Upper school’s spring dance was held at Block 41 on March 28, making it this year’s third off-campus dance along with prom and homecoming. This is a sharp contrast from the last three years, when students would instead attend two dances, winter and spring, in the Pumadome.
“We wanted to try to have another off-campus dance,” Assistant Head of Upper School Meg Anderson-Johnston said. “But in order to fund that, we decided to only have one additional off-campus dance this year.”
In previous years, with low attendance and cancellations to the on-campus dances, ASB needed to make a change.
“I think it’s a lot better than it was last year,” sophomore Oliver Wesch said at the spring formal. “Nobody went to [the previous dance] and we played Connect Four and cornhole the whole time because nobody was in the gym. I think this is really fun.”
This year, 247 students attended the dance.
“I think the spring formal is pretty great. I love when people get really into dancing,” ninth-grader Avery Smith said. “Because I’m a freshman I don’t have any things to compare it to, but I guess it’s always fun getting to go to downtown Seattle and then go to an actual venue and have a dance there.”
ASB has been working on making spring fling an off-campus dance since the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
“We wanted to take the budget from the smaller dances at UPrep,” junior and ASB executive Evie Pagulayan said. “We’re like, ‘Can we take some money from other things and put it towards this dance, to get it off campus so then we could get a better turnout?’”
The majority of the ASB budget for dances goes to decorations, whereas student ticket money goes toward replenishing the venue’s deposit, according to ASB.
“We knew the decorations cost for both of those [on-campus] dances, and so why not combine it and bring it to a dance that someone would actually attend,” junior and ASB executive Maya Le said. “The process that we kind of went through was’ what makes people attend a dance?’ and… that’s not bringing it to school and putting it in the Pumadome.”
In 2023, 123 tickets were sold, no spring dance was held in 2024 and in 2025, 68 tickets were sold. As grade-level representatives last year, Le and Pagulayan would attend the on-campus dances and see few people in attendance. They attribute this to the on-campus nature of the dance.
“It just made people not want to go because that’s the type of thing you can do with your friends at your own house,” Pagulayan said. “You don’t need to come to school on a Saturday and figure out your night for that… So we wanted to get that traditional dance [where] you have the opportunity to dress up, go with friends, get a nice dinner if you want before, and then have fun.”
The theme Tea Party was chosen to evoke a spring feeling and for its flexibility.
“We wanted to give open guidelines, but still formal guidelines,” Pagulayan said. “Wear something pastel colored. That can mean a lot of things to many different people, but that’s also easy on the spectrum of going, ‘I’m gonna go all out,’ or ‘I’m just gonna wear a simple outfit.’”
The venue featured two levels, with the upper being dedicated to a photo booth and the lower level housing the dance and the DJ. Speakers were blasting with music from pop, to rap, to KPop. Students danced under multi-color lights until 10:30pm.
“I think the music is ok,” senior Marin Gant said at the dance. “But it’s been awesome to have another opportunity to be off campus.”
