#57
Issue#57

Editorial Team

  • Editor in Chief

    Joshua Lubin-Levy

  • Managing Editor

    John Arthur Peetz

  • Contributing Editor

    nora chipaumire

  • Contributing Editor

    Jerron Herman

  • Contributing Editor

    Alex Rodabaugh

  • Editorial Assistant

    Nicole Bradbury

  • Designer

    Yotam Hadar

Issue 57 of the Movement Research Performance Journal (MRPJ) takes up the keyword “work.” Given that Movement Research has a history of being an organization of artists laboring for and with one another, we invited contributors to consider, revise, or push against questions like: how are things working today? What is the condition of labor in the field of dance and performance? What does it mean to be or have a body that works, on which work is (or isn’t) projected? How do idealizations of the laboring body and/or the ethos of collective practice relate to or obscure the lived experience of making dance works, working in dance, or balancing artistic production with the productive demands of one’s so-called “survival job”? To work in dance (or the arts in general) is indisputably to be exploited. But the contributors to this issue both directly and obliquely take up the experience of working as both enervating and energizing (in often contradictory ways), and draw from their different experiences of working work’s uneven distribution across the globe, the abelism that belies work’s regimentation, and the on-going struggle to find solidarity among arts workers.

More than thematically linked, the issue’s three sections also reflect a desire to address how this publication itself asks artists to work. Artist-run since 1990, the burden of administering a publication like the MRPJ was (perhaps) once outweighed by the promise of what this kind of project could do to shape the field of dance and performance. Today, that editorial and administrative labor dovetails all too well with what has become naturalized as an expectation of practicing artists—that they write about what they are doing or want to do in grant applications, that they create content to be used both for educating and marketing to audiences, and that they develop a discourse that signifies the value of their work in relation to any number of fields other than dance.

For Issue 57, the MRPJ editorial team (Josh Lubin-Levy, John Arthur Peetz, and Nicole Bradbury) gave the keyword “work” to three artists designated as “Contributing Editors” (nora chipaumire, Jerron Herman, and Alex Rodabaugh). nora, Jerron, and Alex were each invited to invite three to five other participants to join the discussion but also encouraged to pass on the administrative and editorial labor to the MPRJ staff.

Issue 57 is only the beginning of thinking about how the structure of a journal on and by artists needs to adapt to an era in which content creation exists in overdrive.

Contents

SECTION 1: Contributing Editor
nora chipaumire
nora chipaumire
8–11 TEQUIO ancestral practice, MANY BODIES at work
ALMA QUINTANA
ALMA QUINTANA
12–15 This Is All Accidental?
MATHILDE WALKER–BILLAUD, LINA LAPELYTĖ
MATHILDE WALKER–BILLAUD, LINA LAPELYTĖ
16–17 Paperwork
YINKA ESI GRAVES
YINKA ESI GRAVES
18–21 A System’s Analysis
MARGUERITE ANGELICA MONIQUE HEMMINGS, LAI YI OHLSEN, JONATHAN GONZÁLEZ
MARGUERITE ANGELICA MONIQUE HEMMINGS, LAI YI OHLSEN, JONATHAN GONZÁLEZ
22–25 For Abigail, for Simon
SIMON LEUNG, ABIGAIL LEVINE
SIMON LEUNG, ABIGAIL LEVINE
SECTION 2: Contributing Editor
Jerron Herman
Jerron Herman
30–31 Reflection On The Myth
JERRON HERMAN
JERRON HERMAN
32–35 Untitled
MATT ROMEIN
MATT ROMEIN
36–39 Not Alone, Not A Loan: On Collecting and Gathering
EZRA BENUS
EZRA BENUS
40–43 Calculating work: Dance and Justice in numbers / Calcular el trabajo: Danza y Justicia en cifras
CHRISTOPHER “UNPEZVERDE” NÚÑEZ
CHRISTOPHER “UNPEZVERDE” NÚÑEZ
SECTION 3: Contributing Editor
Alex Rodabaugh
Alex Rodabaugh
48 Not Without A Fight
ALEX RODABAUGH
ALEX RODABAUGH
49 Freestyle
TONY WRIGHT
TONY WRIGHT
49–51 Don’t Use My Disabled Body Against Me
VANESSA HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ
VANESSA HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ
54–57 Shaping Movements: The Power of Labor Unity, Dancework, and Organized Resistance
ELISE A. LOGAN
ELISE A. LOGAN
58–59 Guide For Building A Dancer’s Contract
DANCE ARTISTS’ NATIONAL COLLECTIVE, EMILY HANSEL
DANCE ARTISTS’ NATIONAL COLLECTIVE, EMILY HANSEL
60–61 It’s Not Noble For Artists To Suffer
GARNET HENDERSON
GARNET HENDERSON

Editorial Team

  • Editor in Chief

    Joshua Lubin-Levy

  • Managing Editor

    John Arthur Peetz

  • Contributing Editor

    nora chipaumire

  • Contributing Editor

    Jerron Herman

  • Contributing Editor

    Alex Rodabaugh

  • Editorial Assistant

    Nicole Bradbury

  • Designer

    Yotam Hadar