Ride the Cyclone is the story of six children from a small Canadian town who die on a roller coaster. In the afterlife, they battle for the chance to come back to life by sharing their lives and expressing themselves one last time. Throughout this dark comedy, we see the intimate details of their lives, their regrets, and their passions. Each song throughout this show featured a new costume change, while the script demanded that the actors be on stage the entire time.

As the assistant costume designer, Rio designed the “Talia” number sung by the character Mischa, a Ukrainian bad-boy rapper who proclaims his love for his home country and for his fiancée. Because the characters only had 40 seconds to change, Rio had to simplify the traditional costumes of Ukraine without reducing them to a caricature. For the men, this was adding vests and red sashes, while the women wore white skirts with red embroidered aprons and flower crowns with traditional ribbons to be held and thrown while dancing. Some of the greatest inspirations for this set of costumes were the Hopak and Hatsulka dances, as well as the folk costumes of the Odessa and Kyiv regions.