Viva Las Vegas (dancer)

Liv Osthus, better known by her stage name Viva Las Vegas, is a writer, musician, actress, activist, and, for more than 25 years, stripper.

She has written for the The Village Voice, The New York Times Magazine, and other national and regional publications, and published two books about her experiences on stage.

Her story inspired both a feature-length documentary, Thank You for Supporting the Arts, and a one act opera, Vivas's Holiday.

Geek Love author Katherine Dunn anointed her the "Diva of the Demimonde".

She's been dubbed the most literate and most famous stripper in Portland.

Willamette Week noted she has been a "renaissance woman who's authored memoirs, sings punk and French medieval music alike, and has beaten breast cancer to perform into her 40s".

In 1975, Osthus was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Mark and Christine Osthus.

Her father was a Lutheran pastor.

Both parents have indicated that Osthus enjoyed performing as a child, and her mother thought she may choose a theatrical career.

Osthus has indicated that she had trouble maintaining relationships as a child, which continued until she was accepted into Portland's punk scene.

Osthus received a degree in cultural anthropology from Williams College.

During her degree, she completed field work in Bali and East Africa analyzing societal traditions.

These excursions encouraged her to learn conversational Indonesian and Swahili language, in addition to her knowledge of French and German.

She has indicated that her academic training resulted in her thinking critically about sexual mores.

Osthus’ first experience inside a strip club was during a collegiate spring break, and she has spoken at length about her initial surprise at discovering both the artistry of the performances and the intimacy between performers and audience.

“The actual human connection was different from so much theater and art I’d seen … in college, where it tends to be really intellectual,” she recalled.

“It’s the difference between listening to a … CD and going to a rock show.” Even when starting out, she never remembers feeling the strip club was somehow different from any other stage.

After decades of performances in venues of every size across the globe, she's defined three guiding principles – “connection is paramount, sex work is important … and stripping is art!”

Shy and body-conscious during adolescence, she believes stripping helped her find comfort within her own skin for the first time.

Explaining why she prefers to perform entirely naked on stage instead of donning a g-string or similar garment intended to aid the partial concealment of genitals many state and civil authorities now demand, Osthus has said that she finds the shameful implications distasteful.

“What she loves most about stripping,” acclaimed arts website Hyperallergic wrote, “is its celebration of the body, that sex itself is a delight

She has been accused of romanticizing the industry as a stripper pollyanna relentlessly shilling only the most positive aspects of the profession.

In an excerpt from her memoir published by the Portland Mercury, it’s implied she left data entry for stripping largely because she preferred the sex workers’ fashion sense.

At the same time, she did recognize the larger societal implications when first climbing on stage in 1997 as a penniless young writer trailing an awful breakup.

“My new career," she wrote, "preacher’s daughter thrown to the wolves in a dirty timber town."

In 2008, Osthus was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She was just 33 and had no familial history with the disease.

Already wearied after a dozen years at her craft, she'd felt for some time that her stripping career neared the end, and, one week before her diagnosis, Osthus had taken the Mary's Club stage to the tune of The Rolling Stones “Dontcha” for what she believed to be her final performance.

Dr. Nathalie Johnson, a former dancer who'd spent a season with the Alvin Ailey company before focusing upon medicine, conducted surgery to remove her left breast on September 28.

Soon after, she returned to the stage — realizing anew the importance of Mary's as sanctuary and her dancing compatriots as found family.

Moreover, she found herself surprisingly excited to rejoin her comrades.

“Seeing those women in the dressing room, trading stories … I’m probably more jazzed than … i was ten years ago.”

Osthus has stated that dancing forced her to confront newly awakened insecurities and said that nurses often recommend other cancer patients visit her at Mary's. Arguing that her swift return to the stage following the procedure helped heal her body and mind, she has even joked that her cancer treatment facility needs a pole.

"I felt so distant from my body after that initial mastectomy. Then, back on stage, no one noticed."

Additionally, the 2015 birth of her daughter Charlotte underlined the importance of a dependable revenue stream that would not curtail family time.

Well aware that most dancers do not consider their stagecraft especially artistic, Osthus doesn't try to correct their perceptions but does feel a certain responsibility to emphasize the work of sex workers as actual labor.

“This is the more-viable career, and I can be my own boss in this industry.” she told Willamette Week.

“Sex work can be a godsend for entrepreneurial women.”

Although certainly older than the average sex worker, Osthus has previously pointed to the example set by octogenarian dancers maintaining regular shifts in Las Vegas.

She credits mom-and-pop-type bars like Mary's with extending her time on stage as well as the general expectations of Portland, where it's not uncommon to see dancers last more than a decade at the same club and (she believes) depth of sincerity matters more to audiences than tautness of flesh.