Let's declare 2025 as Renzi Legacy Year, for several reasons.
For one, Peter Stathas Dance has invited me to reconstruct an old dance for their company. Just how old you ask? Well, it premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in the fall of 1983, so that makes it over 40 years old. To a Beethoven string quartet, titled What Practice Makes,it's theoretically a dance about the rehearsal process, including lifts that don't get off the ground and a romance between 2 dancers. We workshopped it at Jacob's Pillow's Inside/Out stage earlier that year (see photo below). I've been reminiscing about our free rehearsal space at PS 1 in Queens before it was a museum, summer breezes wafting in through those huge windows. At the time we were a 4-person company: me, Peter, Melissa Matson and Teresa Duggan. Should be interesting to re-visit, with all its flaws - maybe even an opportunity to clarify and improve on it with the help of PSD dancers whose parents were probably toddlers when it was first made!
As another proof that legacy is on my mind, I catalogued my digital archive and donated it to the New York Public Library Dance Division. Live work: 1981-2022 (88 videos)
Dance films 1981-2025 (69 videos)
The library also took the 2-Volume MARTA RENZI NEWSLETTERS books made with Arthur Aviles in 2017, as well as (most of) the paper newsletters themselves.
Don't expect to be able to research them any time soon for that "Renzi Re-considered" paper you're writing. But now if I get hit by a truck my sons don't have to be responsible for pawing through old work.
Speaking of the NYPL, I'm represented in the exhibition there called Room to Move: Dance Theater Workshop and Alternative Histories of Downtown Dance (see photo). Like Jacob's Pillow, DTW was a proving ground for me long ago. So so long ago.
The final marker of the 2025 Legacy Year is that I will soon dissolve And Dancers, Inc. the not-for-profit founded in 1981. Mind you, this decision is not motivated by Donald Trump's decimation of the NEA and various NGOs. Keeping a 501(c)3 just doesn't reflect the reality of my activity; in fact, it hasn't for a long time. It does mean I can't accept tax-deductible donations to my work anymore - so you'll just have to take me out to dinner.
As for what work is currently keeping me busy, the most recent series of videos are not dance films. Below is a video from a project related to my other long-running career: over 20 years working with the Nanuet Family Resource Center near where I live. I shot and edited 6 testimonies in Spanish from recent high school graduates to be shared with immigrant families who may not be adept at navigating our post-high school educational system.
And in case this blog isn't updated next month - and assuming anyone reads it - here's news of upcoming screenings of my regular work:
As usual, there are plenty film festival submissions pending for a huge variety of past work: Blow Me Down, Replica, Her Magnum Opus, Cathy & Harry, Guardians of the Flame, In Search of Lost Time - plus 3 submitted to Mobile Dance Film Festival alone!
Just to prove that legacy doesn't mean it's all over.
