Lesley Telford is a Vancouver-based choreographer and the artistic director of Inverso Productions. She is grateful to live and work on the unceded ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Her work has been described as thought-provoking with a finely wrought movement language. She aims to build cross-platform creations and has worked with text, visual arts and scientific concepts. She has a long standing commitment to emerging dancers in the community, leading the Performance Research Project through Inverso as a space for mentorship, research and performance opportunities.

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. In her decade long tenure with Netherlands Dans Theater 1, 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 set and staged the work of Jiri Kylian as well as Lightfoot/Leon. Lesley has a Master of Arts in Cultural Production from the University of Salzburg and the Mozarteum.

As a choreographer, she has created works for 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, among others. Season 2021/22 will include her third creation for Ballet BC and a new commission for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens as well as a new work for her company, Inverso Productions. Through Inverso she has produced and choreographed two full-length works: Brittle Failure, which has been a part of tours and festivals in Spain, the Netherlands and Canada and Spooky Action, which recently premiered in Canada to enthusiastic reviews. Her work has been presented in the CaDance Festival and Korzo Theatre in the Netherlands, International Festival Madrid en Danza and the Reina Sophia Museum in Spain, the Chutzpah Festival, the Banff Festival of the Arts, the Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival, the Schmiede Festival, EDAM Choreographic Series, the Fluid Festival in Calgary, Dancing on the Edge Festival and the Vancouver International Dance Festival.