Legacy Year?

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: 

June 7 - Her Children Mourn and Replica at Glass Ceiling Breakers 

June 25 - Cathy & Harry at Rivertown Film 

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.

 Lately - and always, you say? - I've been wondering what it's all about. I submit a film to a faraway festival. I post a laurel on Facebook or here. It apparently screens, maybe even gets an award ... silence. 

Similarly with Her Magnum Opus which Consonance Dance & Music Festival recently awarded this "Diploma." But what's infinitely more satisfying, they also created a page with "reviews" from professionals and audience members which touched me.  Check out the page here, with a few excerpts below.

Movement here is more than just choreography - it is memory, language and emotion all at once. The way the film blends structured dance with unscripted, raw motion makes it feel deeply human, like watching someone's soul express itself in real time. It's not just about dance; it's about presence, about leaving something behind without saying a word.

               Andrew Kanivchenko

This film doesn't rush. It moves like a slow waltz, lingering in moments, letting glances and silences speak louder than words. Watching it felt like sitting in a quiet room filled with people who love each other but know they don't have much time left together.

                 Marta Torres Serrano

As long as we're here, there does happen to be a screening that I can attend! The Thomas Edison Film Festival, with whom I have a very long history, will show Inter Library Loan at the Hoboken Historical Museum on Saturday, March 8.  

Doors open at 6:30 for wine & pizza. At 7:00 a brief hello from me and the Executive Director Jane Steuerwald. $10.00 admission gets you in, and supports TEFF,

I hope you'll join me!

[NB: Like many others, I'm feeling a bit compromised by Facebook and the like. My happiest posting on that platform was probably the 365 days of "Outsides" - nature footage lasting about 30 seconds - for a year during the pandemic. Except for that, I never posted about my mood, or my grandchildren, using it more for self-promotion.  And then I realized: I have this harmless old method of self-promotion which the same 50 friends - actual ones - pay attention to - especially if I remind them with a MailChimp email. All this for free and without the meddling of Musk or Zuckerberg. So I'll milk it and see how it goes.]

Lots of screenings coming up in February, in the US and abroad.

REPLICA in a festival called Winter Dances, which has screenings in Finland and Sweden - and pays a screening fee! REPLICA is also screening in Macao (which I had to look up on a map) in the Rollout Dance Film Festival, online for a few weeks.

GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME screens at San Diego Black Film Festival in a Saturday morning "Historical" series.

INTER LIBRARY LOAN at the Greensboro Dance Film Festival in North Carolina, and in Reno, Nevada

where it's already won "Best of Fest" in the Third Coast Dance Film Fest.

Greetings, 2025!

It's that time of year - reviewing, reckoning, resolving. It's also the time when I create a short reel of the work made in the previous year. Without further ado, here's a peek at what I made in 2024.

Not included in the 2024 reel is one currently in process, with the working title The Lake - Rockland Lake, that is, about a 5-minute drive from my house. Starting in September 2024 I'd bike a few times around the lake more or less daily for recuperation from double knee replacement. Almost immediately I decided to record on my cellphone the natural beauty and the diverse humanity that the lake offers. It's a little cold for me right now - also apparently for the diverse humanity - While waiting for warmer weather, I started to play with the footage, as a way of seeing what's there and what might be missing. It's turning out to be some kind of hybrid - not a documentary, not a dance film. A journal maybe, "written" not by me but by many others (d.h. see above).  Check out The Lake (forthcoming) here. Radiant soundtrack courtesy of Soft Talon.

Finished - except for the ever-elusive music license - is the newest one: Blow Me Down, featuring Arthur Aviles & Selina Shida Hack, shot at BAAD! in the Bronx. Aside from Library which was a college commission, it seems like most of what I make lately is decidedly peculiar. Death & Other Disguises features soloists in animal masks; Replica is a duet with a man and a mannequin. Now there's Blow Me Down. When I shared a link with my marine biologist niece, Julianna said it made her want to dance - nothing peculiar about that!  In her email she also asked what was the inspiration behind it. Might as well share my answer with you, Dear Reader.

First, I had a thought that Arthur & Selina have similar movement affinities - a certain groundedness, combined with effervescence -though they’d never met and they're decades apart in age. So I started thinking about relatives ... kissing cousins.

I'd decided to shoot in that space, which is Arthur’s home base - and very cheap rental, FYI!  The space has that screen that can’t be avoided so I decided to make the most of it. Cousins watch cartoons together, don't they? Kissin' Kuzzins.

I thought about Tom & Jerry because they’re Vera’s [my 3-year-old granddaughter] heroes these days, but I knew rights would be an issue. So I looked on the internet archive and found that these old ones (fingers crossed) are in the public domain.

I tried to prepare for a very quick rehearsal+shoot: Selina would be flying in from Berlin on Halloween  and Arthur was flying out to Puerto Rico the day after Election Day. So I decided I’d better get a jump on costumes, starting with some TweedleDum ones ordered online, with turned out to be polyester, tacky (wanting to cover Arthur's cuts, see below.) So I quickly ordered 2 sets of long-sleeved striped shirts and jumpers. The propeller beanies were part of the original idea - cartoons, childhood - but were better made, so I kept them. At the same time I grabbed that Bumble Bee tutu from the thrift shop - only $10! -  a few days before Halloween - because who knew Turned out that Arthur looked great, and kind of Popeye-ish, in the jumpers while Selina rocked the tutu.

As to music, we never rehearsed or shot to the cartoon music: only the images were projected. Later while editing, I gave the audio a try and was hooked - partly out of perversity, I expect. To me the early cartoons are quite sophisticated - and distinctly NOT post-modern. 

For company / energy during both rehearsals and shooting, A & S danced to a Sylvan Esso song - the first one that drew me to the duo, when I heard it on the radio - though I knew I wouldn't use it finally.

Arthur & I rehearsed one day before Selina arrived and made the "alcove" material, and a little scene which we call Pieta, where I stood in for Selina. Partly because I wanted some "cousinly" tenderness and comfort between these two characters, and partly because Arthur had foolishly / vainly attempted suicide earlier that year. For those rehearsals we were listening to Sylvan Esso's Come Down, which I hope we do get permission for. [1/8/25 Note: Permission granted!]

We shot for two days. On Monday Nov 4 - my 71st birthday - there were 102 gold balloons in the space from a party the night before honoring Arthur's 102-year-old landlady Mrs. Ross. How could we not use them?

Is all of the above inspiration, opportunism, instinct?

I'm still awaiting a music license for the last section - will I ever learn? But if I don't hear relatively soon, I'll move on.

As usual, assorted festivals are showing assorted work: 16 festivals and counting for Inter Library Loan, including Miami Screen Dance, January 17-25, in case you're in Florida.  Peculiar or not, Replica is an Official Selection at Rollout Dance Film Festival ... in case you're in Macao. Cathy & Harry has been seen in only a few festivals thus far. But it's been invited to screen at art departments in New Paltz and NYU - and a (mid-Hudson) PBS date in early March. 

So what to expect in 2025? Pretty much the same as 2024. Which is a good thing, I guess. Right? 

Any requests?