About Marta Renzi

ABOUT MARTA RENZI

2011-12-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

Marta Renzi has made more than 75 dances for her Project Company, as well as creating work for groups across the U.S. and abroad, including the Wagon Train Project in Nebraska, Balletteatro in Portugal - and Ben & Jerry's dancing ice cream flavors.

Her site-specific pieces in locations such as the Guggenheim Museum, Union Station and the Staten Island Ferry, led naturally to her work in video and film. In 1981 YOU LITTLE WILD HEART, to music by Bruce Springsteen, was Marta's first half-hour for television, followed by MOUNTAINVIEW, made in 1989 in collaboration with independent filmmaker John Sayles. Since 2005 she has self-produced six short videodances, which have shown at film festivals nationally and internationally. As part of a continuing commitment to making dance accessible to a wide audience, she helped inaugurate the "Inside/Out" program of public performances at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and her Project Company makes frequent appearances for free outdoors in public spaces.

In 1992, Marta received a New York Dance & Performance Award (a "Bessie") for her dance VITAL SIGNS, and in 1995 was the first recipient of a Dancing in the Streets award as "a fearless explorer of all manner of unconventional sites, integrating art into everyday life."

Marta has served on the Board of Advisors for the New York Foundation for the Arts and was a consultant for the New England Foundation for the Arts' program "Building Community Through Culture." She is on the Board of Advisors of QUAAD, a brand new arts organization in Queens, and in 2008 joined the Board of Dance Films Association, a 50-year-old member-supported institution based in New York City.

Renzi has taught in Chile and Paraguay through the International Linkages program of the American Dance Festival and and is a seven-time recipient of Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been funded by the Jerome Foundation, Metropolitan Life, Con Edison and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. In 2007 she received an SOS grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to participate in a workshop entitled Dance for the Camera. In August of 2008, Renzi presented a new quartet as part of "Through a Choreographer's Eyes", curated by Martha Myers at The Yard in Massachusetts, and has returned yearly since then to present new work.

In pre-history, Marta performed with Douglas Dunn & Dancers, in David Gordon's PickUp Company, with Kei Takei's Moving Earth and with Twyla Tharp on the film of HAIR. In theater she has collaborated with William Finn on IN TROUSERS, Andre Gregory in THE PRIMAVERA STRING QUARTET TONIGHT! and with Cecil MacKinnon on Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET performed with the Prokofiev score played live by the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.

From the Vaults - January 2010

2009-12-26T17:41:00.000-08:00

Does anybody ever look at these Archives? I almost hope not, since the last two have been practically improvised. On the other hand, it's fun to look back at the era when I was returning to choreography, but beginning to be more interested in locations and stories than in the movement itself.

This one is from Pro Danza Italia 2004, in Castiglioncello, where I made several quickie site-specific dances, stealing a dancer or two between their classes, rehearsals and trips to the beach. This one was inspired by Nino Rota music - and the tiny little Tuscan building which houses the water pump for the nearby Cafe Limonaia. Lights and music were catch as catch could. Camera by Adolfas Mekas.

And if you're inspired to view more old work, scroll down on this "About Marta Renzi" page and you'll go as far back as 1986, with about one mini-show every 6 months, out of chronological order. So much for "Archive of the Month!"

Archive of the Month - August 2009

2009-08-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hang on to your hats for this archive; it's a rocky camera ride. Presenting NOVY CIRKUS, a piece made in 1994 with a group of Slovak dancers and two Americans - much of it improvised - in an excerpt performed on tour outside the Hall of Justice in Presov, Slovakia.

Part of the accompaniment is a Slovak/American language tape (how DO they think up these useful expressions?) Now that I'm a "filmmaker" (still those inverted commas), I see how cool it would have been to have the time to more-than-record this...maybe a remake for the camera?

Archive of the Month - May 2009

2009-05-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

Did you find your way here from Home? If so, welcome to "About Marta Renzi", the back pages. This is where I'll post Archives from now on, as distinguished from New Stuff.

This one is hungrymouth (click here for Youtube screen) . It was choreographed in 1996, and in this version is danced by me, Erica Eigenberg, Marta Miller and Deborah Tacon at a 1998 concert at St. Mark's Danspace.

This Archive is related to New Stuff, actually, because as I post this, we're cannibalizing movement from it for the new Fruitlands dance. What goes around...continues to go around.

Feel free to wander around these back pages. You'll see some older posts, a Filmography with links to the videodances, and biographical information. All that's missing is baby pictures!

Archive of the New Year

2008-12-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

The last "archive of the month" was apparently in - ahem - July, 2008. Well, here's the archive of the New Year, just in time for the holidays.

A funny little morsel from the 1991 Ladies' Night, featuring long-time collaborators Marta Miller and Deborah Tacon, Janice Mirajanian (my aerobics guru from that era), improviser Jackie Shue, and Holly Poundstone-Corey, who was my backyard neighbor before we danced together...and whose girls Lily and Daphne were later in the cast of Porch Stories!

