Laura Ramírez Ashbaugh

hi <3

After a long training in dance, physical theater and sports I realized that choreography aligns really well with my perception and interaction with the world. Choreography for me is an experimental framework in which I can think and practice with others. I understand choreography as a space where I can explore alternative forms of producing knowledge, dance, and sensitivities that set cosmologies in motion, which conjure different ways of being and seeing the world.

My work is an intersection in between dance, sound, images and sci-fi. Disarticulated bodies, deep hardcore techno, memories, the image that exists before the image, love and choreographic letters, readings, mediums, poems and movies are mostly part of my daily study.

In DAS Choreography I research my new project call Oasis of serenity. An oasis is an isolated spot in the desert where water and vegetation can grow. It is a landscape within another landscape. A possibility. A crack. A space of ideological resistance and generation of collective knowledge. As a choreographer, dancer and DJ, half Ecuadorian, half North American and born in Spain, I have always felt in an in-between place that I cannot name but that invites me to live in constant ambiguity.

I propose an oblique path, a deviant decision. A stay in the research and study while the piece is being made and the language is twisting. Incarnated voices and sound bodies will appear that echo in space through a body committed to sustaining a negotiation between desire, the materiality of gestures and affects, negotiating the different existing realities while creating a space for ambiguity and uncertainty community. Where is the oasis now that we are experiencing a process of climatic, social and political desertification?

With no nostalgia for the past and no specific future in mind, the Oasis of serenity is here, looking at your eyes searching the horizon. Through the fragmentation and unfolding of the body as a physical practice, I open an intermediate space for narratives and images. A game where ruin is the landscape that desperately invades the body of expectations, its speed and its actions.

Stop.

Take a deep breath.

OK.

Imagine the crack that opens in the Apocalypse. There resides oasis of serenity. It presents disjointed dances and a sweet melody from the darkest techno that makes your memories and invisible presences manifest here. Oasis of serenity has arrived to transfer its tragedy.

Laura Ramírez Ashbaugh (Madrid, 1988)

I am a choreographer, dancer, teacher and DJ based in-between Madrid and Amsterdam with my roots in Ecuador, north America and Spain.

In 2011 I graduated in physical theater at the Royal School of Dramatic Art and years later I studied Expanded Theatricalities-Body and Democracy in the context of the Master in scenic practice and visual culture of ARTEA and the Reina Sofía Museum. My dance and choreography studies are developed in schools like the Martha Graham School of contemporary dance in New York, SNDO in Amsterdam or PAF in France.

Since 2014 I’m part of Twins Experiment collective in which I develop, together with Ainhoa Hernandez Escudero, a work that has a lot to do with care, life, affections and horizontality.

I also collaborate with artists such as: María Jerez, Andrea Zavala Folache, Esther Merinero and Andrea Rodrigo.

My works have been seen in Mercat de les flors, Festival Grec, Center for Performance Research, Tanzquartier, Arqueologías del Futuro, Museo del Chopo, Zeitraumexit, Festival La Becquée, Antic Teatre, La Casa Encendida, Naves de Matadero Madrid, IVAM Museum, CA2M Museum, NF Galery, Conde Duque and PAF.

I am currently part of the education-mediation department in the Reina Sofía National Museum; having ten years of experience in education and pedagogy giving regular classes and labs/workshops in New York, Brussels, France and Madrid.

https://lauraramirezashbaugh.com