Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.08.2016, Síða 28

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Choreography 28
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2016
“I found the strip club where I
worked to be like a micro version
of the world we live in, with the
exchange of money, hierarchies
and greed, only in a much smaller
sense,” Olga Sonja Thorarensen, a
dancer and actress, tells me. Along
with the theatre group Dance For Me,
she premiered ‘STRIPP’ August 24 in
Tjarnarbíó as part of the art perfor-
mance festival Everybody’s Spectacu-
lar.
I met Olga and Brogan Davison, her
co-performer in ‘STRIPP’, at Tjarnar-
bíó after a long rehearsal. Rehearsals
can often be quite demanding, they
tell me, as each run-through can open
up a three-hour discussion about
heavy topics. “We often return home
from practices with a headache,” Olga
says.

Becoming Donna

Olga graduated from drama school
in 2012 and afterwards started work-
ing with the Danish theatre group
SIGNA on a piece in which she played
the role of a strip dancer. After the
project finished she found herself to
be in debt, and after trying to pay it
off by working a “regular” job she de-
cided to give stripping a shot. She’d
heard the job paid well so she started
looking for strip clubs on TripAdvi-
sor. A few days later, she showed up
at one for an interview.
Olga danced to Madonna’s ‘’Jus-
tify My Love,’’ and got the job. When
her bosses asked what her stage
name would be, she decided on the
spot that she would be called Donna.
“Donna is another version of myself
I created while working at the strip
club,” Olga says now. After three
months as Donna, she was able to pay
off her debts. She kept a diary while
working at the club, and afterwards
decided to create a piece based on her
experiences.

Staging reality

“I contacted Brogan about two years
ago and told her my idea,” Olga tells
me, “I thought it would be interesting
to collaborate with her on this project
since she had previous experiences
with this kind of work.” The theatre
group Dance For Me consists of Bro-
gan and Pétur Ármannsson, who have
garnered attention for shows such as
‘Petra’ and ‘Dance for Me’.
“This is our third project and it is
similar to our previous work because
we are staging reality, real stories and
real experiences, all the while switch-
ing between fiction and nonfiction,”
Brogan explains. “I thought the proj-
ect sounded extremely interesting and
I found the story exciting. We’ve had
two whole years to work on this proj-
ect and the more we research and go
deeper into the subjects that this story
deals with, the more complex I find to
stage it.”
No conclusions

The production is a mix of choreogra-
phy and performance, with both Olga
and Brogan on stage. They wrote and
directed the show, and use their own
names while playing versions of them-
selves. Of the challenges in staging the
show, Brogan elaborates: “In the proj-
ect we are first and foremost dealing
with Olga and her story, but in this

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GPV.IS/STRIPP
Words ISAAC WÜRMANN Photos ART BICNICK and BÁRA KRISTINSDÓTTIR
“I found the strip club
where I worked to be
like a micro version of
the world we live in, with
the exchange of money,
hierarchies and greed, only
in a much smaller sense.”
Fiction/
Nonfiction
Strip Club
'STRIPP' at the Everybody's
Spectacular art
performance festival
Words & photos HREFNA BJÖRG GYLFADÓTTIR