To the irresistible music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, shot with way-better-than-average sensitivity by Dean Moss at Danspace Project.

Happy Kwanzichanumas!

Marta Renzi FILMMAKER??

2007-09-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

In the past 3 years (of the 30 that I've been a choreographer) my focus has been making videos that include some element of dance. The short dances performed by 10 dancers in RED at Gaga Arts Festival a month ago were a great hit with the live audience. But the idea to develop those site-specific bits was primarily an excuse to shoot some footage of a wonderful location. Happily, the long hours spent organizing dancers, rehearsals, costumes, and sundry logistics to make the shoot/performance possible are doubled in the time I now get to spend editing on my computer at home. And I'm glad to report that re-inventing myself as a maker of dance videos seems to be bearing fruit, as you can see from the assortment of activities below:

PORCH STORIES is being screened Saturday, July 21 at 1:00, as part of the Rural Route Festival at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. The excerpt to be shown features Arthur Aviles and the Boys on Bikes, as part of an afternoon entitled "Young 'Uns"

(Rural Route Festival)

THAW (the newest) showed in June at Rockland Shorts, as part of the Gaga Arts Festival in Garnerville, New York. Audience response at that event has encouraged me to re-consider the soundtrack to THAW: this re-invention is an ongoing learning process (see below).

TENDERNESS is a semi-finalist in the Moondance International Film Festival in Los Angeles, coming in September.

THE WELCOME TABLE was shown recently in a worship service in New Jersey, by a pastor who found word of it on line, and asked for permission to share it with his "diverse, suburban congregation." His statement in the church bulletin encouraged parishioners to "make a special invitation to people who might feel like outsiders to come and sit at the welcome table with us. If you want a vision of what God intends, check out Marta Renzi's film."

It gratifies me that the videos I make find audiences not necessarily in dance film festivals, but in a wider world, including churches, arts festivals and at non-dance short film fests. Of course, I've gotten the usual slew of rejections, including one distributor who wrote a great letter regretting that there is no market for THAW or PORCH STORIES, though he quite enjoyed watching them. Truthfully, I couldn't agree more!

Undaunted, I am soon to fly to Vancouver Island for a Dance for the Camera workshop to learn how to make more of them. Under the direction of Ellen Bromberg, and with the support of an SOS grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, I will spend two weeks immersing myself in the language of videodance. Thus far, I admit I have been largely self-taught, so that my grammar and syntax leave something to be desired. Presumably, when I learn to speak more fluently, I'll still want to talk about something that appeals to an audience that's wider than dance aficionados.

SOFT SELL

2007-08-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

I recently transferred several ancient works to DVD, to preserve them for posterity. In case we're not around when posterity comes, rather than leave them in a box in my attic, I thought I'd also occasionally post them here. Relic of the Month of is SOFT SELL, which was made while I was pregnant with my son Amos, who turns 21 in August.

Soft Sell was made in collaboration with sculptor Harry Roseman and writer Daniel Wolff and toured to Massachusetts, Kentucky and Georgia - with every bolt of that amazing set dismantled and re-assembled by us!

Credits which appear at the end of the video neglect to include the voice of Susan Haskins, reading "I'm Not Very Pretty" as the credits close.

My Double Life

2007-04-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

I call them "my families". The heads of household range from a teenage mom who got her GED just as her daughter turned two, to a hard-working couple working at different fast food chains, to a stay-at-home mother of one. I see each of them twice a week for only about half an hour. But because we meet in their homes - and because the visits commence when a child turns two, it's a pretty intimate scene. I'm there when the dad is looking for work; I'm there when the children are sick; I'm there when the school-age sibling gets a bad report card; I'm there when the shit hits the fan.

I'm paid a small stipend by Americorps to visit "my families" in a program called "The Parent Child Home Program". It's a part-time job, but fairly consuming. Because the program of visits lasts for two years, I go from being "la maestra" to unofficial "tia" of the neighborhood. Some of the people I work with have some idea that I make dances - it explains why I'm so happy to roll on the floor with their kids, or sing in a wacky voice.

For more than 10 years, I've led this kind of double life, working with kids and families, often Spanish-speaking, around advocacy, literacy - liberation really. Too often the dance world I inhabit doesn't invite much of a range of classes, cultures, languages. So this work helps me to feel balanced, feeds me in a different way from making art. Making THE WELCOME TABLE, I even got to mix my two worlds, incorporating one of "my families" of that era with some of my performer colleagues.

And if you asked me which of my two lives is more rewarding to me, more valuable to my community, more remunerative in the long run, more fundamental to my identity, I'm not sure I could say. Maybe that's why I keep doing both.

