port of everywhere is the spillage, the excess of the archive, the unruly host for research by Alexa Solveig Mardon. port of everywhere is the umbrella title for multiple tendrils of research conducted over the last 2 years at DAS choreography: a speculative fictional book, a dance and hosting practice, and questions about imperfect access-as-artistic-practice. The story port of everywhere is a steep and queer departure from the national Finnish epic the Kalevala, Alexa’s matrilineal histories, and messages from the dream realm.

Compiled and written by medical worker Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala is flesh cut by the knife of Lönnrot’s desire: to create a cohesive poetry of a country’s becoming. Published in 1835, the epic sparked a national movement for this independence, a drive to solidify Finland’s place in the European imagination as a civilized nation. The giants, bear-worshippers and witches, mythologized into written language and history could be tucked into pages: no longer exceeding borders, wandering land. The Kalevala’s colonial and Christian lens attempts to contain multiple, unruly and appropriated oral histories. 

The Kalevala’s giant, Antero Viipunen, who holds creation stories in their guts, is one of many obstacles the hero Väinämöinen must vanquish on his way to retrieving the Sampo: a mysterious and unnamed technology. Antero shares a name with my maternal grandmother Solveig’s young companion in the church of Theosophy in Helsinki, one of her partners in accessing multiple realms.

I host the story, and the story hosts me, in order to dance with these ancestors I’ve never met. I know I am dreaming when I see water. Am I setting traps of Antero, or are they setting traps for me? 

I acknowledge that research for this work has taken place on the illegally occupied and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples, and in Amsterdam, home of many unnamed ancestral ghosts and spirits. I am grateful to the waters and lands of these places, which have guided me most of all through this process. 

Thank you to Zahra, Erika, Rhyan, Even, Alysha,  Flávia, Forough, Amparo, Rianne, Aisha, Francesca and Su-Feh, without whose kinship and wisdom this work would not exist. 

Thank you to Ainhoa, Fernanda, Tiana and Matilda for taking a deep dive this last fall. 

The work has been supported by: DAS choreography, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council.

Choreography/direction/performance/text: Alexa Solveig Mardon

Spatial considerations/light and projection: Erika Mitsuhashi

Sound design: Fernanda Libman 

scenography assistance: Alex VDA

in conversation with: Staci BuShea, Annick Kleizen

Text recording and dramaturgy: Even Minn 

Mentorship/inside eye, dance: Zahra Shahab, Lee-Su Feh 

Website design: Brynn Catherine McNab

Video recording, website: Alysha Seriani 

Mentorship/inside eye, text: SF Ho, Aisha Sasha John

costume: Jae Woo Kang, Rhyan McCorkindale, Alex VDA