Dance club sells out Heated Rivalry themed party

Dance club Stardust Bar & Grill reached capacity at their Feb. 6 celebration of the hit TV show Heated Rivalry as 160 people took the floor dancing to remixes by Halifax DJ Tucker Trade.  

More than an hour before the event started, people stood in the cold waiting for the chance to grab one of the 20 first come first serve tickets being sold at the door.  

Twenty minutes before the party was set to start, Lucy Morrow and her friends were at the back of that line.  

“I feel like this space is going to be so inclusive and accepting and fun,” she told The Signal.  
There’s going to be a lot of queer people, but also people who share the same interests.”  

The night was inspired by the Crave TV series that’s taken the world by storm. Heated Rivalry follows the secret romance of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, captains of competing major hockey teams. 

Based on novels by Halifax’s Rachel Reid, the show has become massively popular, earning a 96 per cent approval on Rotten Tomatoes and a 8.9/10 on the Internet Movie Database.  

Inside the venue, the DJ swayed his hips and adjusted his sound board, the TV above his booth silently playing fan-made edits from TikTok.  

Nykki Detlor, aka DJ Tucker Trade, has been hosting nights at Stardust since last fall. When the bar’s event co-ordinator asked him to host, he jumped at the opportunity.  

“I just feel booked and blessed as they say,” Detlor told The Signal. “I didn’t imagine that it was gonna be this sold out …”  

Detlor said he was grateful for Stardust as a safe place for Halifax’s LGBTQ+ community in the wake of other queer performance venues being shut down. 

“We didn’t have spaces that were more predominantly queer,” he said. “And then Stardust opened, and it feels really good to be part of like your hometown’s local best queer dance-party place.”  

The setlist was inspired by and featured songs from Heated Rivalry’s soundtrack.  

“(The show) has a lot of this really funky sort of underground techno type music that I tried to mix in,” he said.  

Blue Reid, one of the party’s attendees, told The Signal, “It’s so much fun to dance with my boyfriend when everyone’s here because they watched a show about two boys … loving each other.”    

The party went on until the bar closed at 2 a.m. A second party on Feb. 15 also sold out.