Two works from some of the most compelling names in dance, showcasing some of the teachers in residence during our beloved Research Week, the final week of the Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation.

DEMON, AJAR | Jungwoong kim

Inspired in part by a Korean folk tale from Ulsan, the village Jungwoong is from – a story in which he performed as a young dancer studying traditional Korean shamanistic dance.

Today Jungwoong is interested in what the story has to say about how one might take action when encountering dark forces. In the folk tale, a man returns to his home and begins to remove his shoes in the traditional maru threshold of his home. He sees a stranger’s shoes where none should be. Through a door ajar, he glimpses a demon within his home. In the traditional tale, the man neither rushes thoughtlessly and aggressively toward danger, nor does he freeze in hopelessness or fear. Instead he begins to move, to feel himself and his own power. He begins to dance in the maru threshold.

FASTCRAFT: THE UNDOING PROJECT | Bebe Miller + Amelia Rudolph in collaboration with Performers Rachael Lincoln + Leslie Seiters

25-years co-creating and performing duet work made through cycles of slow, iterative processes, Lincoln and Seiters attempt “fast craft” as a practice of focus and immediacy, allowing for unfinished, messy, unsure, and unknown. The project comprises multiple commissioned duets, each created in a limited encounter with an invited dance-maker and rehearsed and performed as is, unedited and without development. This approach is our counter to perfectionism, to fastidiousness, and to finding closure. The performance offers the pieces as a fragmented collection, and leaves space for the audience to discover what resurfaces and resonates in the catalog of undone. Bebe Miller and Amelia Rudolph are the first two contributing directors.