Audience participation mandatory: Leeds’ Stretchy Dance Supply want you to get your sweat on

Functions is our interview series profiling parties from across the world. Next up is Leeds’ Stretchy Dance Supply

“The story of Stretchy Dance Supply begins as all Leeds promoter stories do: Students taking a house party dead seriously,” reminisces the team behind the Leeds-based club night. “It’s a point of pride. Who can take it the furthest?”

Long before their breakout as solo artists, Ross Ross, Dubrunner, Breaka and Sourpuss had a mission to host the best house parties in Leeds. While studying at university, the foursome found abandoned mansions on the outskirts of the city to throw parties — growing in infamy for their knack for transforming rooms into tropical jungles or tinfoil space stations. “It was commonplace to have proper dub soundsystems, multiple rooms of DJs, bouncers on the door, a NOS bar in the attic,” they recall.

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By 2018, the group were starting to throw events in fully-fledged venues around the city, based on the “Stretchy prototype” of Breaka’s university basement. With their parties picking up traction, they just needed a theme, a theme that would set them apart from the multitude of student knees-ups you’d find in Leeds at the time. The group took a punt at aerobics-based club workouts, bringing together adrenaline-pumping exercises with rapid-fire sounds spanning jungle, breaks, juke, Jersey club and everything in between — a slapstick pairing that seemed to just work.

After six years, Stretchy Dance Supply has brought speed demons from all over the world to Leeds, from Kush Jones and UNIIQU3 to Nikki Nair and Jossy Mitsu. Even with billings bigger than ever, Stretchy still aims to propel new talent from the Yorkshire area, providing a platform next to global artists in a bid to pay back to the local scene and dance music community.

In celebration of Stretchy Dance Supply’s sixth birthday this month, we chatted with Ross Ross, Dubrunner, Breaka and Sourpuss about their beloved venture. So pull up your socks, grab a dumbbell, and get your sweat on. This is the story of Stretchy Dance Supply.