Premiere, Festival of New Dance, St. John’s, NL, Oct 2019, photo Adam Hefferman
Created and performed by Sarah Joy Stoker, Fort/tress continues to explore the common themes in Stoker's work: ecological crises, extinction, displacement, conservation, and stewardship, industry, consumption, consumerism and the problem of a fundamental disconnect from the natural world. Fort/tress is about women. It is about strong women and not so strong women, forceful and powerful women, injured and dismantled women, manipulated women, oppressed women, women who love sex and women who hate it. It is about women who carry their babies to safety across deserts and seas, women who wait in lines for doctors and food, it is about the animals in women, the vital power and connection to the earth and the giving and preserving of life. This work puts sexuality (and sexualization) on display– Stoker’s white, cisgender moving body treads a thin and tenuous line between submission and repression, misogyny, aggression, power, pain, control and pleasure.
Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the City of St. John's.
2019 - Premiered at Neighbourhood Dance Works’ Festival of New Dance, LSPU Hall
2020 - Presented at the Quarter Block Party Festival, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland
PIG event (Performance Inquiry Group), Maddox Cove, NL, August, 2018, Photos by Michael Luke
