On a cool November evening, a lone man wearing a hi-vis vest walked calmly through a dark field at Hornsby Bend. His movements were purposeful, methodical as he went about his work, marking the ground with spray paint. A spotlight on him cast a long shadow as a shuffling jazz tune played softly. He was an avant-garde dancer, an experimental performance artist – an Austin Water leak detector. A crowd of hundreds cheered as he walked off the field.
This was the last performance of Forklift Danceworks’ Nov. 8 show The Way of Water: Confluence, a celebration of the Colorado River and the Austinites who steward it. The performers were fly fishermen, bird watchers, scientists, teens from Austin Youth River Watch, and myriad Austin Water workers ranging from leak detectors to maintenance and construction staff. To see gruff construction guys take seriously their role as artists for a night – and to see the crowd take their everyday work seriously, maybe for the first time – was incredibly moving.
Director Allison Orr has worked with Forklift for more than 20 years to elevate the contributions of front-line workers – from sanitation workers and college campus custodial staff to firefighters and dog walkers. That respect for the community showed in the seamless choreography of Cecilia Benitez and Rachel Nayer that transcended the daily tasks of utility maintenance, wastewater processing, and field biology through intention and context. Somehow, the show made a gaggle of Austin Water trucks driving in a circle as thrilling as the finale of Cirque du Soleil.
The performance was equal parts stirring, entertaining, and informative. Dr. Ruth Shear, a professor and researcher with the Urban Ecosystems research group at UT, played Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” as her colleagues demonstrated, in rhythm, how they take data from the river to study its contaminants. A John Deere excavator performed a solo piece, its arm curling and extending like a ballerina’s. A frontloader operator popped a wheelie and the crowd roared like it was a monster truck rally. Graham Reynolds’ live jazz score oscillated between contemplative and cocky, and dadaLab’s sophisticated lighting design had a delicate enough touch to allow Austin Poet Laureate Zell Miller III’s powerful spoken word to shine – until the final scene, where blue-green lights cascaded across the field in a beautiful evocation of flowing water.
The core of Orr’s work is not so much illuminating an expansive issue as exalting the unglamorous but crucial work of the blue-collar people who manage our most precious resources.
The production was a celebration of the Colorado River, but it was also a call to action. “We have 10 years left of fresh water if we don’t stop in Austin, Texas,” Miller warned. “Are we really gonna leave this mess for our kids to clean up?” In making the show, Orr realized that much of our fate is tied to the river we live on. “I am the Colorado – my body is mostly water, and the water in it is the Colorado,” she said. “Like, that’s what I bathe in, I shower in, I drink, I swim in. We’re just a speck in the river’s trajectory.”
To tell such a big story, Orr split the show into three parts: The first, Source, took place at Laguna Gloria next to the Davis Water Treatment Plant, because “it’s where we take the water out of the river and drink.” The second part, Currents, was a virtual scavenger hunt curated by designer Kate Murray, which let people choose their own adventure along the river itself. The third part, Confluence, took place at Hornsby Bend, “because all of our treated wastewater goes back into the Colorado at some point – and everybody’s poop goes to Hornsby,” said Orr. “So it felt important that we were at the top and the bottom of the journey, so to speak.”
That journey has gone worldwide, with other Way of Water performances over the last three years in El Paso, Miami, and Venice, Italy, in collaboration with those cities’ scientists and climate departments. They’ll continue through 2027 to draw attention to the issue of water scarcity as a result of climate change. But the core of Orr’s work is not so much illuminating an expansive issue as exalting the unglamorous but crucial work of the blue-collar people who manage our most precious resources.
At Confluence, the Austin Water Basin Bandits demonstrated how they turn wastewater into compost (Dillo Dirt). One worker mimed pouring wastewater from a bucket, moving in a slow, deliberate arc, with a focus akin to any professional contemporary dancer.
The Way of Water: Confluence
Hornsby Bend
November 8
This article appears in November 14 • 2025.