AUSTIN

'Trash' dance celebrates everyday labor as art

No rhythm in garbage delivery? Rubbish! Austin trash trucks are stars of upcoming production.

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Friday, September 04, 2009

After working a shift that began at 5 a.m. driving a trash truck, James Freeman doesn't mind spending a couple of hours on a recent hot afternoon reprising some of his duties while Austin choreographer Allison Orr looks on.

Freeman is driving in unison with three other trucks while music plays. And he's not exactly retrieving trash: He's rehearsing for one of Austin's most unusual dance performances.

Freeman is one of 25 employees of the city's Solid Waste Services Department who have volunteered for "The Trash Project," Orr's latest creative venture using nondancers and their movements as the basis of a choreographed performance. It's all part of an effort to celebrate the artistry in everyday work, and it will be staged on the weekend following Labor Day.

Translating his labor into performance doesn't strike Freeman as odd.

"There's a rhythm you work out when you drive your route, patterns you create," said Freeman, who has been driving a trash truck for eight years. " I want to help the city to understand what we do. Nobody is ever home to see what we do. And sometimes all we hear (from people) is when they call to complain about something."

Though Orr didn't necessarily plan for "The Trash Project" to occur near Labor Day, she said, her impulse to explore the movements of sanitation employees is rooted in the desire to celebrate physical work.

"Most of us are so distant from manual labor," Orr said. "And yet we're so dependent on people to do certain jobs. I wanted to make visible a kind of work that's typically invisible. There's a story to be told here that's not being told."

Solid Waste Services Department officials say Orr's project makes for an uncommon, and welcome, public awareness opportunity.

"We saw 'The Trash Project' as a way to showcase our hardworking employees who do their jobs every day to keep Austin clean and green," said Tammie Williamson, acting Solid Waste Services director. "This performance is also a great way to generate awareness about the vital services we provide every day, and it's a unique way to educate people about reducing waste and caring for the community."

The hour-long performance will be Sept. 12 on the tarmac behind the Austin Studios in East Austin, where bleachers for an audience of 700 will be set up. Among the 16 vehicles are recycling trucks, street sweepers and a bucket truck. Leaf blowers will get a solo. Beige 90-gallon garbage carts will serve as props.

Freeman and his crew start their part of the performance by walking around their trucks. They grab carts and wheel them into line. Others in the show will throw bags of lawn clippings into dramatic arcs or weld leaf blowers in sinuous patterns.

For all its novelty, Orr said, the show is not making light of what sanitation workers do.

"There's a choreography to their everyday work movements," she said. "There's a lot of skill and strength in what they do."

"The Trash Project" has an original score by Austin composer Graham Reynolds — some of which will be performed live by string trio — that incorporates noises made by the trash trucks and machinery. Austin lighting designer Stephen Pruitt will wrap the performance in dramatic lighting. Admission to the show is free.

Sanitation workers are not the first group Orr has channeled into dancers. In 2000, she gathered 50 dogs and their owners in Zilker Park for a large-scale canine and human dance. She's traveled to Venice, Italy, to choreograph gondoliers and their boats. She paid tribute to the king of rock 'n' roll using professional Elvis Presley impersonators. And shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, she created a dance for Austin firefighters with a fire rescue training tower as a stage. Last year, she invited 30 community roller skaters to join a performance that took place in a rink. That show netted Orr the award for outstanding choreography from the Austin Critics' Table.

For Orr, the lengthy process of developing one of her dance works — the bureaucracy involved in working with public agencies, the people management of coaxing nonperformers to be performers, the large-scale logistics of nontraditional performance venues — is as important as the finished performance.

"I've always been interested in any practice of habitual movement," she said. "Ultimately, what I do is about people and their individual behavior and celebrating that behavior. But for me, it's the process that's always the most interesting."

For "The Trash Project," that process started more than a year ago when she first approached the Solid Waste Services Department with her idea. Orr's previous work with the Fire Department eased the way.

Orr cut her teeth as a young dance professional with famed experimental choreographer Liz Lerman's Washington, D.C.-based Dance Exchange, which pioneered creating dances with nontraditional performers in unusual settings. Even the notion of a city sanitation department colliding with art has been explored: New York's Department of Sanitation has had an artist-in-residence since 1994.

Last fall, Orr, who teaches dance at Austin Community College, spent a week in the Solid Waste Services Department's employee safety training so she could accompany workers on their routes. She bought her own safety gear, including a fluorescent reflective vest. Orr accompanied crews to pick up bulky items, bags of lawn and tree trimmings, and even dead animals. And very early on New Year's Day, after revelers had left downtown, Orr assisted the street cleaning crew assigned to Congress Avenue.

Orr raised the $35,000 in production costs for the show principally from private funds. The city is donating the use of the equipment and the employees' time.

On the tarmac during rehearsal, Orr watched Freeman and his colleagues as they practiced waving the automated arms of their trash trucks.

"We can do anything with these trucks," Freeman said.

"There's something really great about getting people, and things, to dance," Orr said.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'The Trash Project' When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 12 Where: Austin Studios tarmac, 1901 E. 51st St. Tickets: Free admission. Parking is free. More: www.forkliftdanceworks.org