Oasis of Serenity is a solo performance that weaves together a collection of horror imagery, hormones, and dances. A solitary presence moves through an unfolding landscape, seeking a portal for affective mattering, immersing in a mystical and hormonal experience that continuously mutates through movement. This body is neither fixed nor singular: it flickers, dissolves, and reconfigures, haunted by forces both seen and unseen.

Horror and fantasy, pleasure and fiction, the labyrinthine and the endless: this dance exists at the threshold, where the visible meets the invisible, where the body is stretched between states of becoming and undoing. A body both deeply personal and radically unfamiliar, guided by instincts and surges, bending to the rhythms of an internal dramaturgy dictated by the imperceptible forces of hormones, memories, and the echoes of past gestures.

The world is a little blurry
or maybe it’s my eyes.
I can’t see you anymore.
Bury all my things. I am on the edge of a nightmare.
I am stuck here, forever.

But the body keeps moving. Even in stillness, there is a pulse, a breath, a lingering vibration. Disjointed movements mirror an inner fragmentation, yet within the cracks, something stirs - something waiting to be named, waiting to emerge. A sweet yet dark techno melody seeps into the air, carrying with it traces of the past, whispers of invisible presences that materialize in the wake of each step.

My body.
My body.

The body as a threshold, a portal, an echo.

Oasis of Serenity does not seek closure, but rather continuation: an opening into the unknown, a space where tragedy, ecstasy, and transformation coexist, always on the edge of arrival.

ʚ♡ɞ

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Note: This text was written on the second day of my period - the most difficult day. I’ve been struggling to keep up with my usual routines as blood un-theatrically drips out of my body. When I think about it, I imagine the pace in which it is being soaked up by mixture cottons and genital stuffings. I am reduced to abdominal cramps that are coming in 30 minute waves every few hours. You are all very far from me - spatially, temporally. When you actually read this, I will be elsewhere, likely not bleeding.

Look front.
What do you see?
And what does she see?
She practices not seeing you.
Not not being impressed upon by you.

As the eyes open and roll about in the sockets, a knife comes in to sever the outside world and the visual world - what is seen is not shared. A world of images are entering into the body in real time. If the scenario was inverted, a chaotic cinema would be beaming from the pupils. The hinge of our (ever limited) access to visionary experience are the effects of reception which emanate from the undergoing body. Ecstasy, etymologically speaking, means to stand outside oneself. It is a subjective experience where where a person is totally and completely involved with an object of their awareness. An experiential immensity wherein the borders of the self-guided-self are risked, even if only momentarily. Ecstasy’s expression in grammar requires the exchange our precious ‘I’ for an ‘it’ or other third-person pronouns. She until I returns, once again. 

ADRENALINE DOPAMINE CORTISOL OXYTOCIN GROWTH HORMONE
SEROTONIN ENDORPHIN

This physical practice was derived from an experiential observing, submitting to, and participating in the hormonal landscapes that occur within the body - between micro-pulses and intermittent larger pulses. The above list cites the particular chemical messengers that are activated during a mystical experience. As signaling molecules, they travel through the blood in order to submit information between organs and tissues. The word hormone is even derived from the greek participle ὁρμῶν meaning ‘to set in motion’. Yet the effects that they exert are often far from the site of production. Note: There seems to be a circling back to the word ‘effects’- access via effects, effects versus origin [my head hurts]. In the context of the dance studio, hours and hours, various states of fatigue, lunches and snacks, energy highs and lows, have subjected this physical practice to a range of hormonal states and movement expressions. It is always the case, but here it is summoned, followed, and attended to. If practice articulates a return-without-repetition, then performance articulates an event-without-return. The hour arrives and here is the moment we know to incite the hormones. The heart beats faster, sweat begins to form in the armpits, there is a vague trembling of the knees. The ecstatic double emergence of an outside-other (audience) and an inside-other (hormone) produces in the performer an I that becomes she, the body subjected to stage.

Concept, choreography and performer: Laura Ramirez Ashbaugh
Mentor and dramaturgy: Bryana Fritz 
Sound: Fernanda Libman 
Light design: Pablo Fontdevila 
Set design/scenography: Javi Cruz 
Costume: Evadehouse 
Sculptures: Marina Glez Guerreiro 
External eye: Amparo Gonzalez Sola, Leandro Souza and Fernanda Libman 
Tutors: Konstantina Georgelou and Jeroen Fabius 
Supported by: DAS Choreography master (Amsterdam), Centro Cultural Conde Duque (Madrid), Ayudas a la creación contemporánea (Madrid), P.A.R.T.S summer residencies (Brussels), La Poderosa + Fabra I Coats (Barcelona), Festival Sàlmon (Barcelona), Mutis Espazioa (Bilbao) and IVAM museum+ciclo radicantes (Valencia). 
Thanks to Sergio Montesinos, Ainhoa Hernandez Escudero, Tete & Fer, Pipo the dog, Rosana & Raúl, Lu Millet, Lorenzo García-Andrade and las chicas. 
Thanks to DAS Choreography peers and staff: Julek Kreutze, Fernanda Libman, Nisha Ha, Tis Ali, Amador Ruiz Folini, Ahmed El Gendy, Simone Truong, Cornelius, Leandro Souza, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, juan felipe amaya gonzalez, Clarinde Wesselink, Setareh Fatehi, Alice Chauchat, velvet leigh, Harco Haagsma, and Udo Akemann