in conversation_Alexa West's Jawbreaker
A backstage conversation between the dancers Cayleen Del Rosario, Benin Gardner, Amelia Heintzelman, Molly Ross, Isa Spector and artist Alexa West
16NOV2025_Presented in November 2025 at 99 Canal, Alexa West’s Jawbreaker explores patriotism and exhaustion through a fusion of athletic movement, Shaker ritual, and Postmodern dance from the 1970s to today. Set within a translucent aqua plastic environment by Charlap Hyman & Herrero and driven by relentless gabber beats, the dancers perform to the point of physical depletion. Read the full press release written by Leah Newman here.
99 Canal’s long standing collaboration with artist Alexa West started in 2023 as part of the inaugural edition of 5x5. She was paired by curator Sam Ozer, founder of TONO, who 99 Canal will collaborate with to bring Jawbreaker to Mexico City in March 2026.
Before the final performance of Jawbreaker Part 1 Part 2 at 99 Canal, the dancers Cayleen Del Rosario, Benin Gardner, Amelia Heintzelman, Molly Ross, Isa Spector, and Alexa gathered backstage. They talked about the year-long process behind the performance: its inspirations and evolving iterations, where the title Jawbreaker comes from, and what it means to perform this piece at 99 Canal.
Selected conversations are edited and condensed below.
Jawbreaker recap:
Cayleen: Is Alexa gonna come and tell us what to do?
Isa: We’re just vibing. I feel like I see some of you doing a lot of wall play.
Benin: I grab onto the doorway [of 99 Canal] with my foot.
Molly: I do feel like the doorway is like a weird threshold.
Benin: Yeah. And then when I threw myself onto that audience member.
Isa: I did that too last night. Well, my friends were in the front row, so when I was crawling up the pole for our trio moment at the end [of Part 1], I was putting my feet on them intentionally.
(…) (Alexa enters)
Alexa: We’re going to go talk.
All dancers: We’re already talking.
Alexa: Oh.
Amelia: Will you direct us?
Alexa: Okay, wait, could someone, maybe Molly or Benin say how long y’all have been working on Jawbreaker?
Benin: Well, you [Molly] and I began working last November.
Molly: A year ago.
Amelia: And then our trio [Cayleen, Amelia and Isa] started separately. We were like three little siblings, in unison, and the Shaker dance…
Isa: We were like a chorus of country dancing pilgrims.
Alexa: And just for context, this is all in a rehearsal process (…) So when was the first time we showed something publicly?
Amelia: Well when did we even start to rehearse together? We didn’t rehearse together for a long time.
Isa: We started at Eden’s (Expressway). But then we would also rehearse at Performance Space. Those studios remember?
Alexa: 122 CC.
Molly: I think as a group we came together in March [2025]?
Isa: Yeah, because that was in March, yeah that was a long time ago. Right, and then we rehearsed all of April, and then May. And then we performed at Judson [Memorial Church] in June.
Alexa: How many times have we performed the work?
Isa: This is the third iteration.
Cayleen: First, Judson Memorial Church over the summer, in June. Second: Pageant, 70 Graham Avenue, and that was in September. And now 99 Canal, November 15 and 16th baby. Manhattan, Man, freaking Hattan.
Amelia: Round three feels the most playful to me. Last night I feel like we played around with each other.
Isa: Yeah, I felt so much play with the audience.
Amelia: Because they’re close, they’re up in our business, in this great way.
Isa: And there’s something about doing this so many times, and we all have to keep it engaging for ourselves in this way, otherwise it doesn’t feel true.
Cayleen: And I think that brings back, this is actually like a secret Alexa that I’m telling you guys, just an added move that I do. And the question of how much is freestyle? I love that question. I don’t think she’s [Alexa] ever put her eyes on it to approve or disapprove. But it’s while you two are going through the arch, I lay on the ground and I just roll side to side, like that Shaker woman from that video - having a panic.
Amelia: You have a Shaker panic and nobody knew?
Isa: Okay, so what was the source material that we all pulled from?
Amelia: Shakers, and then the drunk European men fighting, gymnastics videos…
Cayleen: Cheerleaders.
