Lesley Farlow has had an extensive professional career as a dancer, choreographer, actress, writer and vocalist, Off and Off Off Broadway, as well as all over the U.S. and in Europe. Her own work has been seen in major New York venues such as the Joyce/Soho, Danspace, Dixon Place, as well as elsewhere in the U.S., Canada and Europe.  In addition, while performing and choreographing in New York, she ran the Oral History Project at Lincoln Center’s Library for Performing Arts Dance Division, which afforded her a rare opportunity to meet and work with internationally renowned dance artists. She also created the AIDS Oral History Project to document the profound effects of the AIDS epidemic on the vulnerable dance world.

What drives Lesley is a passion for the performing arts and the transformational possibilities of live performance. As a teacher, she seeks to foster the creative spirit and the critical thinker in all of her students. In addition to the practical components of her technique, choreography and repertory courses, she asks her students to develop analytical thinking and the ability to write articulately about dance and theater.

As an artist, Lesley creates solo dance/theater works that combine myth and legend with images of contemporary culture through dance, text and song. For the past several years, she has been working with the Performance Project, a theater company of former inmates of the Hampshire County Jail, based in Northampton, MA. Lesley is also a member of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, currently working on a series of projects based on residencies with women incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, in Niantic, CT. This type of work exemplifies her belief that the demands of the creative process and performance can contribute to both personal and social transformation.