Film Makes Huge Machines 'Waltz'

Feb. 15, 2003 -- Pretty Big Dig is a funny, eccentric short film that could change forever the way you look at construction equipment and operators in hard hats.

The film, by Canadian dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Anne Troake, was a hit at the Dance on Camera Festival at New York's Lincoln Center last month.

The four-minute work is a waltz featuring three enormous pieces of heavy construction equipment known as "hydraulic excavators." The film is as graceful as it is quirky.

Troake was passing by a construction site one day when she conceived the film, which she describes as a kind of visual one-liner: "big machines dancing."

Meeting the Guys

With a camera crew and some walkie-talkies, she arranged to direct a trio of heavy equipment operators as they put the machines through their paces.

"We met in the trailer on the construction site in the morning," Troake told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "I think I probably stammered out an explanation, and they just said, 'OK,' you know."

Then the operators walked out to their machines, revved them up, and were ready. The crew was paid, and seemed to have a good time.

"It's like work," said one of the operators, "only we're having a bit of fun."

Careful Research

Before the shoot, Troake visited a training school to learn how the machines were operated, and the names of the various parts and what they can do — what she calls the "movement vocabulary."

It was her dance vocabulary that she worried about. "I know that these operators can do incredibly precise movements? They could probably tap you on the shoulder with that giant shovel. But I didn't know whether they would be able to follow movements with a verbal rhythmic direction."

They could, and did, and Troake wound up producing one of those small works that makes you look at the world in a different way.

Expanding the World of Dance

As a dancer, she had another agenda, too. "I do believe that everybody can dance," she says. "I have always balked at the elitism that one sometimes finds, that only a small number of specially talented people can dance. Of course there is such a thing as talent, but it often has more to do with opportunity and confidence than something purely God-given."

And, after watching the performance she inspired from her group of hard-hats and big machines, it's hard to disagree with her.