Lesley Telford's intergenerational Borrowed Time integrates dancers whose ages span 50 years
Inspired by her mother, the Inverso Productions choreographer explores connection, acceptance, and support
Borrowed Time. Photo by David Cooper
Inverso Productions’ Borrowed Time is at 298 Alexander Street from October 13 to 15
SO MUCH OF DANCE partnering is about supporting each other’s weight and shifting that load between each other. For Vancouver choreographer Lesley Telford, that idea has become particularly poignant as a metaphor for the changing responsibilities that come with aging, and the way a younger generation starts to carry the older one.
Advocating for a mother who spent the pandemic in longterm care, and finding herself situated between responsibilities for both her own daughter and her parent, brought the issue to the fore for the choreographer. More recently, the Inverso Productions artistic director has been diving even deeper into the subject by taking gerontology courses: “I feel like I have something to say, and I needed to understand the whole system a little bit better to be a more effective advocate,” she explains.
It was only natural that those consuming realities would find their way into the dance work of Telford, an alumna of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Madrid’s Compañia Nacional de Danza. She started to explore the themes of care, aging, and family in 2021’s Lean-to, her third commission for Ballet BC that riffed on the interdependency within family “constellations”, and in Inverso Productions’ Gem-Like, an exploration of isolation, erasure, and the rare, joyful moments of reconnection that debuted last year at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.
Now the artist is taking the concept further, for the first time integrating older adults into her new Borrowed Time, for Inverso Productions. As she puts it: “I needed that generation onstage.”
She started working with older women—longtime community dancers—early last year. “At first I was very careful with asking or suggesting things that might be challenging physically,” she recalls. “But then one of them said, ‘I can carry that person,’ and another said, ‘I can run.’”
Borrowed Time. (Creative direction by Daria Mikhaylyuk. Dancers: Daria Mikhaylyuk, Marisa Gold, Justin Calvadores, Kerstin Luettich, and Barbara Karmazyn.) Photo by David Cooper
Borrowed Time features Daria Mikhaylyuk, Marisa Gold, Justin Calvadores, Kerstin Luettich, and Barbara Karmazyn—together spanning 50 years of age, from 26 to 76. The project has turned out to be one of the more rewarding and moving collaborations of Telford’s career.
“It’s so refreshing: it’s this little constellation of five people that turn into a little bit of a family and we’re sharing family stories—and sharing the depth of lived experience,” she reflects. “It’s become very much about grasping the moment. It’s a study of relationships—and learning that sometimes the vulnerable aspects of others or ourselves are actually our strength. There’s been a lot of finding out how we partner emotionally, as well—that sometimes the strongest act is an act of acceptance.”
Acceptance, Telford says, is something she came to admire as a strength in her own mother—who had worked as a longterm-care nurse herself—even in the darkest days of the pandemic when the longterm care system had isolated our elders.
“I was fighting and advocating,” Telford says. “But the moment she was able to accept it, she was able to enjoy the moment. Even when she was in lockdown.”
Still, Telford stresses that Borrowed Time, which debuts at dance artist Rachel Meyers’ new industrial space on Alexander Street, is inspired by her experiences, but is not literally about them.
Instead, Borrowed Time is a poignant and poetic reminder of the need for connection. It will resonate with anyone who’s taken on the care of a loved one when time is short: “Part of this piece is an act of letting go—but also grabbing what you want to hold onto,” Telford says.
Borrowed Time. Photo by David Cooper
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