Tarantella

From the sixties and well into the seventies Skive’s most popular dance restaurant, “Tarantella”, was located on Asylgade. The picture above also shows the disco “Kræn Spillemand” on the corner of Asylgade and Vestergade, which had a shorter lifespan in the premises that previously housed the pub “Gravens Rand”. Here, however, the story is about Tarantella.

Live music

Tarantella was built in the sixties and until the mid-seventies the owner and host was the legendary “Pedersen”. The name Tarantella refers to a Spanish dance, and the facade of the building was kept in dark red colors with a large neon sign at the top. The interior was also kept in the muted dark red colors. The establishment had live music five days a week with orchestras that changed every month. Most often it was a trio, but larger orchestras also found their way to Skive. Perhaps some of the guests of the time remember Karl Petters Trio (“Stik mig en Hof”), Jens Hamburgers Trio and Kivi/Woodoo.

Tarantella was a large dance hall by the standards of the time. Facing the street was a smaller hall with a bar. Here, on the first nights of the week, you could sit quietly and listen to the monthly orchestra while enjoying a beer and a sandwich. From the small hall you stepped down to a landing with tables and chairs where you could sit and watch the large dance floor below and therefore have a good view of both the audience and the orchestra on stage at the back of the room. In the bottom corner of the dance hall to the right of the stage, an opening led to a bar. The large dance hall was used from Thursdays, when there was a widow’s ball. In Tarantella’s heyday, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays were an inferno of dance-loving people, and there must be someone in Skive and the surrounding area who frequented Tarantella back in the day who has found their new home in this legendary place.

The last times

In 1976, Tarantella had changed owners when an Aalborg restaurateur named Ove Jensen bought the place. Hoping to compete with the city’s other dance venues, including discos, Ove Jensen undertook a major remodeling and also tried his hand at larger orchestras. Later, the young law student Erik Holst – also from Aalborg – took over the venue and in the same breath bought the competing dance venue “Kilden- Krikken” on Søndre Boulevard. When he went bankrupt, another Aalborg man named Kurt Færch bought the place. Remodeling, bigger orchestras, changing owners did not help. Dance restaurants with live music had become too expensive to run, and in 1979 Kurt Færch sold the buildings to Kvickly.

Today, there are residential buildings on the entire corner of Asylgade and Vestergade.