Austin Dance Maker Allison Orr Wins $525K Doris Duke Artist Award

Austin dance maker Allison Orr with her family in Times Square, where her likeness was projected as part of the Doris Duke Artist Awards.

An innovative Austin dance creator, Allison Orr, has been chosen to receive a 2026 Doris Duke Artist Award, which comes with $525,000 in unrestricted prize money.

"Can't quite believe it!" Orr posted on social media from New York City where the awards ceremony was held and where an image of her glowed in Times Square. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."

Started in 2012 and named for the late billionaire tobacco heiress and philanthropist, the awards rank as the largest prizes in the U.S. given to individual performing artists.

The $525,000 is unrestricted and allocated over seven years, while an additional $25,000 can go to artists who have shown that they are saving for retirement, something many artists do not have the opportunity to do.

Last year, Orr, known for incorporating public communities and their everyday movements into large-scale works, was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame for her history with Forklift Danceworks, now in its 25th year.

Big works, public dancers

Allison Orr, pictured here during rehearsal for "Trash Dance," uses insights from anthropology and social work in her popular dances.

Her spectacular breakout project, "The Trash Project," deployed employees of Austin's Resource Recovery Department to produce an event that made an elegant performance out of the movements of garbage trucks and city sanitation workers.

Other artists talk about embedding in communities, but time and again, Orr and Forklift Danceworks do the work with firefighters, baseball players, Venetian gondoliers and just about any type of worker out there.

Informed by her study of anthropology and social work, Orr and her team get close to the community subjects to find the beauty in their everyday movements.

"What sets Allison apart is her focus on community, how she uses something people share — a type of work, a neighborhood, a heritage  — as the basis for not just a performance but also a celebration of the people who share that thing," said Robert Faires, former arts editor for the Austin Chronicle. "She shows us how everyday movement is dance and how we're all connected through dancing."

Linemen from Austin Energy rehearse "Power Up," a dance event from choreographer Allison Orr.

Orr's visionary work has been commissioned by festivals and institutions such as Fusebox, Kyoto Art Center and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 2023, she released her book "Dance Works: Stories of Creative Collaboration," part memoir and part guide on how community-based art projects can serve as essential tools to address civic issues.

Orr is married to Blake Trabulsi, co-founder and creative director of Zócalo Design. They have two children.

"At the Doris Duke Foundation, we honor the dignity of artists as workers," foundation CEO Sam Gill said in a statement. "For too long, our society has treated the performing arts as a luxury rather than a labor force. With this new round of grants, the Doris Duke Foundation is doubling down on our commitment to systemic change."