Growing Takes Time
Karley Wasaff
Noo Arts
June 20, 2026
Brooklyn<\/p>\n
Walking into Growing Takes Time, the space immediately feels alive with movement, sound, and a kind of structured play. There\u2019s a balance between choreography and unpredictability where nothing feels fully fixed, but everything still feels intentional.<\/p>\n
The audience isn\u2019t positioned as observers but as participants inside a shifting system of games, tasks, and collective decision making. In her New York State Council of the Arts grant-winning and site-specific play coming to Noo Arts in Greenpoint on June 20, Karley Wasaff builds a world that blends contemporary dance, immersive theater, and game logic into something playful and physically present. What unfolds feels less like watching a performance and more like being inside a shared experiment in attention, trust, and cooperation.<\/p>\n
Bleu Pablo (Rail):<\/p>\n
You have a show coming up, Growing Takes Time. Could you tell us a little bit about it?<\/p>\n
Karley Wasaff: Yeah. Growing Takes Time is a real-life video game disguised as a dance performance where audiences don\u2019t just sit and watch\u2014they become part of the system. Inspired by games like Pikmin 4, the performers act as Pikmin, guiding audiences through playful missions, movement props, conflict-resolution games, and cooperative challenges.<\/p>\n
The work blends contemporary dance, immersive theater, and the whimsical unpredictability of New York\u2019s experimental gallery scene. Audiences can expect a beautiful wildflower rooftop run by No Art, gorgeous sunset city views, live gameplay, unexpected interaction, absurd humor, and a strange little world where collective problem-solving becomes choreography.<\/p>\n
Rail: That sounds fun. I\u2019ve actually been a participant in your past two shows, and they were really amazing experiences. Walking into the space, there\u2019s an immediate sense that everything is intentional, but still open. Everything feels placed there for a reason, but there\u2019s also room to breathe. What were you hoping people would notice or feel when they stepped into the space?<\/p>\n
Wasaff: I\u2019m hoping people feel an immediate sense of whimsy and play. I think that\u2019s largely lacking in communities right now. Part of why conflict never seems to get resolved is because it requires self-presence and self-worth to engage with play and vulnerability in conflict.<\/p>\n
Growing Takes Time is weird, messy, fun, physical, and sincere all at once. I\u2019m asking people to play together at a time when genuine collective interaction can feel surprisingly rare.<\/p>\n
I want people to walk away with something. I\u2019m interested in people leaving a little more connected to themselves and community, and feeling lighter than when they walked in.<\/p>\n
Rail: That\u2019s beautiful. Can you walk me through what\u2019s physically happening in the exhibition?<\/p>\n
Wasaff: Yeah. There are about three or four stunning rooftops that audiences travel through. There\u2019s also going to be a digital art exhibition co-curated by Josh Sauceda and myself.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s actually one of my favorite parts of the show, because these digital artists are helping fund underserved performance art and helping create a collective community that expands beyond just one scene. It\u2019s kind of like when one person says something kind to another person, and it ripples outward. That\u2019s the goal.<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s exciting to see a more privileged art form supporting a more underprivileged one.<\/p>\n
Another part of the show includes Not Your Muse hosting a live painting session at the end of the performance. The work focuses on accessible ways to regulate emotions, which audiences will also experience throughout the show itself.<\/p>\n
All of the games and levels throughout the performance are rooted in somatic practices that help people become more connected to themselves and better support their communities.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a collaboration with Tribe and Vibe Collection involving hydroponic systems that are self-watering. They\u2019re implementing them into schools, and my collaboration with them is about bringing those systems into community spaces like No Art.<\/p>\n
And throughout all of this are these whimsical animated Pikmin-inspired characters. You\u2019ll see combinations of contemporary dance, jiu-jitsu, and gameplay mechanics where audiences mirror movement together.<\/p>\n
A big throughline in the work is how contemporary partner dancers and jiu-jitsu practitioners often develop a stronger presence in stressful situations because they regularly train in close-contact, high-pressure environments. My goal is to help people navigate those high-stress moments together with more ease.<\/p>\n
Rail: I love that. You mentioned jiu-jitsu, and I wanted to ask about that briefly because it\u2019s really interesting seeing how it influenced the work. Did you actually practice jiu-jitsu for the show?<\/p>\n
Wasaff: I did. I\u2019ve been practicing it for a while now.<\/p>\n
Rail: How was that experience?<\/p>\n
Wasaff: Oh my god, it was amazing. I used to work at a gym where some of my peers practiced jiu-jitsu, and I would watch them flowing and moving on the floor. I realized I was already doing similar things in contact improvisation dance, so I got curious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing Takes TimeKarley WasaffNoo ArtsJune 20, 2026Brooklyn Walking into Growing Takes Time, the space immediately feels alive with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1149,3458,3457,3459,3456,2878,98,3461,3462,100,99,3455,17,1117,3465,749,2538,9,3463,24,63,3460,3464,905],"class_list":["post-253128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-art","tag-art-books","tag-art-critic","tag-art-reviews","tag-artists","tag-books","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-art","tag-brooklyn-culture","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-contemporary-art","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-art-scene","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-phong-bui","tag-poetry","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}