Remembering Peter Randazzo

PETER RANDAZZO

(1943 – 2026)

It is a difficult time of loss in Canada’s dance community. DCD has learned of the death of Peter Randazzo on February 2. Peter was part of a seminal generation of dance artists who laid the foundation for the dance boom of the 1970s. 

Born in New York City, Peter recounted to me once that he got into dance because of a girlfriend. She wanted to audition for the Martha Graham Company but didn’t want to go alone so she convinced Peter to go too – with an elfish twinkle in his eye, he told me, “I got in, she didn’t.” He was 18 when he joined Graham’s company and danced most of the repertoire over the next six years. He also danced for the companies of José Limón, Donald McKayle, and Eleo Pomare. During this time, he met Torontonian David Earle, a student at the Graham School, and the two became lifelong friends. When Patricia Beatty, who had also attended the Graham School, formed her New Dance Group of Canada in 1967, she invited Peter to choreograph for the debut, a concert in which David also danced. The following year, the trio created Toronto Dance Theatre. At the time, it was the only other dance company in Toronto, alongside The National Ballet of Canada.

Peter created over 40 works for Toronto Dance Theatre and trained numerous dancers in the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre. Writer Graham Jackson once described his work as “bright yet shadowy, tough yet brittle, intense yet darkly humorous, cool yet passionate.” But there were also works, such as Recital and A Simple Melody, both from 1977, that showed his sense of humour and fun.

Peter retired from dance in 1998 and I had the honour of doing an oral history with him around that time. I loved his clipped New York speech and pithy jabs at a dancing life. But my most treasured Peter moment is really a David and Peter moment. When we launched the book David Earle: A Choreographic Biography by Michele Green, we were at a bookstore in Guelph, where David had relocated. Late into the evening, I happened to be sitting at a table with David and Peter when they started telling stories about their time with Martha Graham. As they tantalizingly imitated her and the various rehearsal directors and teachers they had encountered, everyone around them was in stitches. It is a moment that will have to live permanently in my head  – no smart phones around then to record it. 

Though Peter Randazzo retired earlier than his co-founders, his impact is no less significant. The repertoire he built forms a cornerstone of our mid- to late-20th-century modern dance history. In the DCD Moving Image Collection are hundreds of video recordings for which we have little descriptive information. Every so often we get a pocket of extra funds and we digitize a handful of them. In a batch a couple of years ago, we uncovered three gems – a recording of Peter Randazzo’s A Flight of Spiral Stairs (1973) in which he dances, a performance of three of Peter’s works including Encounter (1969), and an interview with Peter done by our co-founder Lawrence Adams. 

These recent losses in our community bring home the fact that DCD’s work is more essential than ever as we experience this generational loss. We will remember them with affection, celebrate them with pride, and diligently preserve the record they left behind.

~ Amy Bowring, Executive & Curatorial Director