Sara Porter expresses her love of the ocean in absurdly funny ways in ‘L-E-A-K’

“It’s a jumble of craziness.” That’s how Toronto’s Sara Porter describes “L-E-A-K,” the new 65-minute performance piece she’s unveiling this week at the Theatre Centre.

The description could be applied with equal aptness to such previous Porter creations as “Getting to know your Fruit” or “This is my Math Dance.”

“I like to put a lot of things together in a space and let the intersections speak for themselves,” Porter explained.

Yet, crazy as they may seem on the surface, Porter’s madcap, absurdist, metaphor-laden performances, derived from and referencing her own life experience, are the outcomes of careful research and offer much food for thought.

In the case of “L-E-A-K,” Porter reflects on the timeless power of the sea and the broader fluidity of the human condition.

She launches an assault on the futile attempt to bring order to the chaos of human existence by slotting things into tidy categories. In her view, categories are very leaky constructions. In the process, among other concerns in “L-E-A-K,” Porter explores the theory of horizons, swimming safety and homosexuality among seagulls. And did we mention the game-show episode?

There is also an accompanying gallery exhibit, but at the core is the notion of ecosexuality, which is where it all started.

Porter hails from Nova Scotia. “I was almost born on the beach,” she said, a matter expanded on in surreal terms at the beginning of “L-E-A-K.”

Porter’s father was a United Church minister. The family moved around the province several times from parish to parish until settling in Halifax in Porter’s teens. Like most Maritimers, she feels an affinity with the sea and, in Porter’s case, particularly with the Bay of Fundy, home to the world’s highest tides.

“I spend time at the Bay of Fundy and have a family home there that I go to with my kids,” Porter said.

“I like to go down to the shore and I sit on the rocks and just watch the tide move. It’s such a powerful experience to see only the water, the rocks and the sky in their epic ancientness. I would feel my own temporariness … like a little biological moment but, strangely, I also got kind of erotically turned on and would feel both that self-saturated sense of my body but also the overall sense that I just want to slide into the water.

“It feels like a profound communion with the natural world. If it had happened once I might have forgotten it, but it kept on happening. So I thought maybe I should make a piece about this.”

Through her reading, Porter discovered this Earth-loving sensation has been given a name: ecosexuality, first articulated by American sexologist Annie Sprinkle and her life partner, multidisciplinary artist Beth Stephens. In 2008, the couple performed a “Wedding to the Earth,” one of nine such events that included a 2011 “White Wedding to the Snow” at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts in Ottawa.

“My version of that notion,” said Porter, “is that unless we fall in love with the ocean and the natural world with as much passion as we feel for one another we won’t be able to save the world.”

It is a serious proposition, but Porter has learned that sometimes the best way to communicate ideas is to use humour as the medium, jamming together apparently incongruous elements, whether danced, recited or conveyed through costuming and props.

“That’s partly where the humour comes in because it does become absurd,” said Porter. “I mean I’m wearing a wedding dress with a seagull on my head, and I’m wearing flippers and I’m doing ballet. And to me that makes perfect sense.”

Porter’s career so far has spanned the worlds of performance and academia. She initially studied biochemistry on full scholarship at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., but graduated in 1988 with an honours fine arts bachelor’s degree. She later earned a master’s in dance studies from England’s University of Surrey.

Porter has held full-time teaching positions in Canada as well as during a four-year sojourn in Scotland. Along the way she has developed her craft as a multidisciplinary artist and, for the past decade, has developed an influential specialty in the deployment of personal memoir as a means of both self-discovery and making art. Porter has also increasingly explored the risk-loaded but potentially revelatory practice of improvisation in performance.

Porter, a proudly queer feminist, works in the community to bring art and dance to marginalized and underserved groups. As a public performer she is noted as a solo artist.

It was the 2014, extensively toured “Sara does a Solo,” about the complexities of being a mother of three and a practising artist, that announced her return to live performance after an eight-year hiatus. But for “L-E-A-K” she shares the stage with Jessie Garon.

“There’s a bit of a battle between us,” Porter said. “I’m in my mid-50s. Jessie is in her early 30s. As a duet it’s about the leaking between Jessie and me. She’s the incoming tide. I’m the outgoing tide. It was a moment of realization in rehearsal that I admit was a hard one. You know, I’m not getting any younger.”

But perhaps getting wiser?

“I feel at this age that’s there’s a permission within myself for the richness of all the things I’ve experienced and think about. And I give myself more permission to move ahead fully with what it is I see and think and hear, and what I want to do.”

This has included presenting herself as a dancing banana or, in the case of “L-E-A-K,” the ocean’s bride.

“Dressing up is something I love to do,” said Porter.

“I feel I can say more true things when I dress up. I think I’m an entertainer at heart. I get onstage in front of people and I like to make people laugh.

“I find the world absurd and delightful and heavy and, in this work, there are sections that are darker, that are more intimate. It requires a different type of bravery to reveal that part of myself. But for the most part, the show has turned out to be much more delightful and funny than I anticipated.”

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