I had the pleasure of witnessing the final performance of Forklift Danceworks', The Trash Project this weekend. The Trash Project was a choreographed dance of 16 municipal Solid Waste Services trucks, 30 Solid Waste Services employees, and a three-piece band, performed before 2,000 people on an abandoned airstrip in the triple-digit heat of an Austin dusk.
Forklift Danceworks' Choreographer, Allison Orr clearly set out to challenge the viewers' perceptions of: dance as a medium, public art, community, consumerism and waste generation, and the Solid Waste Services employees and machinery who constitute the entire cast of performers. What's as, if not more, remarkable than how deftly Orr recasts these terms in our minds, is how emotional that response becomes under the collective influence of the performers, Orr, the audience, and composer and performer of the original score, Graham Reynolds. Conceptually, it's easy to imagine a "public ballet of garbage trucks and garbagemen" challenging one's preconceived notions of the subjects and forms involved. Harder to imagine is a cohesive execution of that concept which evokes strong and opposing feelings of loneliness and a sense of community, or recognition that the love and artistry that resides, often deeply obscured, in our hearts is a universal occurrence. The ideas that beauty is found in the commonplace, or that love is in the details, are all but cliche these days, but rarely elicited so resoundingly and surprisingly.
Luckily for those who were not there to witness the live performances, filmmaker Andrew Garrison has captured, "An amazing vision of the people and the process that lead to this unique performance. Now in editing, the feature documentary brings you the usually unseen people who do a city’s dirty work, transforming their jobs into dance."
TRASH DANCE - Trailer from Andrew Garrison on Vimeo.
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