We connect with one another so we don’t fall, so the wind and erosion don’t sweep us away. We inhabit a world we have built for ourselves, and we walk on, destroying but also honoring this, our land.
KIN is a film informed by the study of environmental science, which seeks to explore, through the body, the wounds of pollution and the life force that drives us toward hope.
Dance: Rocio Luna, Mauricio Nava, Jay-Wan Pattiwael
Playwright: Claudia Fragoso
Production Director and Second Camera: Ana Baer
First Camera: Karl Toft
Drone Operator: Luis Hernández
Editing: Ana Baer
Original Music and Sound Mixing: Richard D. Hall
Voice: Rocio Luna
Costume Design and Construction: Alexander Ammi, Lizette Zenteno, and Rocio Luna
Production Team: Ever Ávila and Carlos Fernández
Environmental Consultant: Cynthia Armendáriz
Direction: Ana Baer, Rocio Luna
Production: Alebrije, TXST, CAAE-UMSNH
Location: Morelia, Michoacán, and Laguna Seca, Jalisco, Mexico
KIN 2026
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Compost 2025
Together we compost in a new breeding ground—one made of waste, bodies, air, sea, bugs, rocks, and sand. We live crawling, scaly, and damp at the dawn of another genesis for the world.
Inspired by Donna Haraway’s creation of networks of speculative fabulation, we set out to creatively and transdisciplinarily explore rhizomatic relationships that intra/inter/dis/connect us, in search of regenerative policies for living together in a multispecies world. This is our experience.
Direction: Ana Baer, Rocio Luna
Production: ALEBRIJE ARTS - Funding: UMSNH, TXST
Dance: Rocio Luna, Mauricio Nava, Natalia Reza
Director of Photography/First Camera: Ana Baer - Second Camera: Valentin Orozco
Drone operator: Alonso Maulion - Still photography: Eric Sánchez
Production team: Gerardo Avila, Emma Avila, Carlos Fernández
Original music: Joaquín López Chas - Audio mixing: Richard D. Hall
Costume design: Rocío Luna
Editing: Ana Baer - Dramaturg: Claudia Fragoso
Location: Michoacán, Mexico, 2025
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Angels of Earth 2024
We are flowers planted in red earth; we are made of clay that molds, that breaks, that embraces; we are angels with restless feet.
Two women intertwine their bodies with a red rope, with a marigold cloth—perhaps a trace of an invisible bond, perhaps an umbilical cord. They cling to one another, play, get in each other’s way, embrace. The piece explores the overflowing multiplicity of sisterhoods inherent in female intersubjectivity and its connection to earth and water.
Direction: Ana Baer, Rocio Luna, and Natalia Reza
Dance: Rocio Luna, Natalia Reza
Cinematography and editing: Ana Baer
Music: Joaquín López “Chas”
Environmental art: Tammy West
Production: Alebrije, CAAE-UMSNH, TXST
Duration: 5’10’’
Year: 2024
Location: San Marcos, Texas, USA, and Lake Camécuaro and La Campiña, Michoacán, Mexico, 2024
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Sympoiesis 2022
Inspired by Donna Haraway’s *Staying with the Trouble*, *Sympoiesis* explores the connections between corporeality, waste, burning, drought, the life force, and degradation; it serves as an invitation to immerse ourselves in the landscape that is slowly fading away at the nearly extinct Lake Cuitzeo in Michoacán.
Production: TXST University, Baer Productions + CAAE UMSNH
Dance: Rocío Luna
Camera and editing: Ana Baer
Second camera: Claudia Fragoso
Music: Joaquín López “Chas”
Artistic direction: Ana Baer and Rocío Luna
Production team: Ever Ávila, Gerardo Ávila, and Carlos Fernández
Direction: Ana Baer and Rocío Luna
Still photography: Erick Sánchez
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Ixchel 2021
Mother moon, liquid Nahuatl, salty skin … Among the steam your presence vanishes and clings to the roots. You embody the navel of the world, where life sprouts and ends …
In an environment of surreal nature, an archetypal figure is revealed through a lyrical, visual painting in motion. Crafted by the superposition of opposites: water-land, dryness-blooming, grounded-volatile, IXCHEL invites the audience on a mysterious journey loaded with visual creativity and a sensual cinematic construction.
Dance: Rocio Luna
Camera and editing: Ana Baer
Dramaturgy: Claudia Fragoso
Music: Joaquin Lopez Chas
Light designer and camera operator at Sala Silvestre Revueltas: David Ramirez
Lighting supervisor at Harrison Theater: Nick Swanson
Produced with the support of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and Texas State University, San Marcos.
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The Sabina 2019
This is an exploration of contemporary surrealism inspired by the figure of the shamanic woman María Sabina and the androgynous, dreamlike quality of Remedios Varo. The choreography and cinematography are site-specific improvisations in which Ana Baer and Rocio Luna seek to create an intimate dialogue between dance, the camera, and the surroundings. The editing is an exploration of Claude Cahun’s ongoing discourse on multiplicity.
Dance / Choreography: Rocio Luna
Camera / Editing: Ana Baer
Original Music: Joaquín Lopez Chas
Direction: Ana Baer + Rocio Luna
Production: Baer Productions + CAAE-UMSNH
Location: San Marcos, Texas
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Parakata 2018
Fragility and strength. Parakata dances across borders and brings people together. In this corner of the mountains, everyone becomes both fragile and steadfast, recognizing that they are neither more nor less capable than others. The survival of the monarch butterfly depends on diverse habitats in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In 2008, these three countries adopted a plan for the conservation of the butterfly’s habitat along its migratory routes.
Dance: Rocío Luna, Natalia Reza
Filming and editing: Ana Baer
Original music: Omar Soriano
Logistics and still photography: Gerardo Ávila
Direction: Rocío Luna and Ana Baer
Production: Alebrije, UMSNH, TXST
Filmed at: El Rosario Sanctuary, Michoacán, Mexico
Year: 2018
Duration: 4’02’’
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Other highlights
2025 Simposia: Celebrating Women’s Full Bodies
Simposia aimed to create a space for reflection and creation where participants could pause, question the demands placed on their bodies, and turn their gaze inward, proposing—both individually and collectively—actions of self-care and self-determination that would open paths to self-knowledge and agency.
November 24–29, 2025, at the Clavijero Cultural Center in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.
2023 Body in Transit
In collaboration with the International Women and Dance Festival, the UMSNH Academic Department of Performing Arts, the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, the Department of Dance at Texas State University, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), Doho Constructivo, and the Department of Dance of the Michoacán State Ministry of Culture; Alebrije presents a site-specific installation featuring a live performance, an Afro-Brazilian dance class, a roundtable discussion, and an artistic creation-in-residence process, from August 5 to 25, 2023, at the Clavijero Cultural Center in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.
2018 International Congress on the Performing Arts: Alternatives for Teaching and Creation in the University Setting
An initiative involving the Performing Arts Faculty of the
UMSNH; the Theater and Dance Division of TXST; the University of Roehampton; the University of Costa Rica; the National University of Costa Rica; Colegio Esperanza,
Holland, Michigan, and Stanford University, with the goal of establishing an exchange among international peer institutions to explore and analyze the implications and scope of teaching, learning, and creative processes within communities dedicated to training professionals in the performing arts.
June 20–30, 2019, in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico