LaBLove (January 29-31, 2010)

History of LAB

LaB (Lindy And Blues) is an all-volunteer organization that puts on Lindy and blues dance events in Philadelphia. Our namesake and weekly dance, Philly LaB, began on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at Take the Lead Studio. Since then, we've grown and transformed many times over. It's been an amazing 3 years, and we hope we continue to grow as a community, an organization, and school for years to come.

Founding LaBtechs Jesse Young, Carsie Blanton, and Cheryl Caraan began brainstorming in fall of 2006, cooking up the crazy idea to start a new dance venue in Philly fueled by their mutual love for super-connected, super-musical Lindy Hop and blues. By the time of its inception, Jon Darvill had joined their ranks. Before the spring of 2007, LaB had gathered an enthusiastic pack of dancers and dancers-to-be, as well as a new LaBtech, Stuart Collins.

During the first year, the techs met weekly over cheap chinese food to dream up and execute ever-more fantastic ideas. We ran workshops and lessons with guest teachers from all over the country like Sommer Gentry (Baltimore), Solomon Douglas (Seattle), Lucky Skillen (NYC), Mike Lenneville & Emily Schelstrate (NYC), and Carl Nelson (Montreal). We were able to get live bands including local heroes the ’LaB House Band‘ and nationally touring artist Amos Lee. We threw quirky events like the “Belles and Balls Ball” (a same-sex couples competition) and our very first weekend workshop “Philly Blues Connection”, a workshop weekend featuring scads of national-level blues instructors (Mihai Banulescu, Andrew Sutton, Brenda Collins, Lessa Lamb, Laura Glaess, and more).
It had been a busy year, but the best was yet to come.

We kicked off year two with our first LaBLove birthday party featuring classes from Brenda Collins and Andrew Slac and music from Gordon Webster. The our projects just kept on coming: in March we had our first dancer residency with Mike Legett, in May we held a workshop weekend with Lindy superstars Kevin St. Laurent and Sharon Davis, and in October we held the first Blues Muse, the world’s first follower-focused blues workshop weekend.
All the while, our weekly dance went from a fewer than 30 dancers to almost a hundred dancers each week and we took on two additional LaBtechs, Kerry Genese and Graham Hunter. We were pushing the limits of our home at Take the Lead.

This past year has been filled with transitions that have allowed us to grow ever more. Having outgrown our birthplace, we moved our weekly dance to the Ethical Society Building on Rittenhouse Square. We threw three large scale events that will occur each year: our second LaBLove featured Mike Roberts and Laura Glaess (Austin, TX) and Gordon Webster, we had some of our very most favorite dancers Skye and Friday teach and featured the Cangelosi Cards, and we hosted the second Blues Muse. We even held a fundraiser dance, Herrang or Bust! to help send dancers from Philadelphia to Herrang Dance Camp in Sweden. Finally, the big change has been that we expanded from our one night of dancing a week to coordinating and organizing more than 3 nights of dancing each week adding a blues night Powerhouse Blues and Jazz Attack. We consult and support the University of Pennsylvania's dance the Fish Fry and when the weather's nice, we dance outdoors on Sundays at Rittenhop.

Now, on the verge of our third LaBLove, we have a total of 11 LaBtechs, having added Mike Legett, Erin Kroll, Seth Baldwin, and Emily Fleck to our ranks. We have hundreds of dancers coming out each to our dances each week, Gordon Webster will be recording a live album at this year's LaBLove, and we have so much more in the pipeline. We LABtechs are especially proud of the innovative classes we teach, the great music we play, the enthusiasm and dedication of our students, and the friendly, fun, inspiring quality of our dances. We can't wait to show you what's in store this year!