Charli Brissey

Associate Professor of Dance

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Bio

Charli Brissey (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and teacher who works choreographically with various technologies and materials. This primarily includes bodies, cameras, objects, genders, desires, instincts, language, and ecosystems. Their work centers choreography as an invaluable method to research social, political, and ecological phenomena, ultimately to illuminate the simultaneousness of “nature” and “culture.” Brissey’s performances and videos have been presented in various galleries, conferences, film festivals, and performance venues nationally and internationally. Their latest film, Canis Major, toured to over twenty countries and won multiple awards, including Best Experimental Film at OUTFEST and the Richmond International Film Festival. They recently produced and toured an evening length dance project called Future Fish which emerged from a multi-year research project exploring the choreography of oceans and benthic ecosystems.

Other projects have included a four-month study of deep time and eroticism in caves of Virginia, producing a podcast centering artists in the Midwest, designing movement scores to track the oscillation patterns of island tides in British Columbia, and an ongoing writing project about the choreographies of love and grief that entangle dogs and humans (and other human/non-human relationships).

Charli has affiliations in the Center for World Performance Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. They teach courses in physical practice, composition, graduate pedagogy, improvisation, digital media, and seminars integrating critical theory and art-making.

They have a delightful constellation of collaborators they frequently make, think, and dream with, both within and beyond the university, and without whom their work would not be possible. Recently they have created videopoems with Petra Kuppers and Stephanie Heit and performances with Jess Fialko and Elisandra Rosario.

Personal Website: www.charlibrisseyisananimal.net