Jo Strømgren Kompani: The Hospital at Den Norske Opera & Ballett

Jo Strømgren is in-house choreographer at Oslo Opera House and his The Hospital, which was selected as “The Sexiest Show of the Year” at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2006, shows three Icelandic nurses entertaining themselves by carrying out their duties on each other. This is not a particularly healthy activity, but it helps the time to pass in the absence of any patients. A military helicopter is incessantly circling over the building, which may be an explanation of why no-one is knocking at the hospital doors.

The Hospital was the first production put on by Jo Strømgren Kompani for female actors. The dialogue takes place in an Icelandic nonsense language – and even if this variant of Jo Strømgren’s typical feature doesn’t mean anything, the response of the audience to the performance makes it clear that they understand.

“The Hospital is physical theatre at its very best: daring, dark, unpredictable and charged with compressed intensity,” wrote The Guardian, whose reviewer couldn’t get over the courage and bravery of the actors.

The performance has been taken to 22 countries. The opera ran for three weeks at the Sydney Opera House, and it was received by standing ovations in Reykjavik, parodying as it does the people of Iceland. In Oslo, it has been put on at the National Theatre (2005) and at Dansens Hus (2008) – and is now finally coming to the Oslo Opera House, where Jo Strømgren is resident choreographer.

Jo Strømgren is a flexible prize-winning artist who was educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Ballet. Since his debut as choreographer in 1994, he has created performances for many stages – dance, theatre and opera – both in Norway and abroad. Strømgren has written many scripts for both film and theatre, and has worked with puppet theatre for both children and adults. His works at the Opera House have included The Four Seasons and Orpheus and Eurydice, while the Norwegian National Ballet has toured with his works Suite and Lamentate to Petersburg and Baden-Baden, respectively. He has been attached to the Norwegian National Ballet as resident choreographer since 2013.