Alexa Mardon

Alexa Solveig Mardon’s interests lie in practices of collaborative sensing: paying attention to what is rarely named but always known. Alexa studies movement through dancing, bodywork, political actions, and poetics. Alexa is a queer second generation settler of Finnish/Karelian/British Isles descent living as an uninvited guest on the illegally occupied, unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples.

Long term relational entanglement, friendship and devotion are at the centre of Alexa’s work which has taken forms including public installation, print objects, rituals for touch and alchemy, movement workshops for frontline support workers, therapeutic movement for families, collective dreamwork, anti-fascist fundraisers/script writing sessions for calling MPS around critical issues, traditional Karelian lament singing, and facilitating dialogues around performance, consent, and power.

Alexa’s work has been presented by OFFTA (Montreal,) Boombox Vancouver, PS: We are All Here (Toronto), Kinetic Studios (Halifax), Dance In Vancouver, 12 Minutes Max (Vancouver), Surrey Art Gallery, and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Alexa's poetry, fiction and essays have been published by ISSUE Magazine, Charcuterie, LINE, The Dance Current, and The Dance Centre, as guest editor of the Capilano Review (co-edited with Aisha Sasha John, forthcoming winter 2021). As an interpreter, Alexa performs actively across Canadian contemporary dance platforms in the work of artists including Justine A. Chambers, Ziyian Kwan, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Vanessa Goodman/Action at a Distance, battery opera performance, Sasha Klienplatz, and Benjamin Kamino.

As a teacher/facilitator, Alexa is committed to anti-oppressive frameworks, unlearning unhealthy relationships to obedience and power, and creating spaces where autonomy, rigorous play, and selfhood can flourish.

Alexa is currently completing their masters at DAS Choreography, University of the Arts. Amsterdam, where their research focuses on dreaming, writing + movement practices that seek anti-colonial mythical, queer + speculative relations with ancestors of all species.

as one half of Mardon + Mitsuhashi, Alexa makes immersive + multimedia performances with Erika Mitsuhashi.