Immersive Shows
Karley Wasaff is widely known in NYC for creating groundbreaking immersive dance shows that operate as living ecosystems—leaving space for reflection, regardless of how one enters or leaves the work. As the sole creator, director, and producer, Karley designs experiences where performer, environment, and audience are equally choreographed, expanding what dance can be.
Growing Takes Time
A real-life video game disguised as a dance performance, where audiences “pluck” PikMii dancers, trigger playful games and grappling duets, and shape the choreography through collective action—turning conflict into shared growth.
The Weight of Worth
A raw, immersive ballet performance exploring the anxiety of not feeling “enough.” Blending classical discipline with contemporary vulnerability, The Weight of Worth asks Am I enough?—and lingers in the quiet, radical act of showing up anyway.
BoneDaddy's Bacchanal
A chaotic, fever-dream queer horror cabaret inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas. Blending cabaret, political satire, adult clown chaos, and consent-driven interaction, BoneDaddy’s Bacchanal unfolds as a choose-your-own-path experience where agency, desire, and power playfully collide—where leering lust lingers long thereafter.
Stage Choreography
XwhY
Karley's notorious stage solo—XwhY investigates body trauma and empowerment through movement.
Each performance serves as a form of time travel, where movement revisits past traumas and transforms them into empowerment and healing.
Each performance serves as a form of time travel, where movement revisits past traumas and transforms them into empowerment and healing.
GLITCH
Glitch is a process-based performance that responds to movement’s potentiality as a tool to positively impact self and communal growth through empathy
Cyclical Cycles
This darkly satirical duet delves into the repetitive patterns of interpersonal conflict. Amplifying anxiety and confrontation within a tumultuous relationship. Offering a compelling examination of relational dynamics.
Darth Dom x Presents Daddy Issues
‘DARTHDOMX presents DADDY ISSUES’ blurs the lines of performance art, fetish, dance, and burlesque. This darkly satirical piece confronts the complexities surrounding toxicity in relation to projecting insecurities onto others out of fear.
Film Choreography
Lasercats (commissioned)
Commissioned as a playful dance-for-film, this project brings the iconic LaserCat graffiti graphic to life—from broken origins to ecstatic rebirth. Karley directed, choreographed the performers and camera, and styled the looks—transforming the character from graphic to embodied pop icon. Produced and commissioned by LaserCats.
XwhY (film only)
XwhY investigates body trauma and empowerment through movement.
Each performance serves as a form of time travel, where movement revisits past traumas and transforms them into empowerment and healing.
Each performance serves as a form of time travel, where movement revisits past traumas and transforms them into empowerment and healing.
MFA Choreographic Experience
here nor there - an Interactive Augmented Reality Instillation
A queer re-imagination of beauty...
I am fragmented,
and that’s okay.
I am lost,
and that’s okay.
I've come to prefer it.
This installation digresses to gestalt through the lense of a queer imagination and queer futurism to critique the present as queer utopic longing. Utilizing Augmented Reality, Live Motion Capture, Performance Art, and Intaglio Prints as an Instillation to re-imagine beauty as resistance, a perpetual becoming—an emergent phenomenon.
I am fragmented,
and that’s okay.
I am lost,
and that’s okay.
I've come to prefer it.
This installation digresses to gestalt through the lense of a queer imagination and queer futurism to critique the present as queer utopic longing. Utilizing Augmented Reality, Live Motion Capture, Performance Art, and Intaglio Prints as an Instillation to re-imagine beauty as resistance, a perpetual becoming—an emergent phenomenon.
I am a... Womyn
Witch Time: A Contemporary Reclamation of the Euro-American Witch Stereotype
Ambivalent | Ambiguous
Ambivalent | Ambiguous is a compositional improvisational work that uses chance-based structures and tarot to disrupt control, authorship, and singular meaning. Drawing from the mythologies of Lilith, Eve, and the witch, the piece examines how feminine power is simultaneously desired and condemned within patriarchal systems. Through endurance, ritualized tasks, and red symbolism, the work exposes contradiction as both a site of oppression and resistance.
BFA Choreographic Experience
Apparatus
Apparatus is a contemporary dance work built on the logic of machinery. The dancers function as interlocking wheels—grooved, precise, and dependent on one another—moving through repetition, resistance, and momentum. The choreography examines what happens when bodies operate as systems: efficient, relentless, and only able to function through contact.
Be .
This thesis explores how a choreographer can create an effortless method and positive community for the self with the creative process through research and my personal experience creating a dance called Be . The method involves three yoga techniques, self-acceptance, trusting the process, and gratitude for others for the choreographer to self-explore and apply to find a balanced relationship between dancers and choreographer and full creative capacity.
Absence is Presence
Absence Is Presence examines how what is missing can hold as much weight as what remains—an exploration of antipodal forces where distance, opposition, and contradiction become a powerful form of presence.