TAMMY CARRASCO is a Philadelphia-based choreographer, performer, writer, and educator, who makes choreographic work that lingers in the resonances of near discovery rather than resolving uncertainty. Her dances and multidisciplinary projects can been seen in private stairwells, expansive public spaces, theaters, and galleries at venues such as Makers Space (NY), Christ Church/Neighborhood House (PA), IceBox Project Space (PA), Maryland Art Place (MD), Judson Church (NY), Cherry Street Pier (PA), Martha Graham Studio Theater (NY) and more. Through the integration of text, set, projection, and a rigorous study of movement and performative intention, Tammy pursues structures that contain us—houses, theaters, domestic rituals, social structures, nature’s cycles, and inherited narratives. Returning to recurring images of houses, thresholds, architecture, and porous relationships, her work asks how we become attentive enough in viewership to perceive what is already present but often overlooked: the relationship between body and place, ephemeral memories embedded in fixed architecture, and wonder concealed within ordinary experience. Ambiguity in her work is not as a refusal of meaning, but is a condition through which curiosity and heightened perception become possible.
Tammy's recent evening-length work, A creature of the garden and cellar premiered March 2026 at Christ Church/Neighborhood House as a part of Philadelphia Dance Projects' "Dance Up Close" series. A creature takes place in the living room as domestic space and a mirror of our deep interiority --from the wispy of the garden to the dark fears of the cellar. Guided by Gaston Bachelard’s philosophies of space, Tammy considers the home as “nest and shell,” shelter and confinement, a site of intimacy, conflict, ghosts, and dreaming. With a sound score built by Devin Arne, the work asks: How can the house—as psychic and choreographic architecture—be embodied, sonically layered, destabilized, and multiplied across bodies, site, sounds, and time?
Tammy's work, ISLAND, has been presented four times across public spaces and unconventional dance sites in Philadelphia. A defining feature of this work is the ways audiences travel with the performance from the mouth of Philadelphia’s Cherry Street Pier along its length, including an over-sized staircase and courtyard over-looking the Delware River. In this context, the mobile nature of the work activates the audience as collaborator—viewers choose a vantage point, how long to linger, and what element of the space – dance, water, architecture—to prioritize in any given moment. Movement references the natural occurring designs and the geometry of water, plants, root systems, and soil, using the body as a bridge that links our built and natural landscapes to the nuanced construction of human relationship.
Tammy is grateful to have received support from institutions and organizations for her creative processes and presentations, including Foundation for Contemporary Arts, DanceForce and the Western NY Choreographer's Initiative sponsored by New York Council of the Arts, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Bryn Mawr College, The College at Brockport, and The Ohio State University.
In addition to her choreographic and creative pursuits, Tammy has been a dance educator in higher education for more than a decade, holding full-time positions at Bryn Mawr College (2021-present) and SUNY Brockport (2015-2020). She has been a Guest Choreographer at West Chester University, Drexel University, and University of Memphis, and has taught at summer dance intensives at Philly Dance Share Summer Intensive, Governor's School East (NC), as well as movement and choreography workshops across the country.
She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor and Interim Director of Dance at Bryn Mawr College, holds an MFA in Dance from Ohio State University (2015 University Fellow), a BFA in Contemporary Dance from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and is a Walnut Hill School for the Arts alum.
