Whether it resembles the slow, building roll of distant thunder or the immediacy of an overhead lightning storm, flamenco is electric. This energy, however, is an intimate one, and one that benefits greatly from proximity.

This winter has been one of the wintriest in recent New York City memory. Between the unnavigable mounds of dirty snow at every intersection, dangerous patches of black ice, multiple days of subzero temperatures, power outages, and frozen pipes, there has also been the bone-chilling rise of authoritarianism in America.

Liv Lorent MBE is a gal I relate to, a choreographer with a penchant for the gothic, drawing upon the duality of traditions within narrative dance: the grand guignol and the sentimental.

One thing that I love about the Firebird is that she is the hero,” said Catherine Hurlin, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, in a Zoom interview on a snowy February morning.