Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2017, Síða 42

Things 42The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 05 — 2017
Melkorka
Sigríður
Magnúsdóttir
Musician, Dancer
In “Making of an Artist,” we ask notable
members of Reykjavík’s arts scene to
tell us about the formative works and
experiences that helped them along on
their creative journey. Our first sub-
ject is Melkorka Sigríður Magnúsdót-
tir: the dancing, whirling, grinning
f rontwoman you might know f rom
our favourite electro-pop party band,
Milkywhale. Here are her selections.
1. ‘Beauty and the Beast’
on the West End
I was eleven, and blown away by the
whole show: the singers, choreog-
raphy, glitter, costumes... I still keep
the programme on my bookshelf.
2. Körper - Sasha Waltz
My mother took me to see this perfor-
mance at the Reykjavík Arts Festival
in 2004. The whole show was such an
intense explosion of ideas. It influ-
enced my decision to study choreog-
raphy and performance in [mainland]
Europe. I just wanted to get to know
everything that was happening in
the performing arts scene over there.
3. Screensaver - Icelandic
Dance Company
This piece is by an Israeli choreogra-
pher, and I remember how different
it felt from everything the Icelandic
Dance Company had been doing until
then. It was super technical and really
hardcore. The style was so specific, and
the “wow!” factor was definitely there.
4. The World in Pictures -
Forced Entertainment
I'd just moved to Amsterdam in 2006
and went to see this performance. It
started with a one-and-a-half hour
monologue, and more than half of the
audience walked out. The show was
based on the idea of telling the history
of the world from the cavemen until
today. It was so messy and great. I'm
always impressed when theatre art-
ists manage to stage complete chaos.
The dark ages were realized by dim-
ming the lights and presenting a
wildlife slideshow on a Macook while
performers dressed as monks threw
fake snow around. You get the idea.
5. Rosas Danst Rosas - Anna
Teresa De Keersmaker
Beyoncé's music video “Countdown”
is basically stolen from ‘Rosas Danst
Rosas’. The original version is over
twenty years old, and so much bet-
ter! There’s something so original,
weird and strong about these move-
ments, which I hadn't really seen be-
fore in dance. Complete girl power.
6. Show Must Go On - Jérôme Bel
This piece is extremely simple. One DJ,
nineteen pop songs and twenty danc-
ers. The DJ plays songs from a stack of
CDs. The first song ("Tonight" from
‘West Side Story’) is played to a dark
auditorium. “Let the Sunshine In”
brings a dawning of the stage lights.
During the Beatles' "Come Together,"
the performers walk onstage and stand
still in a line. Roughly thirty seconds
into David Bowie's "Let's Dance," they
start groovin' it. And it goes on like
this until the end. So simple. Saw this
performance in Brussels and loved it.
7. Robyn at Iceland Airwaves
2010 and Rock Werchter 2011
I am inspired by the particular abil-
ity of live music to affect an audi-
ence in a very primal way. For me
Robyn does exactly that through her
quirky performance and great music.
I was completely blown away when I
saw her perform at Airwaves in 2010
and again in Belgium the year after.
8. ‘Shaking the Habitual’ Tour -
The Knife at O2 London
The Knife put on such crazy shows. I
absolutely loved Shaking the Habitual,
a night blurring the boundaries be-
tween a concert and a performance.
You didn't know which of the perform-
ers was singing, what was "live" and
if anyone was really playing an in-
strument. I was like WHAT IS THIS,
WHERE CAN I JOIN THIS CULT? It was
a show in every sense of the word—
the essence of a performance band.
SHARE: gpv.is/tm05
MAKING OF AN
ARTIST
Words:
Melkorka Sigríður
Magnúsdóttir
Photo:
Art Bicnick
SAGA RECAP
Words:
Grayson Del Faro
Illustration:
xxxxx
“What is this?!
Where can
i join this
cult?!”
Saga of Gísli Súrsson
There are more sex jokes in the sagas
than you might guess, and neither
jokes about butt-sex nor the literary
masterpieces of the genre are exempt.
