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mrpj.org is the online edition of Movement Research Performance Journal. Discover our latest issue, explore our archive and follow a calendar of select events dedicated to contemporary performance.

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Cover of Issue #62

Issue #62

Winter 2026

We Exist in the Ambivalence of Those Motherfuckers

What began as a project responding to the fiftieth anniversary of the ‘end’ of the Vietnam War became a project of inhabiting the Movement Research Performance Journal (MRPJ) from within the landscape of contemporary Vietnamese performance art. The result, Issue #62, is a window onto a community of insiders who reflect a set of concerns, questions, historical trajectories, and aesthetic legacies that differ from what has more often been foregrounded in our U.S./New York City-centric publication. Like other documents of this kind, which endeavor to portray a performance scene that will be foreign to many readers, the texts from this group of intergenerational, contemporary artists demonstrate a careful navigation of the dialectics of inside and outside, self and other, performer and audience, seeing and being seen, that informs every exchange across cultural difference. The texts are also not monolithic, suggesting a range of relations to the Vietnam of the past and present, from within Vietnam’s national borders and among the diaspora. Especially for contributors living and working in Vietnam, writing has also been a practice of choreographing words within a political landscape where to speak publicly, in itself, is a performance of negotiated risk. Embracing the complexities of these differing positions has been the focus of our editorial process—one that has asked the editorial team to embrace the limits of our own knowledge, to recognize we will not be able to recognize all valences others may discover in these texts, and not to edit these layers out of the works that follow.

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Calendar

Trinity Irish Dance Company

“Sophisticated and commanding” (Los Angeles Times), Trinity Irish Dance Company (TIDC) has pioneered a movement genre that “ushered in a new era for Irish step dance” (Chicago Tribune). Led by Founding Artistic Director Mark Howard and Associate Artistic Director Chelsea Hoy, this Chicago-based company celebrates 35 years of genre-defying innovation with a program representative of Howard’s unique vision to fuse vibrant Irish traditions with ever-evolving American innovation.

MISFITS/ ARCH

An evening split bill between Dareon Blowe, Artistic Director of MISFITS Dance Collective, and Carlos Franquiz, Artistic Director of Arch Danse Ensemble. Dareon will be showing STATES — a work confronting the interpersonal relationships that emerge through the political nature of our world. Carlos will be showing In front (Behind) Closed Curtains — a work that discusses human connection and the battles we face behind close doors.

Lyon Opera Ballet

Kicking off the second year of the Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels is Lyon Opera Ballet, one of the world’s foremost contemporary dance companies. This exhilarating double bill brings together two striking works from both sides of the millennium: Merce Cunningham's seminal masterpiece BIPED and the US premiere of Christos Papadopoulos's Mycelium.