{"id":2122658,"date":"2026-08-31T16:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2122658"},"modified":"2026-08-31T16:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:11:08","slug":"alexa-west-toes-the-line-between-dance-and-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2122658","title":{"rendered":"Alexa West Toes the Line Between Dance and Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Image-credit-Kayhl-Cooper_01.jpg?w=1000″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tChoreographer Alexa West wants to see you work. \u201cSo much of dance is supposed to hide how hard it is,\u201d she told me. \u201cAll the dancers I work with are interested in pushing themselves, so we play with making material that allows them\u2014or doesn\u2019t allow them\u2014to do the dance successfully. The labor has to be shown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the past five years in New York, West\u2019s uncanny, Rube Goldberg-esque dances have made her one of the stars of the city\u2019s experimental dance scene. During a meeting over the winter at Pageant\u2014an East Williamsburg space founded by West and four collaborators that\u2019s considered a center of the New York performance scene\u2014the artist reflected on the two-part premiere of her most ambitious work to date, Jawbreaker Part 1 & 2 <\/em>(2025). \u201cI\u2019m feeling wonderful,\u201d she said of the piece, which was developed over a long period and built on close relationships between her and the piece\u2019s five dancers, who are Pageant regulars themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing a work-in-progress phase at Movement Research, West showed Jawbreaker<\/em> first at her space last October, then at Chinatown\u2019s 99 Canal a month later. The piece is a near-perfect distillation of what makes West one of America\u2019s most exciting choreographers: kinetic movement, a hypnotic soundtrack, and, crucially, props that serve as objects for the dancers to work against. West engaged set-dressing and props in her choreography from the start\u2014an approach she\u2019s refined over time, at the Martha Graham School, Cooper Union, and the sculpture department at Bard College\u2019s Milton Avery School of the Arts. \u201cWhat I\u2019m coming to understand is, I\u2019ve learned how to make dances from a sculptural approach in terms of material, scale, and time,\u201d she said of her training.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Alex West: Jawbreaker Part 1 & 2<\/i>, 2025.<\/span>Photo Kayhl Cooper\/Courtesy 99 Canal, New York<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWhile previous dances such as 2023\u2019s Occasion, Occasion, Occasion <\/em>have incorporated tables and furniture, Jawbreaker<\/em> makes use of a fabricated lamppost-like structure and a teal green plastic \u201croom wrap\u201d that covered the whole of both Pageant and 99 Canal. West described the room wrap\u2014made and installed by the architecture and design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero\u2014as \u201cclaustrophobic\u201d and \u201cinvasive to both an audience and a dancer.\u201d Following a score drawn from sources as disparate as golden-age Hollywood musicals, YouTube compilations of drunk men, and improvisations taken from rehearsals, Jawbreaker<\/em>\u2019s dancers writhe, sweat, and jerk to the point of \u201cexhaustion\u201d amidst the expanse of green vinyl\u2014a strenuous experience to both perform and to watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a presentation of Jawbreaker <\/em>at the TONO Festival in Mexico in March, West and her collaborators at Pageant turned their attention to another arts institution back home: the Museum of Modern Art. As part of the museum\u2019s Kravis Studio artist residency program, the group will stage a series of performances there during the month of August. Their challenge will be to translate the energy and experimentation at the heart of the Pageant program to MoMA and, for the first time in the cofounders\u2019 four-year history, choreograph a piece together. \u201cIt\u2019s a new thing for us, to take Pageant out of Pageant,\u201d West said. Looking around at the humble one-room studio space, she laughed: \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a little out-of-body\u2014from this to MoMA.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Image-credit-Kayhl-Cooper_01.jpg?w=1000″] Choreographer Alexa West wants to see you work. \u201cSo much of dance is supposed to hide how hard it is,\u201d she told me. \u201cAll the dancers I work with are interested in pushing themselves, so we play with making material that allows them\u2014or doesn\u2019t allow them\u2014to do the dance successfully. The labor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2122658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2122658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2122658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2122658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2122658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}