Choreographer
Lesley Telford
Lesley Telford is a choreographer, educator and the Artistic Director of Inverso Productions based in Vancouver on Coast Salish Territory. She began her career with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, worked with Nacho Duato at Compañia Nacional de Danza in Spain and spent over a decade dancing and creating at Nederlands Dans Theatre 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.
As a choreographer, she has created works for Les Grands Ballets Candiens, Ballet BC, Netherlands Dans Theater 1, Zfin Malta, Hubbard Street Dance Company, Compañia Nacional de Danza, Ballet Vorpommern, Butler Ballet, International Project for Dance in Rome (DAF), University of Utah and Arts Umbrella Dance Company. Through Inverso, Lesley choreographed and produced 4 full evening works which have been presented throughout Europe and Western Canada. In her work, Lesley explores the physicality and spatial structures of emotional states at the intersection of dance, the visual arts, text and film.
Her work has been described as having “a profound way of tapping into deep recesses of our emotional and intellectual landscapes”. Lesley teaches workshops internationally in many companies and schools. Locally, she has a long-standing commitment in support of emerging dance artists and has developed outreach and professional platforms to provide valuable opportunities and experience.
She has a Master of Arts in Cultural Production from the University of Salzburg.
