Artistry in Motion
National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow and founder of Tucson-based Mexican regional dance group Danzacultura Mexicana Carmen Barón ’86 has been dreaming of dresses since childhood. Here, she reflects on a lifetime of designing, teaching, dressmaking, dancing and keeping the traditions of folklórico alive.
Barón, who graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and spent her career drafting and designing for the mining industry, says that while buildings and dresses use different materials, the process is essentially the same. “My eyes are trained to see,” she says. “My imagination is open to angles, numbers and calculations. It is second nature.
I don’t have to measure, because I can see it in my eyes.”
Q: You were born and raised in Mexico. What are some of your fondest memories?
A: Growing up in Altar, Sonora, every family had a sewing machine. And we had dresses, but only for special occasions — one for Christmas, one for Easter and one for summer. When I was very young, I would cry a lot, so my mom would put me on her lap at the pedal machine, and I would watch her sew. She taught me how to sew by hand, then how to use the pedal machine. I started standing, using one foot, and later I learned to sit and use both feet.
Barón and students practicing at the El Rio Center in Tucson
Q: What are your early memories of music and traditional Mexican costumes?
A: A lot of people assume I grew up around folklórico dance, but I didn’t discover it until we moved to the U.S. There were no folklórico classes in my hometown, only in the big cities. When musicians would come [infrequently] to my town, I remember having a kind of ticklish feeling in my feet watching them perform. I was so curious about the music and dance style. I distinctly remember when my uncle bought a newspaper and I saw a girl in a Chiapaneca dress. The photo was in black and white, but I found myself wondering what the dress would look like in color, and I fell in love with it.
I have a funny story about that. When I was studying at the University of Arizona, my family and I went to a mercado in Guadalajara where I saw a dress very similar to the one I saw in the newspaper when I was little. It was $250, and at the time, I only had about $250 to my name. From Guadalajara we went to Mexico City and then Puebla. When we arrived in Puebla, my luggage was gone. They still couldn’t recover it after three days, so insurance paid me $250 for the lost items. As soon as they handed it to me, I knew what I was going to do with it. On the way back to Tucson, I stopped at the same mercado and bought the dress. It was a miracle. I had wished for that dress since I was little.
Clio Coronado, Amelia Cardenas and Alondra Coronado — members of Barón’s youth group — with Barón at Tucson Meet Yourself, October 2025
Q: At age 13, you and your family moved to the U.S. What was that transition like?
A: Well, moving to the United States was a complete surprise. My dad, who was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Sonora, had been traveling back and forth across the border every week for work. One day, the border agents asked why he was making so many trips. When he explained that his family was in Mexico, they said, “Why don’t you bring them over to the U.S.?” That same day he went to the office and started the paperwork. We thought we were just preparing for a vacation. I even remember going to what we thought was a museum to fill out papers and answer medical questions. But on the Fourth of July that year, we officially moved to the U.S.
Everything happened quickly after that. Starting school was especially hard because we didn’t know any English. We had to walk several blocks every day to school, and I cried from September to December. My sister didn’t want to eat, and my mom worried we might have to move back to Mexico, because she was afraid we were getting sick. After visiting Mexico that December, I felt a little calmer and more determined to adjust. I carried a dictionary everywhere and started memorizing everything I saw like a picture to make up for my lack of English. When tests came, I was able to do well because I had studied so hard, translating word for word.
Q: At Pima Community College, you discovered Mexican folklórico dance. How did it change your path?
A: It honestly happened by chance. One day, as I was walking up the stairs at Pima, I noticed a class for Mexican folklórico and folk dance. It caught my attention, and I decided to adjust my schedule. I kept all my architecture drafting classes except one, which I swapped for the dance class. From that point on, I began studying Mexican dances while continuing my focus on architecture.
In one of my folklórico classes, we had an assignment to make a doll-sized skirt from Michoacán. The skirt I made had a lot of pleats, and my classmates said, “Oh, she really knows how to sew.” They started asking me to make practice skirts, and later, after I graduated, I continued helping with costumes and dancing with the group.
Q: Did you ever dream that making costumes and folklórico would be such a big part of your life?
A: I never imagined I would get into anything related to dance, because I didn’t grow up seeing it and I only sewed once in a while. When I was younger, I pictured myself marrying an architect [which I did] and living in a big city, but that was as far as my vision went. Sewing professionally, exhibiting my work, teaching and learning folklórico were never things I considered. In my hometown, life was very simple. We didn’t even have a radio at the time. If you don’t see something growing up, how can you dream about doing it? It wasn’t until I went to Pima that I began to picture it all.
Q: How has architecture influenced your approach to designing costumes?
A: Architecture has helped me a lot in designing because it taught me about curves, lines, proportions and colors. Those same principles became so important in creating folklórico costumes. I learned how to think about balance and structure, which carries over into the way a skirt moves or how the embroidery flows with the fabric. I remember showing a dress I made to a teacher from Aguascalientes. He noticed the arches in the design and asked me, “How is [it that] this dress is better than the ones they make in Mexico?” I told him it was because I studied architecture. He smiled and said, “No wonder!”
Barón assisting Victoria Lopez as she dons one of Barónʼs folklórico costumes at Tucson Meet Yourself.
Q: What is your favorite part of teaching young people?
A: I love teaching kids because they truly want to learn. I believe that if you start young, you never really forget. When I was little, my mom used to teach me how to thread a needle and use a sewing machine. She never made fancy costumes, just simple blouses with small collars and little sleeves. She taught me the basics, and look what I was able to do with
that foundation.
Q: What message do you share with young dancers and artists?
A: I find that when you dance, you are full of energy the next day. When you are sweating, you are letting all the bad oxygen out and the good oxygen in, leaving you more alert the next day.