Lesley Telford

Executive Artistic Director

Lesley is a choreographer and the Executive Artistic Director of Inverso Productions. She is grateful to live and work on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people. Through Lesley’s choreographic work she 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 very deep recesses of our emotional and intellectual landscapes”. 

Lesley finished her studies in Montreal at L´École Supérieur de Danse du Québec before joining the company Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. She went on to dance with Nacho Duato´s Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid, Spain and spent the majority of her career with Netherlands Dans Theater 1 working with Jiri Kylian, Lightfoot/Leon, William Forsythe, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger and many more artists.

She has created multiple works for Ballet BC along with commissions for Bern Ballett,  Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Netherlands Dans Theater 1, Hubbard Street Dance Company 2, Compañia Nacional de Danza 2, Ballet Vorpommern, International Project for Dance in Rome- DAF, Butler Ballet, University of Utah, and Arts Umbrella Dance Company. This season she is creating for Ballet Am Rhein.

She founded Inverso Productions in 2012 to experiment with other art forms and ways of creating dance. She has a long-standing commitment in support of emerging dance artists and developed Performance Research Project to provide valuable opportunities and experience. Inverso also builds intergenerational productions and outreach to facilitate dance for all ages.

Lesley has a Master of Arts in Cultural Production from the University of Salzburg and the Mozarteum. ​​
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