Allison Orr

Bio

Allison Orr is the Artistic Director of Forklift Danceworks, an organization that seeks to activate communities through a collaborative creative process. From sanitation workers to firefighters, Venetian gondoliers to professional baseball players, power linemen to forestry technicians, Orr creates award-winning choreography with unlikely performers. Inspired by the beauty and virtuosity in the practiced, habitual movement of labor, Allison’s dances feature the often-overlooked choreography of work that sustains our everyday lives. Building on her background in anthropology and social work, over the past 20 years 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. Her work challenges audiences to expand their notions of dance and performer. Allison is a 2018 USA Fellow.