Garbage Trucks Prove Anything Can Dance

Dickinson to screen award-winning documentary exploring the beauty of trash collection

Dickinson will host a screening of the award-winning film Trash Dance on Monday, Feb. 29, at 6 p.m. in the Stern Center Great Room.

Directed by Andrew Garrison and choreographed by Allison Orr, Trash Dance is a documentary that follows the daily routes of sanitation workers in Austin, Texas, and culminates in a spectacular and moving performance by two dozen workers and their trucks on an abandoned airport runway. Through dance, Orr discovers the beauty and grace in garbage trucks and in the workers who pick up our trash. Following the film, Garrison will join the audience via Skype for a Q&A session.

Garrison is an independent documentary and fiction filmmaker based in Austin and is an associate professor of film and digital media production at the University of Texas at Austin. His past films include Third Ward TX and The Wilgus Stories, both of which premiered at SXSW and aired on PBS. His films have been screened at film festivals around the world, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Film Institute.

Orr is an award-winning choreographer and founder of Forklift Danceworks. She was named Best Choreographer of 2003, 2008 and 2013 by the Austin Critics Table and Best Movement Illuminator by the Austin Chronicle in 2012. Orr’s choreography has been featured in Take II, Dogs with Jobs, and Left to Our Own Devices. She is on the dance faculty of Austin Community College.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Theatre & Dance and the Center for Sustainability Education. It is also part of the Movement Matters Film Series, which includes three documentaries that explore dance as a vehicle for social change and personal transformation.

Learn More

• Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
• Center for Sustainability Education
• Department of Theatre & Dance
• Latest News

Published February 23, 2016