This year I participated, along with two of my friends, Daana Leal and Dalia Ruíz (we’re all dance students at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California), in the Sky Islands Festival, conducting dance workshops for visitors, young students, and children from the community of Moctezuma, Sonora.
Additionally, I had the opportunity to present my first dance project with an environmental focus. Without a doubt, this was the perfect setting to share this work, surrounded by organizations, students, visitors, and volunteers interested in protecting and reconnecting with our natural environment.
Three years ago, after studying Biology and working full-time with Sky Island Alliance, I had to move to the city of Mexicali to study for a degree in Dance. One of the main motivations that led me to make that decision was realizing that at conservation and environmental education events, only Mexican folkloric dance groups were presented. It’s a wonderful representation of our culture, but I felt that another type of dance was missing, one that would dialogue directly with the objectives of these festivals: a dance that would speak about environmental issues and that would function as a means of protest, awareness, and reflection.
Many times people asked me: Why did you decide to study something so different from biology?
And my answer was the same: “I always wanted to study dance, even before studying biology, but having gone through biology gave me the answer to why I would study dance, and everything made more sense.”
Today, after three years of dance training, I managed to unite both paths with my first work: “Souls in Flight,” a piece inspired by the story of environmental activists and guardians of the monarch butterfly, who gave their lives to protect the forests where these butterflies hibernate. The choreography is a metaphor about life, death, and transformation—performed by Dalia Ruíz, Daana Leal, and Jazmín Hernández (whom I represented on this occasion).
The performance in Moctezuma, Sonora, was carried out in a surprising way, interrupting the festival’s closing dance. Perhaps at first it generated some discomfort, but it was precisely that disruption that captured the audience’s attention. “Souls in Flight” is something very different from what’s normally presented in the community, and for that very reason it fills me with joy to see how it was received with respect, emotion, and curiosity. The congratulations and words of encouragement from the audience reminded me why I do this: because art has the power to move, awaken, and transform.
I deeply thank Sky Island Alliance for the invitation, for the constant support, and for continuing to believe in me, now also as an artist. I hope this is only the beginning of a path where dance and biology continue to come together to defend life through movement, beauty, and consciousness.