A dance party catering to older women in the LGBT community returns to the William Way LGBT Community Center this weekend — and twice more later this year.
Stardust Dance Party will be held 7 p.m. Jan. 16 at the center, 1315 Spruce St. The event is geared toward women over 50, but all women are welcome.
Ed Miller, senior-programs coordinator at William Way, said the event, first held in 2013, grew out of a call for expanded women’s social programming.
“We were having monthly smaller events and the women who were coming said they really wanted a dance party,” Miller said. “So the first one went really well; we had more than 80 women turn out. And it showed us that these larger women’s events could be really successful.”
The party has been held annually since. Miller said board member Laurie Ward, who is involved with the center’s senior-women’s programming, proposed expanding Stardust events throughout the year, and center leadership backed the idea.
“Laurie, [program director] R. Eric Thomas and [development director] Ben Jones all came to me and we said let’s make this even bigger, so we put some money aside and were able to schedule three dances for 2016,” Miller said.
The party will return May 21 and Sept. 17.
Several women involved with the center’s senior programming have been key to organizing the events, Miller added.
“There are a couple women who are really interested in trying to build programs for older-adult women,” he said. “They really help a lot with volunteering in advance and setting up and cleaning up the day of. They’ve been very instrumental in telling us what the women want.”
For the first event, organizers featured a male DJ but the women who attended suggested a female would be more fitting, Miller noted, so they brought on DJ Sandi Stabler, a former DJ at Sisters.
Stabler will return to spin at this year’s rosters of events, which will include finger food, beer and wine.
Miller said organizers have reached out to leaders of organizations across the city to spread the word and continue the event’s record of attracting diverse partiers.
“We’ve always had a really good mix of women across the board; we had many African-American women, women of different ethnicities and from all different neighborhoods. It’s never been just women from Center City or South Philly, but also Mount Airy, West Philly, Northeast Philly. That’s really important because the idea is to connect women across the city and build bridges. This is a great opportunity to gather all these women together in the same place and have them walk away having made new connections and new friends.”
Stardust is in line with the center’s revamped commitment to women’s programming, Miller added.
Its monthly Women’s Wednesday, geared toward women over 50, is being reinvented and will soon be returning from hiatus, and the center will stage another Professional Women’s Power Hour Jan. 28, following the success of its first event this past fall.
“We’re really making a very strong effort to pay attention to what women are looking for,” Miller said.
Stardust runs from 7-10 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $15. Anyone unable to purchase a ticket who would like to attend should contact Miller at 215-732-2220 or at [email protected].