B.C. woman overcomes adversity by choreographing positivity

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Bobblehead Dancing Adam finds out how woman wearing a tutu is overcoming adversity by choreographing positivity.

It’s not unusual to find Lesley Carlberg out and about wearing a tutu.

“Tutus are so pretty,” she smiles, while walking her dog in a white tutu adorned with colourful flowers. “But sometimes people think I’m getting married.”

Instead of walking down an aisle, Lesley is making the ordinary — like dog walking, bike riding, even snow-angel making — far more fun.

“Someone told me, ‘Your tutus represent your childhood dream that was never realized,” Carlberg says, adding how she wanted to be a dancer when she grew-up. “And I was like,’yah’!”

For as long as Carlberg can recall she’s expressed herself physically, from dancing in her first tutu at three to growing-up doing all sorts of physical activities. That all stopped, however, when she received a devastating diagnosis.

“I went to get an MRI,” she said, describing how she felt compelled to visit the doctor after feeling a tingling sensation in parts of her body.

“And they were like 'You have MS.' I was like, ‘What?!’”

Eventually Multiple Sclerosis made it so all the active things she used to do, she no longer could.

“It could get me down sometimes,” Carlberg admits.

But instead of mourning what she couldn’t do, Carlberg decided to start celebrating what she could — like finding the fun in wearing tutus in unexpected places and seeing the potential of bobblehead dolls doing unexpected things.

“I always have dance in my head,” she says, about the day she was inspired to create a flash mob of Bobbleheads.

To craft the scene, Carlberg attached raised arms to the dolls with the bobbing heads, dressed them in all sorts of summery costumes, attached them to a machine that would make them sway in different directions, and used a green screen to make it look like a dozen of them were dancing on a beach.

“It‘s fun for me,” Carlberg says. “And I like to make people laugh.”

She posted the video online, and received so much positive feedback she decided to make another. For the second creation, she made tiny monster masks to attach to the bobbleheads so they could perform ‘Thriller’ for Halloween.

“Now I’m the bobblehead Lady,” Carlberg smiles.

Now Carlberg’s commissioned cozy costumes for her cast of compact characters, set-up a revolving green-screen stage in her living room, and focused her phone on capturing the bobbleheads dancing to an original Christmas composition.

“We've just got to find that joy in life to keep going,” she said.

While Carlberg is still a couple of weeks away from debuting her yuletide musical, she’s already grateful to have found an unexpected way to overcome adversity through choreographing positivity — and realizing her childhood dream of performing in an unexpected way.

“As a kid, I feel like we were very playful and we need that playfulness back,” Carlberg says.

“Because there’s a lot of laughter and happiness there.”