Amelia: I feel like the drunk man, they’re still with us.
Isa: Oh my god no. Remember the version when we fought each other?
Amelia: [Laughs] Is this still part of your solo?
Isa: No, it is my solo. But it has changed.
Amelia: It doesn’t give drunk Europeans anymore?
Isa: No, to me I’m matching their cute moments a little bit. Something happens towards the end of the dance where I am doing a ditsy little thing that feels like the final form.
Alexa: I’m just curious, How do you guys feel about the videos being the start [of the process]? Because we learned some of the material from video. But from my perspective, it gets so translated through other things, it becomes something else.
Isa: But it’s interesting how long that takes, because it feels like [this process] really requires a lot of time to ferment and become something else in the world.
Molly: I love how all the source materials are all these different kinds of weird dance forms or videos of movement that kind of collage together. And they’re all these different, weird, cultural references that don’t really have [anything] to do with each other. But then the bulk of the work is us remaking them into something together, taking them into a dance together.
Alexa: Could y’all specifically say what some of the videos were?
Isa: It was some Spirit, kind of like vintage Spirit Routines. What do you call them? Remember the dance teams, the cheer routine and a gym?
Benin: Gymnastics, but not the actual gymnastics, but the weird dancing that they do before.
Isa: And traditional Shaker.
Amelia: the Brazilian competition.
Molly: Italian disco.
Cayleen: Drunk men fighting in the woods. Country dance, Shakers, I don’t know how Alexa finds them. I don’t know how the algorithm is getting them to you, but they are very niche.
Alexa: There’s an algorithm.
Amelia: I remember a long time ago, someone was talking about your work because they curated you into something. And they were like, everyone’s work who I curated has something to do with the Internet. And I was confused, what about Alexa’s? And they were saying Alexa’s work really reads like a meme to them. In the moment, I didn’t know if I agreed with that. But then I was thinking about it, she’s pulling from all these media sources or random images, and then reconfiguring them to have a different meaning. And that is what a meme is. So I feel like in that, I don’t know how this reads to the person on the outside, but the process, how you [Alexa] work with found images or material that’s widely available on the internet, and then you remake it to have a meaning that’s either funny or awkward or really poetic. It does feel like that.
Isa: I like it because I don’t think you necessarily set out to have any tone on it. I think we all have different characteristics of being funny or being this or being that, with the movement. And it feels like we all have to stay very true to a certain task, like we’re not performing, I’m not trying to make fun of these moves when I do it. I’m actually taking it so seriously in the world that we’ve built together. So, in that way, it feels honest. It feels like we work all together, and it feels serious. But it’s so fun, because this process of working together is so fun and silly.
Amelia: The joy and the play really came out last night, which is the part of this work that makes it really fun to perform.
Alexa: Is it hard on y’all’s bodies to do this dance?
All dancers: Yes…
Amelia: Yesterday, I kind of felt maybe I don’t really warm up and I feel like I did the performance better. I think I need every ounce of energy conserved. I need to be warmed up enough that I’m not gonna get hurt but I can’t be…
Isa: I have to warm up because if I don’t do cardio, and I start going really fast, my body is like throwing up in itself. It’s too intense.
Cayleen: I need mental warm up mode, just as much as the body. I’m one to sit still before we go on. Because I just have to get myself primed to go there and be changed, frankly.
Amelia: I do feel like I had a new moment yesterday. I feel like I unlocked a new key in Douglas Dunn (the name of a phrase) yesterday where I actually need to relax into this a little bit more than I think. I feel like I want to punch so hard at this movement, because this dance feels so punchy. And I want to reach the audience even when they’re really far away from me. But I actually have to really soften into the movement and chill out to be able to do a full out, which is not a method I ever used. I usually want to go as hard as I fucking can. But sometimes you stop yourself.
Alexa: Do you guys ever feel like you’re in conflict with the audience? Sometimes people feel like it’s very aggressive towards them as an audience member, I’m wondering if that’s from y’all?
