Beauty is born from garbage

Municipal sanitation workers are rarely associated with the fine arts.

During the summer of 2008, ACC Dance Professor Allison Orr started to work on a dance choreography called the Trash Project with The City of Austin Solid Waste Service Department employees which culminated in an applauded performance.

"It was really important to be able to show that the employers of the Solid Waste department have a lot of skills and passions aside from just picking up the trash," said Orr.

The Solid Waste Department employees don't just pick up the trash. They take care of the recycling, collect dead animals, and clean the city when nobody is looking. Some of them are talented musicians or potential dancers. A crowd of 2,000 people got to witness these 26 performers with the help 14 garbage trucks last September for the Trash Project live show.

"I listened and asked them who had artistic talents that they wanted to feature and that could be used in the performance. Orange Jefferson is a professional blues musician and Ivory Jackson Jr. wrote a rap that was performed live at the show," said Orr.

The process of giving life to her project wasn't just about choreographing dancers. Orr is also a professional choreographer and the artistic director of Forklift Dance Works.

She had to go through The City of Austin Solid Waste Service Department to get authorization to use some of their employee's time, trucks and gas. All other expenses were paid by a City of Austin Cultural Funding Program grant and Orr herself.

"Getting the department authorization was the harder thing I had to do. It took about eight or nine months for my project proposal to get through," said Orr.

The performance will become a documentary directed by University of Texas at Austin RTF professor Andrew Garrison. Garrison, who is also the founder of documentary project East Austin Stories, was introduced to Orr by her husband when she was starting her project. Garrison saw the Trash Project as a natural extension from his previous film, Third Ward TX in which a group of artists in inner city Houston rebuild a left-for-dead neighborhood.

"I learned about Allison from reading about her in the paper. I was ready for a new project and I liked how she did art with people who don't usually think of themselves as artists, and that she worked with working people," Garrison said in e-mail.

Part of Garrison's 200 hour long footage shows Orr working side by side with the Solid Waste Department employees. She partook in the sanitation workers late night tasks, emptying public trash cans, riding on the back of a garbage truck, learning their professional secrets and getting to know them personally.

"Working side by side with them is really important because, in order to gain their trust, I had to learn what they do, so they know I am for real. The objective is to show what they do, how is their work," said Orr.

Garrison is raising funds online to make a documentary out of all the footage he produced throughout the Trash Project production faze and show. He set a goal of $10,000 dollars and offered different thank you gifts for the contributors. Patrons that donate between $10 and $20 will receive a bumper stick and a thank you note from Garrison, and whoever donates $1,000 will be invited for a home-made dinner with the director himself. With 11 days to go, the Trash Dance project is $90 dollars away from being made.

"Crowd funding is a significant and growing way for projects to get funding. I am a reluctant convert, but now I am completely enthusiastic. It does more than raise money, it starts to build resources, a team of support."

Orr has been working with people that are not usually thought of as dancers since her graduation. For instance, she worked with the Mills College cleaning crew. Since then she choreographed Sextet, a dance performed by two women, professional dancer Karly Dillard and her and two visually impaired men with their guide dogs. In another project called In Case of Fire she worked with 13 Austin firefighters.

"I love the way we see all of these people as secret artists. They step forward and out as dancers. I like that it honors the people doing the work that keeps this city from calling on its own waste. They are often invisible to us. And on this project and this movie, there are faces and names and real stories," said Garrison.