The Saga of Gísli Súrsson begins with
a good old-fashioned Norwegian fam-
ily feud in which a guy named Skeggi
asks his carpenter to carve a wooden
statue of Gísli with another dude’s dick
in his butt as an insult. Gísli happens
to be hiding in the bushes nearby and
he jumps out and cuts off Skeggi’s leg,
later killing him. I like to think that he
dies in the name of sodomy. So before
the real story starts, let’s have a mo-
ment of silence for Saint Skeggi, pa-
tron saint of anal.
Bromance is dead
Due to this feud, Gísli and his fam-
ily move to Iceland, leaving behind all
this business about who puts what in
whose behind. They all marry into re-
spectable Icelandic families. Gísli lives
with his wife Auður, brother Þórkell,
and his wife Ásgerður, while Gísli and
Þórkell’s sister Þórdís lives nearby with
her husband Þórgrímur. There is also
a guy named Vésteinn, the brother of
Gísli’s wife. I know this seems confus-
ing as hell, but I’ve already narrowed
out like fourteen other dudes also
named Þórsomething so this is as sim-
ple as it can get. Sorry not sorry.
The four brothers-in-law show up
at Parliament dressed like rich bitches
and do nothing but drink. This causes
lots of gossip about them, including
a prophesy that their friendship is
doomed. When the brothers-in-law
hear about this, they decide to avert
it by taking the oath of blood-brother-
hood. In this case it means making a
fort of grass, mixing their blood into
the dirt, and holding hands, exactly
like little boys would probably do. But
Þórgrímur won’t hold hands with Vé-
steinn because they’re not related, so
Gísli is like, “Fine, then I won’t hold
hands with you because you won’t hold
hands with my bff.” Then he realizes it
was all for nothing and tells Þorkell,
“We’re basically fucked.”
Murder (not so) mystery
One day Þorkell overhears Auður ac-
cuse his wife Ásgerður of wanting to
bone her brother Vésteinn instead of
her own husband. Ásgerður is like,
“Yeah, and?” When he won’t let her into
the bed that night, Ásgerður threatens
to divorce him. When he declines a di-
vorce, she assumes they can just fuck
their way to forgiveness and every-
thing seems fine. When Vésteinn had
gone abroad, Gísli had broken a coin in
half and they each took one, like those
children’s friendship necklaces popu-
lar in the 1990s. Gísli sends his piece to
Vésteinn warning him to come home
because everything is in fact not fine.
As the prophesy foretold, they’re
fucked. Meanwhile, Þorkell meets
with a wizard who forges a spear for
him from the broken pieces of a fam-
ily sword. When Vésteinn ignores
Gísli’s warning and returns anyway,
he is promptly speared to death in the
night by an anonymous killer. Who-
ever could it be? Well Gísli, genius as he
is, has dreams that point the finger at
Þorgrímur so he sneaks into his place
at night and spears him right back.
Lather, rinse, revenge
Þórdís wastes no time in marrying her
dead husband’s brother Börkur, nor in
having her own brother charged with
outlawry for the murder. The rest of
the saga passes as a montage of Gisli
finding strange new places to hide
only to be discovered by Börkur and his
cousin Eyjólfur, then escaping, and do-
ing it all again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
He also encounters all kinds of
freaks and geeks along the way. Most
notably there is a guy who keeps his
gigantic troll-child on a leash outside
his home and a woman so obscene that
she successfully repels the search party
by offending them with her mouth-
fuckery. This all goes on for years and all
the while he is haunted by a mysterious
woman in his dreams, probably a beau-
tiful personification of his guilt or some
shit like that. You know, literature.
Sadly, they find him in the end.
When they attack, even Auður helps
to fight them off with a club. They cut
him open and his entrails spill out but
he gathers them up, shoves them back
in, and keeps fighting until he keels
over. When Eyjólfur returns to gloat
to Börkur about news, Þórdís has some
deep feels about her brother’s death. So
she stabs Eyjólfur in the leg, declares
herself divorced from Börkur, and
walks the fuck out.
READ THEM ALL: gpv.is/sagas
Morals of the story:
1. Violence begets trauma.
2. Seriously, dude, see a psychiatrist.