Vehicles double as stages and galleries when ‘Dance Truck Returns’

Founded by Malina Rodriguez, Dance Truck is a "mobile movement project," a way to bring cutting edge contemporary choreography out of theaters and onto the streets of Atlanta. "Bringing dance to the people" is the organization's motto, and it's a philosophy Atlantans can see in action for themselves June 28 at "Dance Truck Returns," featuring dance performances, art installations, animation projects, print-making and food, all delivered in trucks.

“It’s the humble beginnings of an annual truck festival I’d like to create,” said Rodriguez, who daylights as technical director at Theater Emory..

Dance Truck unites two of Rodriguez’s lifelong passions: performance and trucks. When she was a kid, Rodriguez and her father restored classic Chevys together. The memory of going to car shows with her father stayed with her.

It wasn’t until she started working as a member of a union tech crew unloading sets and lights for performances at the Fox Theatre that the idea of bringing trucks and performance together started to emerge.

“Seeing the empty truck and the way the light bounced around in there, I thought: It’s kind of a beautiful performance space,” she said. “I loved the idea of mashing it all together.”

Using the back of a truck as a mobile stage, Rodriguez and her crew started taking dance performances to various outdoor sites around Atlanta in 2009. Since its inception, Dance Truck has hosted nearly a hundred artists in performances staged around Atlanta in box trucks and shipping containers, on flatbeds and pickup trucks. It’s also performed at the Time Based Arts Festival in Portland, Ore.

“We’re a mobile unit, so we can take artists’ work out of the Atlanta scene,” said Rodriguez.

Dance Truck Returns will present new works by Atlanta-based choreographers BEATRIX, Kala Seidenberg and Erik Thurmond alongside work from New Orleans-based company tEEth on a 26-foot box truck. In addition to the Dance Truck performances, there will also be a video installation from artist Tommy Taylor in a truck sponsored by Whitespace Gallery. The Atlanta chapter of the Association Internationale du Fim d'Animation will have an animation truck, launching their own Dance Truck-inspired project to bring animation to schools around Georgia. Participants will also be able to print their own Dance Truck T-shirts on a school bus temporarily transformed into a screen printing studio, and the Good Food Truck will serve edible treats.

Since the beginning, Dance Truck has provided an interesting challenge for dance artists who are typically more accustomed to working in the rarefied environment of stage and studio than on the back of a flatbed truck.

“It takes a little getting used to because the whole structure moves,” says Atlanta-based dancer and choreographer Blake Beckham, who has performed with Dance Truck several times. “It vibrates, it’s not completely level. That’s part of the fun and challenge of dancing with Dance Truck. You just enter into the adventure of performing in this new environment.”

“When I started working on my piece, I didn’t really know how to make a dance for a truck,” says Seidenberg, a recent graduate from the dance program at Emory University, who will be performing a new solo work in the back of the truck on Friday. “It was a bit of a scare for me.”

It’s a challenge for artists, but it’s one they seem glad to accept since Dance Truck is a singularly Atlanta mash-up, mixing high art with the down-home.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez hopes she can find more people like her — people who love both performance and trucks.

“I’m hoping people will show up with their own awesome vintage trucks,” she said. “When I see a truck on the street or in a parking lot, I put a flyer on it that says: ‘Nice truck. Come to our show.’”