Renaud's retirement provided her with the freedom to involve herself in whatever engagements and projects she chose without the relentless deadlines and pressures she had faced during most of her career. For instance, she was a guest teacher at the National Theatre School, instructing the acting students in movement. She also accepted an invitation to work with the Montreal contemporary dance company Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire, which had established a series it called Choréchanges. Casual and intimate, the Choréchanges monthly sessions were held in the company's rehearsal building and were intended to foster dialogue between dance professionals and interested patrons. One of these encounters was a roundtable discussion focussing on Montreal's dance heritage. Renaud, along with several other choreographers, including both Françoise Sullivan and Françoise Riopelle, participated.

As interest in Canada's dance history grew, Renaud's importance within it gained national attention. In the 1980s, Lawrence Adams, a former principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada and the future co-founder of Dance Collection Danse, came to Montreal to see Renaud and to talk about the history of dance in the city. He later invited her to participate in ENCORE! ENCORE!, a dance preservation project that involved six choreographers from across Canada reconstructing their earlier choreographic works. Dance reconstructions were popular in the 1980s and the ENCORE! ENCORE! proposal intrigued Renaud, who accepted the offer. She travelled to Toronto to reconstruct her works Déformité, Moi je suis ..., and L'emprise. She chose to work with Louise Bédard, a young and talented dancer from Montreal, who quickly felt an affinity for Renaud's choreography and was attracted to Renaud's generosity: “What I love about [Renaud] is the absence of conflict between the generations; it seems to be non-existent for her. Her relationships, with both novice and mature creators, are filled with a curiosity about human beings and the creativity which motivates them.”

The choreographic works reconstructed during the ENCORE! ENCORE! project were done so for the purposes of recording these dances via videotape and notation in order to make the works available for future public performance - establishing a benchmark for Canadian choreographic works. These reconstructions were later featured in Un pas dans l'inconnu, a 1988 documentary made for l'Université du Québec à Montréal. In 1988, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Refus global, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal hosted a dance recital, featuring dancers Louise Bédard and Ginette Boutin performing those reconstructed choreographic works by Françoise Sullivan and Renaud. For that event, Mousseau's burlap setting of 1948 was also reconstructed and his original costumes were used. Thérèse Renaud was present to recite her own poetry during the performance of Moi je suis … .

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©2009, Dance Collection Danse
Jeanne Renaud Exhibition Curators: Ray Ellenwood and Allana Lindgren
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Jeanne Renaud
with Louise Bédard, 1986