BIOGRAPHY
Karley Wasaff is a NYC-based movement artist, creative director, producer, and educator shaping change through movement. Their interdisciplinary practice lives across choreography, immersive performance, social choreography, concert dance, dance film, performance art, and participatory experiences—blurring the lines between performance and practice, where art and action move together.

Karley creates worlds where movement becomes a shared language. Through systems of participation, play, character, tension, and transformation, their work asks how bodies can rehearse new ways of relating to themselves, one another, and the environments they inhabit. Their work often slips between the familiar and the strange, using whimsy, humor, heightened characters, and unexpected worlds to invite audiences inside. Dance is the medium; social choreography is the methodology; civic practice is the purpose; shaping change through movement is the mission.
​
A NYSCA-funded artist, Karley is committed to crafting community where underserved performers can thrive. Their work has been supported, developed, presented, and screened through POSH HQ, Noosphere Arts, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New Dance Alliance, Art Basel, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, RAD Fest, and Christie’s New York, where they premiered XwhY as the institution’s first performing art soloist.

Artist Statement

My practice begins with tension: between freedom and containment, fear and play, rupture and return, the body and the systems shaping it. I frame art as a tool for social change and self-reclamation, using choreography to build worlds where those tensions can be experienced rather than simply observed. I often begin with something I am moving through personally, then translate it into movement, character, and systems others can enter.
Movement is also a daily practice for me—a ritual of returning to the body. Somatic practice, training, teaching, and choreography continuously feed one another, blurring the line between performance and practice, where art and action move together. My creative process expands from there through character-building, improvisation, movement direction, chance-based scores, and collaborative play. I use chance not simply to randomize, but to challenge expectation, activate agency, and create room for genuine encounter. I don’t separate technique from worldbuilding, or audience from ensemble; each performance ecosystem feeds the others.

That structure often extends to the audience. Across immersive performance, concert dance, film, performance art, and participatory experiences, audiences may mirror strangers, navigate games, make choices, encounter characters, or alter what happens next. Participation becomes choreographic material; experience is the practice.

My worlds often slip between the familiar and the strange, moving through whimsy, humor, horror, absurdity, tenderness, and heightened character. I’m drawn to play not as escape, but as a way of moving through difficulty. Tension is the teacher; whimsy is something we practice.

Ultimately, I’m interested in how movement can rehearse possibility: agency, curiosity, trust, cooperation, resilience, and new ways of being together. Dance is my medium; social choreography is my methodology; civic practice is my purpose; shaping change through movement is my mission.

My choreographic language is shaped by my MFA training in dance and a movement background spanning modern and contemporary dance, ballet, jazz, heels, improvisation, performance art, somatic practices, and partnering. I love the specificity of composing movement—timing, musicality, physical language, spatial relationships, and the images bodies create—while leaving room for responsiveness, play, tension, and surprise.

I build each movement vocabulary from the world of the work rather than imposing one signature style. A piece may move between fully set choreography, structured improvisation, choreographed character encounters, partnering systems, and audience interaction. I’m especially drawn to weight, resistance, repetition, momentum, touch, and the ways bodies negotiate control, vulnerability, agency, and connection.
​
My worlds also pull from pop and political culture, twisting familiar archetypes and iconography into something stranger. Music, character, narrative, and environment are choreographic materials. Across forms, I want the movement to remain embodied, theatrical, technically intentional, and alive.

LINKTREE
​upcoming shows, classes, ​press releases, ambassador codes, & more

What Audiences Are Saying