KARLEY WASAFF

Karley Wasaff
Movement Artist
& Educator

Kinetics with Karley is a non-for-profit dance company with
a mission to stand up and shape change through movement.
All donations are tax-deductible

Artist Bio

Karley Wasaﬀ is a non-binary pansexual movement-artist based in NYC. Karley began a nonproﬁt-dance- organization, Kinetics with Karley, to utilize their privilege to stand up and shape change through movement. Karls is the creative director and producer of BoneDaddy's Dungeon|KWK Productions, the original immersive theatre cabaret. Karley’s current choreography incorporates compositional-improvisation-scores to evoke the spontaneity of genuine un-adulterated human interaction. Karley received the 2022 Social Justice Fellowship from TheField.org and named a Brooklyn Arts Exchange Emerge NYC 2023 Artist. Karley premiered, 'XWHY,' at Christie’s New York, and coined their ﬁrst performing art soloist. Karley has toured with ASE Dance Theatre Collective, Queerness in 2024 Exhibition, ESTIA Creative Home, RAD Fest, Love Moves, SMUSH Gallery, Saleh Dance, Kun-Yang Lin, and Greenspace, Guilty Pleasures Cabaret, Redlight Disco, Dark Opulence, and Secret City Cabaret. Karley has been in residency with the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), University of Southern Mississippi, Alpha Omega Dance, and The Floor on Atlantic. Karley holds a BFA in performance and choreography from USM and MFA in dance from Hollins University.

*click images for more movement stills

Photographer:John Christou Email(book/purchaseprints):[email protected]

Artist Statement

I frame my art as a tool for social change. I employ a self-awareness equation of destruction and growth shape change through movement. I create compositional-improvisation-scores to evoke the spontaneity of genuine un-adulterated human interaction to cultivate expanding awareness and challenge perceptions. I utilize chance as a tool to reimagine the ordinary and mundane as a moral act to alter the quality of attention I project onto the world, and myself. I lean into my own fears as materials for my explorations, like bringing radical awareness to my queer identity through compositional improvisation: gender binary is a structure, like choreography, and the action of non-binary represents chance in that it deviates from the original. I operate my life as an artist as a practice of creating myself as transformative assembly and healing.