This festive season, Santa brought Sydney a big bag of party in the form of Ivy’s Courtyard Party. From midday onwards, people came from all corners of the city to pack Ivy’s pool bar and courtyard to capacity, staying until the wee hours of the morning.

The planets had well and truly aligned for Boxing Day, with all the elements in place for a smashing end to the year: sunshine and dancing to get you sweaty, a pool and cheap drinks to cool down and a list of local and international favourites covering party music from a to b to work off the Christmas calories.

With the sun coming out in force after an extended hiatus, people were flocking to the pool for a dip to escape the heat and to find some space amongst the standing-room-only crowd up at the Pool Bar. They were also treated to the best seats in the house, as the stage is a 360-degree set-up, with the front precariously close to the edge of the pool and the revellers within.

The Shapeshifters laid down the perfect soundtrack to the lush surrounds of the Ivy’s upper level. The duo free-styled through tracks representing a couple of styles of house before finishing with their trademark, uplifting summer house music which saw grins all round, fists pumping, people splashing and hips shaking.

If the Pool Bar was packed for the Shapeshifters, then the crowd was busting at the seams for Nervo in the Courtyard below.

Nervo ( duo Mim and Liv) have had a big past couple of years and evidence of their popularity could be found all round the Courtyard, with someone to be found in a Nervo tee-shirt at every turn. The pair don’t appear to have picked up any foreign accent while living in abroad for the past couple of years, but they may have picked up a trick or two on the decks. Their performance, which consisted of their own productions and well-known party bangers, whipped the crowd into a frenzy: people stormed the stage to dance, climbed onto friend’s shoulders and jumped up and down with hands in the air screaming for more.

By the time they dropped their collaboration with Steve Aoki and Afrojack We’re All No One, the place ignited in flames – a scene more common at Field Day or Parklife main stages, only on a much more intimate scale.

After the madness of Nervo, Art vs Science followed. The guys started up with a fun, jokey mood, leading in with Twist and Shout by the Beatles – a good indication of what was to come, as their set had an eclectic mix of tracks.

The crowd was loving the set from the start, but the bomb properly dropped when they unleashed a rendition of Magic Fountain, which resulted in Jim Finn jumping onto the speakers and trashing like a man possessed. The showmanship was well received – people followed the lead from the stage and danced it up, getting lost in their own personal party, something made easier by the veil of smoke that would intermittently cut you off from the hundreds of other revellers directly around you.

As the sun set, few knew what was in store as the stars came out both literally and metaphorically. As good as everyone was, Tigerlilly was the proverbial Star of Bethlehem for the night.

She played a set that moved from banger to banger and read the crowd to a tee. Mixing on the spot, she moved from tracks like the Caveat remix of Dada Life’s_ Happy Violence_ through to Avicii’s Levels and most of the other party bangers doing the rounds on the club circuit at the moment.

Her choice of tracks provided exactly what they crowd wanted and they showed their approval through their feet and hands, which for the most part were constantly stomping and raised accordingly. By this stage, what appeared to be Tigerlilly’s entourage had joined her on stage and a crew of about six or seven people were cutting loose behind the decks, jumping up and down, feeding off the energy from the crowd and just having loads of fun.

The numbers in the Courtyard grew with the passing of the day, those who were too worn out from an early start were replaced two fold by the night owls and the late to rise, leading to little space, but one hell of an atmosphere.

Tigerlilly’s set was the first of darkness and the full effect of the production values could properly be felt, which probably added to the enormity of her set. The scale of the lights, strobes, smoke and whatever else was going on was immense, and the sea of people, one hundred deep, were bathed in Christmas greens and reds, in addition to brilliant flashes of light that lit the place up like an incandescent bomb every time the music dropped. Naturally, this all made people want to cut loose, and as the sun faded, so too did people’s inhibitions.

Unfortunately, with a day as big as this, it’s simply impossible to catch all thirty-some DJs on the lineup, including the Italian Mowgli, who I would have loved to see but could not.

But from what I saw, the standard was high in all areas of the establishment, with people laughing and dancing at every turn – Ivy’s latest courtyard party definitely lived up to their esteemed reputation.