Isa: Well, I don’t know about everyone else, I know I’m doing it. I think Amelia is doing it. But I think with this iteration of having all these eyes on us, with these small movements I feel very coy when I’m doing them. It feels very flirtatious. And I think in that way, hiding certain things from the audience. I also do the opposite, and make extreme contact with them in this way, which feels very vulnerable. But it’s also super liberating and I think it does something that’s kind of funny, but also very restricted.
Amelia: I don’t know if I feel confrontational with them, but I definitely feel like I want to look back at them while they’re looking at me. I feel that kind of exchange really gives me a lot of energy.
Isa: I don’t feel like a dancer. I don’t feel the wall between us. It feels like I am in the room that you’re in, doing the thing.
Cayleen: I feel really held by the audience. I feel like the dance itself is maybe quote on quote aggressive, because it’s so energetic and physical. But I also think for me, and I think this is true for a lot of the times I perform, there’s an undercurrent of tenderness, of just, oh, you’re all sitting there. The eyes are holding me. It doesn’t feel invasive. It’s like I’m receiving your gaze, and I’ll return it. But also you’re watching my body. You’re holding my body as I do these things that are vulnerable.
Molly: I think you [Alexa] can also maybe come across aggressive, because this piece feels very mortal or something I feel like I’m very much in my body. And I think that can be confrontational when an audience member is like I’m just watching a body from my body.
Benin: And I think it just seems to be something I’ve run into with your [Alexa’s] work a lot, where people sometimes feel it’s aggressive because it isn’t interested in being about one particular thing or being explicit about what it is about. I think that can feel aggressive to people because they’re trying to project a narrative or a story onto it, and the work is constantly resisting that. That’s a feature I’ve noticed in other pieces of yours, but experiencing it as a dancer has made me feel I’m a material in a way that now seems obvious that that’s what you’re doing when you’re a dancer. But I feel that more actively in your work; I feel I’m just a composition of atoms moving in certain ways. But it’s not that I’m— I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.
Cayleen: But it’s freeing, that resonates with me. It’s freeing to not be like a person.
Isa: I think it makes the audience a little uncomfortable because we are directly engaging with virtuosity in such a specific way. We’re doing something the audience can’t imagine doing, because there’s something so humiliating about it. And we’re doing something so rigorous, unapologetically sexual, awkward, horny, and athletic. It’s all of these things and failing a lot. I think we’re engaging with the effort of the work, allowing it to decompose, in front of them, and to engage with that instability. For an audience, I imagine, that’s uncomfortable because we’re never doing something recognizable or perfect for them. But we’re clearly so engaged, and that’s what I love about this work. We have all these different backgrounds and training, and we’re all engaging with them in a way that feels liberating: doing some of these things very badly, even doing ballet in ways that break the rules or expectations.
Alexa: The question everyone asks is how much of this is set and how much of it is improvised?
Cayleen: There’s confines, but I’ll be making choices out there.
Amelia: And I think they’re (the audience is) trusting and wanting that we’re gonna really push things in a way where they’re not necessarily looking the same every time, but the energetic tone is still there. Obviously things line up that need to, but it’s more about finding your full range inside of the stuff than hitting every single mark perfectly.
Alexa: I think for me, I am a big-picture person. Having y’all as a cast, you’re all good dance makers and thinkers. That helps me not have to carry that last bit of saying for example where to put your foot, and you can make that decision and I would have made something very similar myself, if not it.
Molly: That’s what I really appreciate though. You give us material, and let us eat it.
Isa: When I watched the video of the Pageant iteration, I was just like so sound because this process has been, I don’t know, you’ve really given us the time to find it and not impose it in this way. That’s really impressive, because when I watch the piece, it’s so cohesive and it’s so unified. And it really feels like you haven’t imposed something super strict on it. But then you watch it and it’s very cool.
Alexa: But that’s because we worked for six months before we even put it together… We technically made a lot of different compositions and exercises where I was trying to impose and it wasn’t working, because everyone had such a different style. And then finally what I was able to find between all five of you was this matchy, messy virtuosity.
