2023/24 Artists in Residence
Inverso Productions’ Borrowed Time will be presented at 7:30pm on January 27, 2024 at Dance Victoria Studios as part of our popular Dance Days Festival. This performance is free with a suggested donation of $10. The RSVP list for this performance is now full.
“It is so inspiring to dance with artists of different ages, and to experience such a high level of trust and mutual respect.”
Barbara Karmazyn
Choreographed by Lesley Telford, Borrowed Time is an intergenerational project bringing together professional and amateur dancers to explore strength and vulnerability through different phases in our lives. Inverso recently premiered this work in Vancouver with dance artists: Daria Mikhaylyuk (29), Marisa Gold (30), Justin Calvadores (27), Kerstin Luettich (62) and Barbara Karmazyn (76), choreographed by Lesley Telford. The project was, and continues to be, a beautiful exchange between generations with many shared conversations about family dynamics and life stories.
Lesley Telford is based in Vancouver, Canada as a choreographer, educator and Executive Artistic Director of Inverso Productions. Her work has been described as having “a profound way of tapping into very deep recesses of our emotional and intellectual landscapes.”
Lesley danced professionally Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Compañia Nacional de Danza in Spain, and Netherlands Dans Theater 1 where she worked with choreographers such as Jiri Kylian, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Johan Inger, Crystal Pite and others and performed in major theatres worldwide.
She has been commissioned to choreograph for Ballet BC, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Netherlands Dans Theater 1, Hubbard Street Dance Company 2, Compañia Nacional de Danza 2, ProArte Danza, Ballet Vorpommern, International Project for Dance in Rome- DAF, Butler Ballet, University of Utah, and Arts Umbrella Dance Company. Next season 2023-24 she will be creating in Malta.
She founded her own company, Inverso Productions, to experiment with other art forms and ways of creating dance. Through Inverso Productions she has produced and choreographed three full-length works: Brittle Failure, which has toured to Spain, the Netherlands and Canada, Spooky Action, and her current project, Gem-like. Through Inverso, Lesley also leads initiatives for emerging professional dance artists. As director of Inverso Productions, her focus has been collaborations and community outreach at the intersection of dance, theatre, text, visual art, film and science. She is now creating this intergenerational piece as a way to find a parallel path with her art work and her work as a senior’s advocate.
Lesley has a Master of Arts in Cultural Production from the University of Salzburg and the Mozarteum.