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Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Take the long view

You may have noticed that a big upset occurred in the USA in November, so my posting the usual personal musings on my brilliant career seemed a bit non-essential. So here it is December, with the inevitable end of year wrap-up that has me thinking about the past year, past projects, the past in general.

Archiving old mini-DV tapes - the long view - I stumbled on Femme, a dance that got a certain amount of mileage as I was beginning to move away from live performances in my b.c. (see above).  Femme may not be earth-shattering, but it has some killer performances by the all-female cast. It also reminds me that:

1. pop music was not something I used to ironic purpose
2. character, narrative, social relationships drew me before concept
3. no one else seemed to want to make the dances I made - for better or worse
4. we had a grand time together

My guess is that most of you won't take the time to watch even the full two-minute excerpt below - though I expect you'll enjoy hearing Baby It's You. And you may be intrigued by the baseball announcer that follows, whose use is ironic. 

Femme (excerpt) from Marta Renzi on Vimeo.

Taking the time to take the long view isn't easy, especially nowadays. There's a lot of competition for our attention, and we all seem to have accepted that without too much of a fight. It turns out that my long-awaited hour-long Her Magnum Opus is a paean to time-out-of-time: a life-time, the seasons of a year, party time, the 9 months it takes for a baby to be born, time and tide. It's due out in early 2017 - the time it takes to complete a feature film...

It makes me think it's time to return to sharing live dances again. Long live the anachronism of actually being stuck in a theater letting the thing take its course - with all its mystery, apparent foibles and shortcuts, including the opportunity to daydream in the dark. Like the way that email conversation, for example, has obviated more interactive listening, maybe film has diminished the patient reception needed for one human to witness another's singular expression.

Whoa! I started with the end of an old year, moved toward the end of an era, and ended up with the end of communication as we know it?!?

However, as with my brilliant career, sometimes it's instructive to take the long view. Now, as to climate change, is it already too late?

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Alberto said...

Hopefully it's not too late for climate change….it's certainly never too late to appreciate being present to watch one of your live performances or even a video recollection of said performance. ❤️