You’re all superstars who are going to try to steal the spotlight from each other, but I was thinking, what’s the similarity here? The way I generally cast…. I think I’ve probably said this to one or two of you, but there’s a similarity in me and you, and then there’s differences, but there’s that one key similarity that’s like, okay, that’s what I want to work on for this project. So I think this group, each of us (points at herself and the dancers), have an overlap, but y’all might not have clean ones together. It was a process of finding out what we can do all together. And there was a day where actually you two (points at Amelia and Isa) were gone, and I gave these three (points at Cayleen, Molly, and Benin) your material that you had filmed, and it just started working. And then from there, we kept building and building. But that was the initial thing, it was like this process of translating it all through each other’s bodies. I think that was the thread that I’ve never been able to get to before.
Isa: Yeah. I think that’s something new that I really appreciate in this work. I think I haven’t considered how you’ve found our thread. I think in previous work, I’ve understood that you’ve kind of kept everyone in certain camps. And this one, you allowed us to be a bit more of a kaleidoscope of each other.
Alexa: It’s just time. And now, moving forward, I don’t want any process any shorter than this.
Molly: I feel like there’s some things we never really talked about, like the wrapping on the wall. We never really talked about the pole that much. Or where everything’s coming from. But there’s such clarity for you that I also feel like it helps me find clarity.
Alexa: Dance for me is the training, which is my top experience with dance. It is being in a dance class and not performing. I’ve never performed a lot in my life, honestly. But being in dance class is my experience of abstracting the body. You think about muscles and bones and all this stuff, and you’re not thinking about how an office worker sits or someone cries on the subway. But you see a dance on TV where everyone’s dressed as a construction worker, but then they’re doing the abstraction, they’re doing these high kicks that no one does in everyday movement, in this figurative or representational costumed way. And that’s something that dance actually does a lot, but doesn’t allow the deeper meanings of those things.
And so I’ve always wondered, what happens if you bring the meanings of those representations into the abstraction, right? And you allow them to coexist, but you don’t force them to meld? So there’s a lamp post balance beam, and y’all are in these outfits that kind of work and kind of don’t, but you’re just doing dance. We’re not gonna call it anything else, it becomes a dance. We might put some references of people doing gymnastics etc in at the beginning of the process but they’re not important at the end. And that’s a large part of when people are asking what’s it about? And it’s about time and space as most dances are. But that’s when it gets really funny. When people are like, what’s this about?
Amelia: The toughest question. Because it’s so singular, they’re just looking for such a simple answer with that. What is it about?
Isa: So why is it called Jawbreaker?
Alexa: It didn’t have a title at Judson. And after that show, I was thinking about the costuming and the energy of it felt like a 90s action movie, and then the physicality is pretty abject. I was thinking about an object that can enter your body, and it’s edible, but not food, and it can change the shape of your body. You look at someone with a Jawbreaker in their mouth, and you can see their form has changed, their physical form, but also their experience of having that in their mouth is really different than looking at it. It’s probably more intense than looking at it. And I was just thinking about those and then Jawbreaker is just a sphere, and it has this very simple form, but then it has all this cultural connotation that I really like. In the 90s, kids choked on them, but they’re also sweet, and everyone really lusted for them. They’re also very beautiful, they’re speckled. They have all these color on them, but they’re kind of dangerous. I just thought it had a lot of different connotations, and it also had this really punchy tonal bit that I thought matched what you guys were doing well.
Isa: I should have asked you that sooner!
Cayleen: This was before the [green] wrapping came into it?
Alexa: So once we started talking, they [CH&H] had proposed a couple of different room wrap styles to me, and I just immediately was really interested in the plastic because it is the combination of beauty and claustrophobia and danger. All this because y’all are so stunning in this dance that also it looks quite terrifying. And I was trying to just keep those two tones equal the whole time. Jawbreaker, I think, has that in the name where you’re like, ooh, sexy. And then, some people come up to me and say, do you remember when kids choked?
Alexa: Do we feel good? It was a lot easier for me to talk about [this performance] with y’all so I appreciate it.
Isa: That was nice.
Alexa: All right, let’s get warm.
