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.

Francis Rodriguez (she/her) is a dance maker, performer and educator currently based in Austin, Texas. Originally from the Rio Grande Valley, she holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Dance from The University of Texas at Austin and is a graduate of the UTeach Dance program. Francis’ journey with Forklift Danceworks began in the summer of 2018 as an Artistic Intern for Dove Springs Swims/Nadamos Dove Springs. Since then, she has collaborated on Austin FC Collaboration (2021), Dances for Dogs and People Who Walk Them (2022), The Way of Water: Waller Creek (2022), and the ongoing Leaps & Bounds creative movement program.

Born and raised in deep South Texas – aka the Rio Grande Valley – Vanessa is a proud Fronteriza of Mexican heritage. She lives by Howard Thurman’s quote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

What makes Vanessa come alive is following her heart into uncharted territory – what has been seemingly non-existent/impossible – for someone like her with her type of cultural/social/economic background. For example, saying yes to training in New York City at the Atlantic Acting School – Evening Conservatory and somehow happily surviving in the great big apple for three fabulous years. OR like working at Forklift – a celebrated innovative arts organization – when no one ever told her that working full-time in the arts was an actual thing to want!

She comes alive as an actor, singer/songwriter, cultural worker building community with other artists, and as a performer and producer of dance performances with Frontera Dance Project – a dance collaboration based in the Rio Grande Valley, which she co-founded with Choreographer, Erica Garza, in 2019. Creating, co-creating, and working with humans who love to imagine and make big ideas come true gives her life.

Vanessa graduated with a Master of Liberal Arts from St. Edward’s University and with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and a minor in Hispanic Studies from Texas A&M University.

Marina Garbalena is a dancer and choreographer with a background in arts education and nonprofit administration. She is a lifelong creative and grew up loving music, playing soccer, and riding her bike around the streets of La Chaveña in Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua. In her formative years at Academia and Centro Municipal de las Artes, she found a supportive community that inspired her to pursue dance, and witnessed first hand the power of arts as a conduit for connection, community, and cultural preservation.  

Marina has collaborated with National Dance Institute, and Pushing Progress Contemporary Dance in New York City, Danza Total in Mexico City, El Paso Opera, UTEP Department of Theater & Dance, and Eva Maria Dance. She served as teaching, administrative and artistic staff, as well as Interim Co-Artistic Director with Kids Excel El Paso, a non-profit arts education organization. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance from University of Texas in El Paso, and is a founding member of Mountain Movement Dance Company, with which she has had the opportunity to choreograph and perform in Texas, New Mexico, Mexico, and the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

Shobie is an arts administrator with a passion for dance and building community. Before joining Forklift Shobie worked at Creative Action as the Director of School & Community Partnerships. She also spent many years working as a theater director and as a location manager on feature films. Originally from Fayetteville, Arkansas, Shobie holds a MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon and a double major in Communications and Theatre from Trinity University in San Antonio. In her spare time she enjoys teaching Jazzercise classes at the Austin Rec Center, volunteering with her daughter’s school, and potlucks with friends and family.

Penny Snyder is a communications professional who helps arts organizations share what they do with the public. Her work is characterized by a focus on narrative storytelling, accessible and engaging prose, and an iterative approach to content and strategy based on outcomes and analytics. She has worked in communications at Sasaki, a planning and design firm outside Boston, MA, in PR at the Blanton Museum, in Austin, TX. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2016 with a BA in English and received High Honors for her General Scholarship thesis on art museums, architecture, and public space. She is an incoming graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

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).

Jane joined the staff of Forklift Danceworks in November 2016 to manage national touring associated with the On Campus project. She has been following the work of Forklift since she met Allison in 1998 and is excited to be helping to expose the world to its extraordinary work.

Her full time work is at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland where she is a key member of the curatorial team and is the primary program design generator and leader of all initiatives, projects and programs in the area of campus and community engagement. While she has been at UMD she has established two campus/community working groups, each with the focus of integrating creative expression into conversations and activities about social justice.

Jane worked in various capacities, including Managing Director/CEO, at Liz Lerman Dance Exchange for 13 years. Prior to that, she was manager of the Culture in Community Fund at the New England Foundation for the Arts after her work for several years at The Music Hall, a multi-disciplinary arts presenting organization in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jane has served as a panelist for grant reviewing in many parts of the country and enjoys talking and writing in various forums about community building through the arts. Long ago, she was a professional musician in New York, favoring chamber music because it provided collaboration and co-creation opportunities. She is based in Catonsville, Maryland, where she lives with her family, and continues to investigate how to be anti-racist and what it means to be an arts citizen in an ever-changing and complex society.

McKenzie Chen is a movement artist and dance educator from Houston, Texas. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of North Texas and an MA in Dance Education from Hunter College. During her graduate studies, she was a Lincoln Center Scholar and received the Excellence in Dance Education Award. For the past five years, she taught for the NYC Department of Education as a K-12 certified dance specialist. She also served as a teaching artist for New York City Ballet and the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services. She strives to foster creativity, critical thinking skills, artistry, and a love for movement in her students.

LB is a performer, choreographer, and dance educator based in Austin, TX. In 2017, she graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in dance with a focus in dance education. She co-founded TC Superstar, a multidisciplinary performance group, and now performs regularly in the Austin area and all over the country. Along with Leaps & Bounds, she teaches at Ballet Austin and in multiple Montessori preschools. LB is committed to guiding young children in their developmental journeys through movement, and she is passionate about creating safe spaces for children to explore their creativity.