Algeria, she would spend time in her relatives’ living room, observing patiently and learning the style of dance.