After various incarnations as a cinema, dance hall, roller rink, boxing, wrestling, vaudeville and sporting venue since 1911, The Rivoli in Parramatta, affectionately known as “the Riv”, was refurbished and re-opened after WWII to a crowd of 800 dancers and a 14-piece orchestra. It’s Friday night “Old Time Dances” put Western Sydney on the nation’s social radar with 2UE recording live every week and broadcasting across the country.
After various incarnations as a cinema, dance hall, roller rink, boxing, wrestling, vaudeville and sporting venue since 1911, The Rivoli in Parramatta, affectionately known as “the Riv”, was refurbished and re-opened after WWII to a crowd of 800 dancers and a 14-piece orchestra. It’s Friday night “Old Time Dances” put Western Sydney on the nation’s social radar with 2UE recording live every week and broadcasting across the country.
Dance, in the Rivoli’s heyday, was a means of drawing community together. By imagining what the Riv might look like today, almost 50 years after it was demolished to build a tax building, DMC will investigate the world of the dance hall and shed light on the history and importance of the Riv, through contemporary dance, community dance, music, oral histories and site-specific design.
“Reviving the Riv” highlights the potency of dance to create spaces of social cohesion, intergenerational contact, community and collective experience, things that seem sorely lacking in our contemporary social lives.
Choreography, Direction and Performers: Matt Cornell, Anya Mckee, Sophia Ndaba, Melanie Palomares, Katina Olsen, Marnie Palomares, Carl Sciberras, Miranda Wheen and Rosslyn Wythes
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