Backstage video by Kayhl Cooper
Jawbreaker Press
Artist bios
Alexa West is based in New York City. She holds a MFA from Bard College, and her work has been presented by SculptureCenter and the 2023 Performa Biennial among others. She was a 23–24 Dance Research Fellow at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library and is a Movement Research Artist in Residence 24-25. In addition, West is a co-founder of Pageant, a venue in Brooklyn that presents performances by emerging choreographers. In 2026, West and Pageant will be part of the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio at MoMA.
Cayleen Del Rosario is a dance artist based in New York City. She earned a BFA from studies at NYU Tisch and Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, and is currently a master’s student at The New York Graduate School for Psychoanalysis. Her work has been presented at Triskelion Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Provincetown Dance Festival, CPR Center for Performance Research, Truro Center for the Arts, Pageant, Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, The Tank, and other spaces.
Benin Gardner is a dancer and writer from Los Angeles. She has performed at Pageant, Center for Performance Research, and SculptureCenter in works choreographed by artists like Coco Villa, and Alexa West.
Amelia Heintzelman is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Her work has been supported by residencies, commissions, and grants through Center for Performance Research, Draftwork at Danspace Project, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Issue Project Room, Movement Research at the Judson Church, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pageant, Snug Harbor, UCross Foundation, and University Settlement. Most recently, she’s worked as a collaborating performer for Kim Brandt, Jesi Cook, Ayano Elson, Deborah Hay, evan ray suzuki, and Alexa West. She is on teaching faculty at Movement Research and Pageant, and rarely/sometimes teaches Comedy Pilates.
Originally from Michigan, Molly Ross is a dancer and choreographer now residing in Brooklyn NY. Her work has been presented in NYC at PAGEANT, Essex Flowers, FourOneOne (curated by Moriah Evans), the Wild Project (curated by Kyla Gordon) and Grace Exhibition Space. She has received creative support from New Dance Alliance's Satellite Residency in NYC and the LakeSide Inn Artist Residency in Michigan. She has also been in an ongoing collaboration with Nola Sporn Smith as MOLLY&NOLA since 2017. Their work has been shown at a variety of theaters, galleries, and DIY spaces across NYC including CPR, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Pioneer’s Go East, The Glove, Assembly Room, and Roulette Intermedium. As a performer Molly has worked with Alexa West, Laurel Atwell, Susannah Yugler, Melinda Ring, Jo McKendry, Kat Galasso, Lena Engelstein, and Beth Gill. She will be performing in forthcoming projects with Peter BD and Rebecca Jensen this month.
Isa Spector is a director, writer, and choreographer based in New York. Their work embodies the absurd and intimate landscape of digital culture via dance, theater, and film. Recently, they created an original dance theater piece for the opening of INTIMA, a new performance space in Bushwick. Spector has shown work at Performance Space New York, Center for Performance Research, PAGEANT, the 14th Street Y, and the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts in Los Angeles. As a performer, they have worked with Korakrit Arunanondchai, boychild, Danielle Agami, Sam Max and Alexa West. As a movement director, Spector has worked with artists including ANOHNI, Steve Lacy, and Jeremy Dutcher. They are a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts where they received a BFA in Dance and BA in Dramatic Literature.
About 99 Canal
99 Canal is an artist-run Studio and Public Program.
As a 501(c)3 Non-Profit, our mission is to facilitate artists’ access to affordable professional studios and expose the public to live, experimental practices in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
Founded in 2022 by artist Baldassarre Ruspoli, 99 Canal began as a personal response to the critical lack of affordable studios and artist-first organizations in Lower Manhattan. Over three and a half years, it has evolved into a multi-disciplinary space offering artists intimate work studios alongside a rigorous, well-documented, free public program, serving a cross-generational community year-round.
The conversation about finding the thread between all five dancers really captures somthing essential about collaboration that most people miss. Building a cohesive work by allowing everyone to translate material through their own bodies rather than imposing strict uniformity creates this 'matchy messy virtuosity' that sounds way more interesting than polished synchronization. I worked on a project once where we tried to force everyone into the same mold and it just felt dead, but when we let people bring their own interpretation while staying tethered to the core idea it actually came alive.