Dr. Charli Brissey

Biography

Charli Brissey (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and teacher whose work engages choreographically with technologies and materials. Their creative endeavors primarily encompass bodies, cameras, objects, genders, desires, instincts, language, and ecosystems. Brissey centers choreography as an invaluable method for research into social, political, and ecological phenomena, aiming to illuminate the interconnectedness of 'nature' and 'culture.' Their performances and videos have been showcased in galleries, conferences, film festivals, and performance venues across the nation and globally. Notably, their recent film, Canis Major, has toured twenty countries and garnered multiple awards at the Experimental Film OUTFEST and the Richmond International Film Festival. Brissey also produced and toured an evening-length dance project titled Future Fish, stemming from a multi-year research initiative exploring choreography in the context of oceans and benthic ecosystems. Other projects include a four-month study on deep time eroticism in Virginia caves, producing a podcast focused on artists in the Midwest, designing movement scores tracking oscillation patterns on an island in British Columbia, and an ongoing writing project exploring choreographies of love and grief entwined with the relationships of dogs, humans, and non-human entities. They are affiliated with the Center for World Performance Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and teach courses in physical practice, composition, graduate pedagogy, improvisation, and digital media, integrating critical theory into their art-making.

Research Interests