The Team

From sanitation workers to firefighters, power linemen to maintenance teams, Allison Orr creates award-winning choreography with the people whose work sustains our everyday lives. Inspired by the beauty and virtuosity in the movement of labor, and building on her background in anthropology and social work, Allison has honed a methodology of ethnographic choreography that engages community members as co-authors and performers in the creation of large-scale civic spectacles. Challenging audiences to expand notions of dance and performer, her dances have been performed for audiences of 60 to 6,000+.

In recent years, Allison has been named a MacDowell Fellow, a Dance | USA Fellow in Social Change, a Doris Duke United States Artist Fellow, Best Choreographer by The Austin Chronicle, Most Outstanding Choreographer by the Austin Critics Table, one of Tribeza Magazine’s Top 10 Austinites, and one of eight “Extraordinary Texans” by Texas Highways Magazine. Her large-scale work The Trash Project was named a #1 Arts Event by the Austin American-Statesman, #1 Dance Event by The Austin Chronicle, and Most Outstanding Dance Concert by the Austin Critics Table. It is also the subject of a feature-length documentary film entitled Trash Dance.

Allison has been commissioned three times by the Fusebox Festival and was the single US choreographer selected by the Kyoto Arts Center as part of the National Performance Network’s Asian Exchange program. A guest artist for numerous dance programs including Williams College, Wake Forest University, the University of Maryland, and Texas A&M, Allison has been a Mellon Foundation Creative Campus Scholar at the Center for the Arts of Wesleyan University. Her work has been funded by the City of Austin, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Doris Duke Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the MAP Fund, The New England Foundation for the Arts, Engaging Dance Audiences/Dance USA, numerous foundations, and the City of Venice, Italy.

Currently a Distinguished Fellow of the College of Environment at Wesleyan University, Allison directed The Artist in the City — a hands-on course in her community-based dance-making practice where Wesleyan students embedded within the local water/wastewater department to create collaborative artistic projects with city employees. Allison has also taught children, adults over 65, and people with disabilities. Before founding Forklift Danceworks in 2001, Allison danced and studied with Deborah Hay and MacArthur Award winner Liz Lerman. She holds an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Mills College and a BA in Anthropology from Wake Forest University. Allison is a fourth generation Texan and lives in Austin with her husband and two children. 

You can find and follow Allison on Twitter.

Working in the mediums of dialogue, participation, and collaboration, Krissie Marty makes dances with people who aren’t traditionally considered dancers.  As Associate Artistic Director and Community Collaborations Director of Forklift Danceworks, she most often engages working people in dance-making. She created and directed RE Source, featuring the employees and machinery of a Goodwill recycling warehouse, and conceived and co-directed with Allison Orr the multi-year project My Park, My Pool, My City, dances for city pools and their people, including Bartholomew Swims, Dove Springs Swims / Nadamos Dove Springs, and Givens Swims; Served, a dance for Williams College Dining Services staff; The Trash Project Rotterdam as a commission for the International Community Arts Festival, PowerUP featuring employees of Austin’s electrical utility; Play Ball Downs Field on a historic Negro League baseball field; Afoot! a marching band extravaganza in Houston’s East End; The Trees of Govalle featuring employees of Austin’s Urban Forestry Program and Govalle neighborhood residents.

Krissie’s community-based choreography has been made in partnership with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Stratford Circus (London), Chateau de Cazals (France), and Adugna Dance Company (Ethiopia). Krissie worked as a faculty member and choreographer with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange for over a decade. She choreographed movement for theatre with Big Art Group (NYC and international tours), Washington Shakespeare Company, and Imagination Stage (DC). Krissie has worked with countless artists, teachers, and students at Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion, Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, the Pediatric Unit at Georgetown Medical Center, and in home health/hospice care centers.

You can find and follow Krissie on Twitter or Instagram.

Gretchen LaMotte (she/her) is a community-based performance maker, facilitator, and arts administrator. Born and raised in New Jersey, she received a BA in Science in Society from Wesleyan University with concentrations in Psychology and Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and a Certificate in Environmental Studies. At Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts, Gretchen worked for the Creative Campus Initiative, Zilkha Gallery, and the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. With Forklift, she has collaborated on The Artist in the City (2016), My Park, My Pool, My City (2017-2019), Served — Williams College (2018), From the Ground Up (2019), and Take Me Out to Downs Field (2020).

Clara Pinsky (she/her) is an artist-organizer and arts administrator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. in Dance from Wesleyan University, where her senior thesis, “Evaluating Community-Based Performance as a Strategy for Community Development” emerged from her work on program evaluation for Forklift Danceworks. Clara also directed BUILD, a dance featuring Wesleyan’s Physical Plant employees, using the engagement model developed by Forklift Danceworks. She has been working for Forklift since 2015, collaborating on The Trees of Govalle (2015), The Artist in the City (2016), Bartholomew Swims (2017), Served (2018), Nadamos Dove Springs (2018), Givens Swims (2019), and From the Ground Up (2019).

When she’s not making dances with Forklift, Clara works as a Research Associate at the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation while pursuing a Masters degree in Urban Strategy at Drexel University. Prior to working at Lindy, Clara served as Program Manager for Skywatchers, a community-engaged arts program in the Tenderloin Neighborhood of San Francisco.

Don Anderson was born and raised in Austin, Texas. Don previously worked at Solid Waste Services (now Austin Resource Recovery) for 8 years. During that time he starred in Forklift’s production of the Trash Project and in the documentary film Trash Dance. Since then he has spoken both locally and nationally about this creative collaboration between city employees and a dance company. In his free time, Don loves to barbecue and spend time with his lovely wife Regina and their grandkids.

Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Austin-based composer-bandleader-improvisor Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs and concert halls with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater and Jack Black to DJ Spooky, the Rude Mechs and Forklift Danceworks.

Heard throughout the world in films, on TV, on stage, and on radio, from HBO to Showtime, Cannes Film Festival to the Kennedy Center, and BBC to NPR, he’s scored HBO’s “The Diplomat”, “Before Midnight” with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, “Bernie” featuring Jack Black, the Rooster Teeth TV series “Day 5”, and many more. His score to the Robert Downey, Jr. feature “A Scanner Darkly” was named Best Soundtrack of the Decade by Cinema Retro magazine.

With the jazz-based but far reaching Golden Arm Trio, Reynolds has repeatedly toured the country
Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Austin-based composer-bandleader-improviser Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls with collaborators across a multitude of disciplines.

Heard throughout the world in films, TV, stage, and radio, he recently scored Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette with Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, and Laurence Fishburne for Annapurna Pictures, Happy Jail for Netflix, the Rude Mechs’ Stop Hitting Yourself for Lincoln Center Theater, Ballet Austin’s Grimm Tales, and a multi-year commission from Ballroom Marfa, The Marfa Triptych. He has performed on an array of legendary stages, from the Kennedy Center to the Green Mill Tavern to the Conan O’Brien Show. His Creative Capital Award winning project, Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance, a bilingual cross-border opera created with librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (Mexico City) and director Shawn Sides (Rude Mechs), has been staged in over a dozen cities in North America.

As Artistic Director of the non-profit Golden Hornet, he leads efforts which draw on the collaborative spirit of rock bands and the composer-led nature of classical music, with a focus on commissioning new music, fostering young and emerging composers, and presenting adventurous works in non-traditional settings. Alongside Kronos Quartet’s longtime cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, he curated The Sound of Science, an interdisciplinary, multimedia performance that is touring internationally.

Reynolds leads the jazz-based but far reaching Golden Arm Trio. He is a company member with the internationally acclaimed Rude Mechs theater collective and resident composer with Salvage Vanguard Theater and Forklift Danceworks. His accolades include a Creative Capital Award, an Independent Music Award, two Frederick R. Loewe Music Theatre Awards, nine Austin Critics Table Awards, the John Bustin Award, multiple Austin Chronicle Best Composer wins, and a B. Iden Payne Award. Graham released a twelve album set on Innova Recordings in early 2017 and his newest studio effort, MARFA: A Country & Western Big Band Suite, came out on November 22, 2019. Find out more at grahamreynolds.com.

Stephen Pruitt has been working as a photographer, designer, writer, director and performer since getting his first camera in high school. After studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, he switched directions by spending two years at Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati working under several well know directors and playwrights, including Lee Blessing, Edward Albee and Rebecca Miller. Shortly after, he began designing lighting and sets and became interested in dance, becoming the resident designer for Cincinnati’s Contemporary Dance Theater, where he worked with many nationally known Dance groups and choreographers including Parsons Dance, Urban Bush Women, Doug Varone, David Dorfman and many others.

Since moving to Austin in 1997, Stephen has worked as a freelance Lighting, Scenic, and Video designer, collaborating with many of Austin’s biggest and most creative theater and dance groups including Forklift Danceworks, Tapestry Dance Company, Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance (as resident production designer for all three), Trouble Puppet Theater (resident lighting designer), and Rude Mechs (company member) as well as Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre, Conspirare, Scottish Rite Theater, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Physical Plant Theater, and St Edwards University. His company, Fluxion Scenic and Light, has produced and designed many seminal Austin events, including Austin Film Society’s Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards, the Mayor’s party at City Hall for First Night, and opening night parties for Cirque du Soleil’s first two Austin Premieres. In addition to his work in Austin, Stephen tours and travels frequently and also produces performance work through Catastrophe Theory Arts.

Stephen has received many nominations and awards from Austin’s critics and arts community including each of his collaborations with Forklift, and is the only designer in Austin to be nominated for Critic’s Table and B. Iden Payne Awards in both the Scenic Design and Lighting Design categories, and his work is routinely recognized in the many end of year top ten lists. In the past couple years, Stephen has been spending more time on his photography work, with recent shows at Prizer Arts and Letters, and Link & Pin Gallery. All of his work in various media can be found at www.stephenpruitt.net

Tamara Rivera is an environmentalist who has a passion for social justice and community building. Tamara is from Holyoke, Massachusetts and is a senior at Wesleyan University where she double majors in Biology and Environmental Studies with a minor in Dance. With Forklift, Tamara has collaborated on Givens Swims. She has also participated in and led an on campus project where she job shadowed Physical Plant employees with other students and created a performance with choreography from their everyday lives.

E’ja Alexander is a native Texan who loves the arts. Raised in Dallas, E’ja is an aspiring dancer with training and teaching experience from Dallas Black Dance Academy. She’s also choreographed for WEBO Tiger Steppers. She is a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin studying for a BFA in dance. E’ja enjoys hanging out with friends and reading in her free time.  She hopes to explore the many different sides of fine arts and one day pursue a career dancing in a professional company.

Madison Sheridan is a third year Theatre and Dance major at the University of Texas at Austin. She is minoring in Arts Management and Administration, and hopes to receive a certificate in Social Entrepreneurship and Non-Profits. She enjoys knitting, reading, and petting all the cats that come across her path, and is very excited to be interning at Forklift!