BIOGRAPHY
Karley Wasaff is a freelance movement artist, producer, and educator based in NYC, shaping change through movement as both method and mission. They are the founder of Kinetics with Karley, a nonprofit offering accessible training to underserved performers, and the creator of immersive dance shows like Growing TakesTime and Bonedaddy's Bacchanal. Their solo XwhY premiered at Christie’s New York, where they were the institution’s first performing art soloist. XwhY has since been commissioned for live performance twelve times since 2021, and adapted into a dance-for-film commissioned by RAD Fest, CineCorps, and Oddfest Film Festival. Their work has been presented with Art Basel 2024, The Oculus, Abrons Arts Center, The Tank, and more. Karley has held residencies with BAX, New Dance Alliance, Satellite Art Show, MetaBetties, Alpha Omega Dance, The Floor, and multiple collegiate institutions. They hold an MFA from Hollins University and are a 2022 Social Justice Fellow from TheField.org and a BAX Emerge NYC 2023 Artist.

Kinetics with Karley doesn’t wait for doors to open—they build them, hold them open, and bridge the way to the next. Karley’s work reminds us: movement is how we shape change, together.​

Artist Statement

I frame my art as a tool for social change and self-reclamation. My choreographic practice lives at the intersection of trauma, healing, and improvisation — using compositional scores to explore rupture, return, and the politics of presence. I create structures that expose the tension between freedom and containment, where conflict is not avoided, but choreographed as a necessary force for transformation.

I employ a self-awareness equation of destruction and growth to shape change through movement. Chance becomes a tool — not to randomize, but to challenge expectation and activate agency. I lean into fear as material. Gender binary is a structure, like choreography, and the action of being non-binary represents chance in that it deviates from the original. I use this deviation as a method — letting my body rewrite the score, again and again.

My current work unfolds across multiple performance ecosystems — from immersive installations to community classes — each feeding the other. I don’t separate technique from worldbuilding, or audience from ensemble. Instead, I ask: How do we grow together? What tools do we need to return? What systems keep us soft when everything else says harden?

I operate my life as an artist as a practice of creating myself as transformative assembly and healing.

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An Interview on Karley Wasaff by Quiet Lunch

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Brooklyn, New York

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