Flamenca!

I have loved Flamenco since I first saw it when I was in high school and a traveling troupe came to the little town in North Carolina where I was living with my grandmother. I watched, gape-mouthed in wonder, to see women stomp and shout and perform with passion what looked to me like defiance. Since then I have watched Flamenco live, on film, on TV, any way I could find it.  But tonight's performance, all women performing a woman's choreography for each other's gaze, was the most erotic, passionate, and inspiring performance I've ever seen. 

I took Bella and Cristina to see this intense and unusual all-woman trio: the guitar played by a Spanish woman named Antonia Jimenez; the singing (and one dance) by a Venezuelan named Barbara Martinez; and the star dancer a full-bodied New Yorker, Xianix Barerra, unafraid of her strength, embodying confidence and ferocity, with a spiraling barely-contained power only a woman can express. 

All this, and Dr. Fiona Hill. Today was a great day for the strength and possibilities of women who will not be infantilized or diminished. Revel in the extras.