Since I was a teenager, I’ve struggled to voice who I am to the world, mostly out of fear of being judged as the weird, spacey, interpretive-dancing, Latino kid. So I did what any teenager would do: I locked up my inner weirdo, threw away the key, and became a “normal” kid.

A real tragedy.

Two decades later, the seeds of Egregore sprouted in my Ayahuasca ceremony, while I was sharing sacred space with a lovely collective of human beings. We cried, we laughed, we…um, vomited. But it was in that moment, in a glimpse into eternity of my vomit bucket, that I found that special key again. This “egregore” brought me closer to myself, rooting me back into a sort of cosmic, infinitely abundant, self-love journey.

Egregore is a second coming-of-age story that follows Serenity’s similar cosmic journey of self-discovery, set against a tender backdrop of whimsy, ballet, and an enchanted bedroom forest puppet, Gregor, who helps guide her to embody her truest self, despite her family being against it. Co-written and starring my partner Sareen (a real-life ballerina), we found similarities in our story. We found that for us, some things, like our creative voice, can only be expressed through the body. Through the connection of movement.

There was a moment on set where Sareen and her family were explaining Serenity’s story to her 93-year-old grandmother, who plays Medzmama. They described, “A young girl with a quirky demeanor didn’t fit in…all she wanted to do was dance, but her family forbade her from dancing, shutting down her dreams.” As her grandmother heard these words, her jaw dropped, and she gasped, “That is my life,” she said in Armenian. With a furrowed brow, Sareen’s mother responded, “Your life? Excuse me, but that was my life.” Sareen stood there stunned, eyes welling. Unrealized dreams of Armenian women have led to a version of this story generation after generation, and in that moment we hoped to break the cycle. As the day went by, the Armenians on set sang together, cried together, and laughed together, creating an infectious egregore across the green room.

We were fortunate to make this film with some incredible partners like The Ebell of Los Angeles, founded by women during the women’s suffrage movement, along with Los Angeles Ballet and The Reef, a creative artist space. We were also graciously fiscally sponsored by From the Heart Productions and apprenticeship sponsored by Justice for My Sister.

At its heart, we made Egregore to connect to the joy in the absurdity of our existence. We crafted this story from a place of empathy to share and better understand our relationships with humanity through our art.

There’s no more time for silence; it’s time to dance.