Talking Trash

UPDATE: Because Austinites have shown so much love for the film Trash Dance, the producers of America Reframed, which is currently streaming it online, want to make sure all Chronicle readers get a chance to see it. Click on the viewing link at the bottom of this post to watch it for free through Jan. 28.

Andrew Garrison’s award-winning film Trash Dance premiered Tuesday on television and online. It was broadcast on some national PBS channels (not Austin's KLRU, according to listings) as part of the third season of America Reframed, which is also streaming it online for free through January 28.

Garrison’s documentary captures the making and performance of choreographer Allison Orr’s much-adored Trash Project in which she marshaled the mechanical movements of garbage trucks and the graceful dynamics of the workers who operate them into a stunning work of art. Local maestro Graham Reynolds provides the music.

It was a drizzly night in 2009 the first time the show was performed on the tarmac at the Austin Film Studios. Bleachers had been set up for 700 spectators, and another 700 were admitted standing-room-only, while an estimated 500 more eager attendees jumped the fence. “Those who got in witnessed an alchemy, a performance thrilling not only in its novelty but in its anthropomorphism, humor, intelligence, beauty, and illumination of an essential civic service that is usually on the periphery,” wrote Janelle Seitz when reporting on the two-night reprisal of the show in 2011.

Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires concurred when he wrote: “From the moment the performance ended 17 months ago, people have been asking Allison Orr when she is going to present The Trash Project again. The unusual dance production, created with the cooperation of the city of Austin Solid Waste Services Department and featuring 24 department employees and 16 large sanitation vehicles, made such a profound impression on the people who saw it – transforming the way they view the men and women who pick up their trash and recycling – that they were eager to see it again and for more Austinites to see it, too.”)

Fortunately, Garrison not only captured some of that 2009 performance on film, he also spent a year and a half accompanying Orr on her predawn ride-alongs with the sanitation workers and the sometimes fractious rehearsal sessions. The process is revealed to be as much a part of the art form at the finished project. In my review of the film I wrote: “If dance, as Orr explains, is simply the coordination of space, time, and energy, then the orchestration of garbage trucks, trash receptacles, and the human beings who maneuver them is the dance equivalent of a city symphony.”

Now in a presentation mode that removes the need for gate-crashing, Trash Dance will premiere online at 7pm CST on WORLD Channel, and be followed by an online chat. It will stream there for free until January 28.