The R Word

2007-04-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

REJECTION

That dirty word. After more than 3 decades of putting myself out there, I'm an expert in the fine gradations of the R-word. Now check this out. Months after receiving word that PORCH STORIES was NOT chosen for a festival called A FLICKERING IMAGE, I received the following:

"Official Ballot 2007"
Juror #1 - Beautiful characters in an earthy, beautiful setting. There is an elegance to this ballet of human interaction that defies the standards and norms of cinema.
Juror #2 - Wonderful use of color and nature's own lighting; a delightful concept.
Juror#3 - A very thought-provoking film. Each character's dance was a story within itself. The photography was excellent!

Now, given that the rewards in my line of work are pretty flickering, I took the comments of Jurors 1-3 as quite positive. Yeah, my work didn't get chosen in that festival - who knows why - but neither was it considered worthless. So, I was inspired to write the following:

Dear Flickering Image:
I just wanted to thank AFI for taking the time to make screener's
comments available. In my case, they tended to be quite positive, so
I was encouraged. But in this otherwise quite impersonal process, ANY
words are welcome. Oddly enough, receiving comments many weeks after the "rejection"
makes me realize simultaneously how glad I am to make contact with
a viewer, and how a viewer's response is just that - not necessarily the
final word on each artist's ongoing process of conceiving, making,
finishing, submitting, (doubting) - and moving on to the next project!
I wish other festivals would recognize that, and take the time to make contact.
Sincerely,
Marta Renzi

ACCEPTANCE

Of course, all acceptances are somehow rewarding, right? For me, particularly so was AFIA, whose mission is the following:
* Low Budget
* Movies made by filmmakers who are just beginning to establish
their careers
* Movies that touch the souls, make people wonder, smile, cry or
think in the ways the mainstream movies do not.
* Films where the storylines tend to be unpredictable and/or
provocative, where genre experimentation and innovation are in focus
rather than gloss and stars.
* Films that deal with controversial topics or approach well-known
topics in a controversial way, films that major studios are afraid to
fund and major film festivals don't dare to show.
* Original, groundbreaking films that are narrative or
non-narrative, as well as those, which experiment with different
methods and/or arts (music, painting, dance…) as alternative
storytelling form
* Films that by its form, content or message provoke challenge and
develop audience's experience, that have something to look at while
watching, something beyond the norm and the ordinary, that provoke
discussion and interpretation and exposes the audience to things
unfamiliar to them.

Now THAT's a club Groucho Marx & I would LIKE to belong to!

CONFESSIONAL

2007-01-07T08:38:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have read my (printed) newsletters over the past several years will be wondering if that chatty, introspective, self-deprecating voice will appear on the blog. Read below an exchange of emails between Marta Renzi (choreographer and professional doubting Thomas) and Marta Jo Miller (long-time friend, able assistant, confessor) during the making of NOT ABOUT PARIS.

10/14/06, from Marta Renzi to Marta Miller:

Dear M,

Shoes are at the shoemaker: the chair dresses I designed & stitched are being tea-dyed. There's a pretty great poster which I expect will be available next week. I'm making the score with Steve Elson on Monday. The scrim is hung, so we could use it in rehearsal so the dancers aren't clueless for the Thursday runthru.

I won't be up until Tuesday, by 1 or 2. Shall we just plan to meet at the costume shop at 2:00? On Tuesday's rehearsal, we'll begin with a scene-to-scene runthru and see how far we get. I'd like to steal costumes for Dark Wood (the first processional) and Child's Dance/Zhuvatchka.

One of the primary ways you can be helpful next week is getting some of these lesser dancers cleaned up - and their egos catered to a bit, so I can look at the big picture. The hungrymouth trio could also use drilling, although Caitlin can only be there on Thursday next week.

The stronger dancers are beginning to really get it. I can't wait for the next stage, although I think it will never rise above its origins.

I saw our Dav in THE EXONERATED; he and the rest of the cast were transformed; and I'm feeling like only pieces with the importance of EXONERATED should ever be presented. The usual Renzi self-flagellation. Thanks for being there to help stay the whip!

m

10/14/06 from Marta Miller to Marta Renzi

Hi Darlin!

Yes, I will meet you at the costume shop at 2:00....
I look forward to diving into the world of NOT PARIS... and remind me to give you a talking to
regarding the importance, even politically, of making art.... ANY KIND OF ART... as a creative act that isn't part of the capitalist system of goods for money...
making things, thinking about things, and bringing people along for a ride that isn't watching tv
to support the selling of cars is a fine and important use of energy.... even if it's not about folks on death row. We need to make the world a good place that
is filled with all kinds of human expressions... of imagination, truth, beauty, wisdom and whimsy.
Throw down your weapon
(whip - whatever) and kick it over here!

yours,
m jo

Actually, if I understand correctly, this kind of dialogue is very blog.
N'est-ce pas?