GUILD DANCE RETURNS

No matter how long this Montana girl lives in the Emerald City, the vivid abundance of spring here amazes me every year. Providing a similarly effusive spring-like return, Guild Dance Company presented The Works2: Reconnected after a two-year hiatus. Offering three different lineups over three different performances, the program featured original works by Guild company members in addition to local guest artists. The performance I’m reviewing (Saturday, April 26th 8 p.m.) featured a program as invigorating in variety and scope as walking around Seattle in the springtime—greedily snorting up lilac fragrances and the visual ombre-ing spectacle of rhodie blooms.

The first piece, Words Cannot Express, is choreographed by Guild’s founder and artistic director Alex Ung and Guild dancers. Gauzy fabric billows from a center point on the ceiling and hangs into the dance space almost the way Fourth-of-July swag festoons decks and balconies. The music creates an atmosphere somehow both unsettling and ethereal. The dancers’ heads tick. They look like they are carrying heavy loads. They shake like they hurt, and I hear lyrics from a Florence & the Machine song, “You need a big god…You keep me up at night.” Then a grand transformation begins—the fabric is pulled down like a big tent. The dancers struggle underneath, undressing. The fabric pulls away and one dancer is left in a climbing harness. She is hoisted to the ceiling where she performs aerial acrobatic twists and spins. She is lowered down, the group takes her weight, the fabric wrapped, and so is the piece. It’s hard to know for sure, but I wonder if the title of this piece, Words Cannot Express, references the stroke Ung miraculously survived in June 2023, having to be airlifted from the Olympic wilderness. In his seven-month recovery update on his Go-Fund-Me page, Ung works through aphasia to express his gratitude to his family and friends for their support in his recovery from the life-changing incident. It is so good to see this member of the community back making dances. 

The audience gets a complete change of pace as we observe the interior lives of dancers Megan Sellman and Ieva Bračiulytė in Post In Transit, a film by David Comeaux. Developed during Open Flight’s Flight Deck residency and winning the Best Duet award from the dancentric film festival, Post In Transit explores a girlish fantasy world. Paper geodesic tents and hanging fabric divide an attic play space where journal pages are written, crumpled like flowers and retrieved from the trash. Sellman and Bračiulytė lick envelopes, put them in boxes, look at each other’s writing. We see a beautiful tawny-colored eye gazing through a hole. Fingers grasp, gather fabric. The duo lean on chairs, tip them. When the balance is upset, the dancers mirror and try to read each other. Post In Transit is like peering into a snow globe where a delicate tug-of-war between self-love and who we become in relationship, all in the midst of a paper snowstorm. 

No Take-backs choreographed by Guild member Hannah March, also hints at a personal sifting through outer layers to find personal identity. Three dancers sort laundry and put on clothes. They take off layers and step into someone else’s costume. One starts to take her shirt off but doesn’t and performs a solo in a stark diagonal slice of light across the stage. I hear words in the soundtrack that say something like, “I’m wonderful and I know there is a supreme power that is not going to Instagram.”

I’m almost disoriented dance-style wise when the next piece by Ben White of Swing Dance SCT begins. Like a fizzing energetic blast of Coca Cola, three couples dance a fun, bouncy number to big band-sounding music. The couples take turns being featured, clapping their hands from the side while they watch the others dance. The footwork is sometimes tap-like and periodically punctuated with jazz hands. It feels like the pressure valve release that joyous dancing provides, whether during war time of the past or during the doom and gloom chaos that characterizes the news cycle of our current daily lives.

There is a clean starkness in the lighting, set, and costuming of In Three Parts choreographed by Guild member Shayley Timm that reminds me of the white-stuccoed walls of Greek villages. The music says something about “When I sleep, I dream.” Three dancers wearing black create triangular formations under blue lighting that explore the push and pull of the strength of that shape. Their hands flutter to their heads and hearts like urgent prayers, symbology underscored for me by the holy trinity triangular formations. One dancer whips herself to the ground. She dances in a wild, manic way made all the more effective when she shifts to slow motion, hands flat to the ground.   

After intermission, in another refreshing style/mood change, Guild Company members Emma and Prasti Purdum dance their work everything that was. Noah Gold plays keyboards on stage and performs his rearrangement of Patsy Cline’s Crazy along with original song Let There Be You. The Purdums (a mother/daughter duo) emote to the sorrow and longing of Cline’s famous song by squatting and rocking back and forth while holding their faces. One covers her mouth, rubs her hands, and shakes her head like she disagrees with the other’s interpretation and embodiment of the lyrics’ sentiments. 

Brass anklet bells tinkling, Indian classical and guest dancer Pooja Ganesh breaks the Purdum’s disturbing spell. In an untitled piece, Ganesh stomps complicated foot rhythms, looks coyishly over her hands, and with elbows up, whirls and whirls impressively, her dress becoming a blue and red blur. 

SLOWBURN Dance Company performs the next work.  Like cameo portraits, the dancers hold a series of poses, each performed as if precious and representing something of sentimental value. Then the dance shifts. One dancer wears blue velveteen overalls and the other five wear all black. They create formations that remind me of five dots on a game die. The soloist does a series of slow extensions, balances, moves heavily weighted to the ground. Meanwhile, the five others sit in the lit part of the stage and then leave like the shake of fortune’s dice. 

A second dance film, Party Dress by Jeremy Steward, punctuates the program. Party Dress takes the audience on a breezy romp through a rural setting. We follow the dancers down a meadow path. We see hands clasped on forearms sliding and separating. The dancers toss their clothes with abandon. Individual dancers smile into the sun in front of a barn. There’s a dinner scene that reminds me of the Slow Food Movement and I hear the words, “I don’t need it,” in the soundtrack. 

The show ends as it began with a full Guild Company piece choreographed by Ung called Am I Enough. Ocean wave imagery (similar to the iconic prints created by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai) are painted on four rolling screens. The dancers walk between the screens, moving them to upbeat music, though their facial expressions remain detached in contrast. The dancers take the screens, or the screens take the dancers off stage and the evening–that has been like a springtime sensory delight–ends. 

This review is of Guild Dance Company’s The Works2: Reconnected Program performed Saturday, April 26th 8 p.m. in the Yaw Theater. Other performances of The Works2: Reconnected were on April 25th, 2025 at 8pm and April 26th, 2025 at 5 p.m. Guild company dancers include Emma Purdum, Prasti Purdum, Shayley Timm, Kelli Carnes, Meredith Pellon, Kate Henderson, Kince de Vera, Hannah March, and director Alex Ung. See a copy of the evening’s program here.