Executive Artistic Director Report
2022-23
Lesley Telford
AGM Inverso Productions Society, December 12th, 2023
2022-23 was a special season for Inverso highlighted by our exchange with older dancers in our community.
INTENSIVES
In August 2022, Inverso hosted our first annual Inverso Summer Intensive, co-presented by SFU Woodward's Cultural Programs in association with SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. The intensive included 6 hours/day of workshops over 6 days taught by Heather Telford and myself with guest artist talks by Beatrice Larrivee and Ellie Bishop. Inverso Summer Intensive continued in season 2023-24.
FILM
We finalized the edited film version of Spooky Action in collaboration with Eden Solomon, Steph Cyr, David Cooper, and Andrew Mackenzie and successfully submitted the work to the Toronto-based festival: “Made-in-Canada”, which took place in July 2023. We are interested in sharing the short film with other film festivals in the future.
OPEN SERIES
Inverso continued to host our series of OPEN classes for the community.The classes were open to all levels and ages, including emerging artists, professional artists and older community dancers.
RESEARCH and CREATION
Inverso also initiated a new research and creation process, involving an intergenerational group of professional and community dancers. Our work-in-progress was shared in a by-donation showing at the Dance Centre in February 2023 to an enthusiastic audience who encouraged us to continue the work.
2023-24
This season, 2023-24, we developed and self-produced a full length version of this work which premiered at 678 Alexander October 13-15, 2023. In Borrowed Time, a 50 year range of ages performed in an exploration of strength and vulnerability through different phases of life and showed how our perspectives towards care shift across generations. We will continue this work in residency at Dance Victoria in 2024, performing at Victoria’s Dance Days. We are also thrilled that we will tour an excerpt of Borrowed Time to several care homes in the greater Vancouver region in 2024.
THANKS
Thanks so much to our artistic team: Marisa Gold, Justin Calvadores, Daria Mikhaylyuk, Barbara Karmazyn and Kirsten Luettich, our lighting designer Irene Weng and many generous volunteers who helped make “Borrowed Time” a success. We would also like to introduce and welcome Samantha Krystal, our new Administrative Assistant, who has been instrumental in our work so far this season.
Thanks to our private donors, the Dance Centre as well as our government funding bodies: the City of Vancouver, the Canada Council of the Arts and the Community Services Recovery Fund which will be applied to an online education series in 2023-24.
I am so grateful to our board who has generously committed their valuable time and expertise to Inverso over the past season. I would like to extend a special thanks to our outgoing Board Chair, Peter Dickinson, who has contributed over 5 years of service to Inverso Productions Society. Peter was a founding board member of Inverso in 2017. He took on this role enthusiastically and guided Inverso through our first 5 years, despite the many other commitments in his academic and artistic life. Peter was a huge source of support when I returned to Vancouver. The complexity and integrity with which he wrote about the arts was inspiring. It was an honour to be included in his blog, Performance, Place and Politics, his book, My Vancouver Dance History, and above all choreographing for his play, Long Division. Thank-you Peter for your long-term support and commitment to Inverso. I look forward to seeing you in the theatre!
2022-23 was a special season for Inverso highlighted by our exchange with older dancers in our community.
INTENSIVES
In August 2022, Inverso hosted our first annual Inverso Summer Intensive, co-presented by SFU Woodward's Cultural Programs in association with SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. The intensive included 6 hours/day of workshops over 6 days taught by Heather Telford and myself with guest artist talks by Beatrice Larrivee and Ellie Bishop. Inverso Summer Intensive continued in season 2023-24.
FILM
We finalized the edited film version of Spooky Action in collaboration with Eden Solomon, Steph Cyr, David Cooper, and Andrew Mackenzie and successfully submitted the work to the Toronto-based festival: “Made-in-Canada”, which took place in July 2023. We are interested in sharing the short film with other film festivals in the future.
OPEN SERIES
Inverso continued to host our series of OPEN classes for the community.The classes were open to all levels and ages, including emerging artists, professional artists and older community dancers.
RESEARCH and CREATION
Inverso also initiated a new research and creation process, involving an intergenerational group of professional and community dancers. Our work-in-progress was shared in a by-donation showing at the Dance Centre in February 2023 to an enthusiastic audience who encouraged us to continue the work.
2023-24
This season, 2023-24, we developed and self-produced a full length version of this work which premiered at 678 Alexander October 13-15, 2023. In Borrowed Time, a 50 year range of ages performed in an exploration of strength and vulnerability through different phases of life and showed how our perspectives towards care shift across generations. We will continue this work in residency at Dance Victoria in 2024, performing at Victoria’s Dance Days. We are also thrilled that we will tour an excerpt of Borrowed Time to several care homes in the greater Vancouver region in 2024.
THANKS
Thanks so much to our artistic team: Marisa Gold, Justin Calvadores, Daria Mikhaylyuk, Barbara Karmazyn and Kirsten Luettich, our lighting designer Irene Weng and many generous volunteers who helped make “Borrowed Time” a success. We would also like to introduce and welcome Samantha Krystal, our new Administrative Assistant, who has been instrumental in our work so far this season.
Thanks to our private donors, the Dance Centre as well as our government funding bodies: the City of Vancouver, the Canada Council of the Arts and the Community Services Recovery Fund which will be applied to an online education series in 2023-24.
I am so grateful to our board who has generously committed their valuable time and expertise to Inverso over the past season. I would like to extend a special thanks to our outgoing Board Chair, Peter Dickinson, who has contributed over 5 years of service to Inverso Productions Society. Peter was a founding board member of Inverso in 2017. He took on this role enthusiastically and guided Inverso through our first 5 years, despite the many other commitments in his academic and artistic life. Peter was a huge source of support when I returned to Vancouver. The complexity and integrity with which he wrote about the arts was inspiring. It was an honour to be included in his blog, Performance, Place and Politics, his book, My Vancouver Dance History, and above all choreographing for his play, Long Division. Thank-you Peter for your long-term support and commitment to Inverso. I look forward to seeing you in the theatre!
Inverso Productions gratefully acknowledges that the land on which we work and create is the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We are committed to ongoing learning to be informed allies of Indigineous people.
Copyright © 2024
Inverso Productions Society
1190 Kilmer Rd, North Vancouver, BC, V7K 1R1
Inverso Productions Society
1190 Kilmer Rd, North Vancouver, BC, V7K 1R1