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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

Soa Ratsifandrihana: g r oo v e

g r oo v e is a solo performance by Soa Ratsifandrihana that draws on a wide range of dance styles, from baroque-influenced forms to the Afindrafindrao of her native Madagascar. She revisits the Madison, her first learned choreography, popularized in the 1960s by African American singer Al Brown, and references Ghost in the Shell, an anime she loved as a teenager.

Los Ricos - Sonia & Ismael: Vínculo

Vínculo (meaning “Bond”) is a flamenco show that captures the vibration of an encounter. A space where emotion, art, and memory intertwine to shape a world of their own. It is an open dialogue in which every moment, sound, and pause builds a connection, allowing flamenco’s tradition to meet the personal vision of its creators.

Robyn Orlin: We wear our wheels with pride

Robyn Orlin’s We wear our wheels with pride is a vibrant tribute to the rickshaw drivers of South Africa’s past, celebrating their resilience, artistry, and strength. Inspired by Orlin’s childhood memories of Zulu men pulling elaborately decorated rickshaws under apartheid, the piece transforms their movements into a dynamic fusion of dance, song, and theatrical spectacle.

Movement Research at the Judson Church

A free, high visibility low-tech forum for experimentation, emerging ideas, and works-in-progress held in the Fall and Spring seasons. Artists are selected by a rotating committee of peer artists, and join Movement Research Artists-In-Residence and international guests each season in performing at the historic Judson Church.

Jane Comfort and Company

A new dance work featuring music by MacArthur award winning composer Heather Christian that explores America’s current immigration landscape through intricate vocal polyrhythms and vivid community-inspired movement. The program also includes Comfort’s 1983 Afro-Brazilian infused Artificial Horizon with live drumming, and her 1996 work Bites, a musical chairs-driven examination of scarcity set to Klimchak’s percussive score and a voice-over of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.