Not many choreographers pore over the garbage industry journal Waste News. But Carrie Hanson, artistic director of local dance company The Seldoms, is fascinated by refuse’s one-way trip to the trash heap—so much so that her latest work, the full-length dance Monument, is devoted to it. Inspired by an article about Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill, a site taller than the Statue of Liberty, Hanson has her dancers transform themselves into something like a dense pile of rubbish. She calls the work “a physical culmination of demise and expenditure,” but insists it isn’t meant to be preachy or green. She says she’s more interested in individual acts of consumption—someone using a plastic cup once, say, then tossing it without a second thought—and how that disposable mindset spills over into other things, like relationships. Whether or not the piece conveys all of the thinking behind it, one thing is for sure: Trash has never looked so lovely.  Apr 3-5 and 10-12 at 8. $18, D. Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N Dearborn. theseldoms.org.

Photography: William Frederking