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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

An Evening with (LA)HORDE

On the occasion of the Ballet national de Marseille’s performance Age of Content at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, (LA)HORDE—comprised of artists Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel—join us to present a selection of their films.

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE

Founded in 1985 and based in Brooklyn, Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE seamlessly melds traditional African and Afro-Cuban dance with contemporary movement and spiritual storytelling. For its homecoming season, the company returns with two captivating programs that honor Brown’s signature choreographic voice—uplifting themes of community, resilience, and transcendence through a powerful blend of rhythm and ritual.

NEW@Graham: Graham and Tech

Graham + TECH is an innovative series that sits at the intersection of movement, technology, and archival exploration. Participants will engage with the legacy of Martha Graham while experimenting with cutting-edge immersive dance technologies, creating a dynamic dialogue between tradition and innovation in the world of dance.

Jan Martens: The Dog Days are Over 2.0

Belgian choreographer Jan Martens brings his explosive The Dog Days Are Over 2.0 to NYU Skirball. In this relentless, high-stakes performance, eight dancers push the limits of endurance through a hypnotic cycle of jumps with little music and no escape, just raw physical intensity. Martens strips dance down to its purest, most brutal form, exposing the beauty and agony of repetition. Precision and exhaustion collide in a performance that is both mesmerizing and punishing to watch.

internal weather

internal weather is a movement work i created while paying closer attention to how my body responds before i know why. i’m interested in the space between sensation and story—where habits form, where anxiety repeats itself, where attention drifts or locks in place. this piece doesn’t try to resolve those patterns or translate them into answers. instead, it stays with them.