Susanna Plotnick

Thoughts on Fire Dance, A Lament, Seven Months Later

The idea for Fire Dance, A Lament came to me on the day in July, 2023 when New York City was blanketed in a thick, yellow smoke, caused by out-of-control fires in Canada.

It was an other-worldly sky over New York City, never before seen. And, of course, the air was unsafe to breathe. People wore masks outdoors, and even the indoor air quality was affected. I made plans to buy an air purifier.

I took the subway to Coney Island and made this drawing:

I was worried that the birds were breathing in the smoke. This was my alarm, my sorrow and my great frustration.

Fire Dance, A Lament is a dystopian book which takes place in Coney Island in the year 2035. Angelina is the story’s main character. She is an eight-year old girl who has an older sister, Cristina, and an older brother, Enrique.

This is how my experience translated into the book:

This is how Cristina tried to help:

And this is how Cristina and Angelina tried to help:

(This painting is taken from a drawing done from life off the pier)

As the story continues, we learn that Angelina’s older brother Enrique has a girlfriend, Paloma, who is a dancer on the boardwalk:

Paloma (“dove” in Spanish) is a symbol of the birds – their beauty, movement, and vulnerability.

Angelina loves and idolizes Paloma.

(I included the sign “girls” to heighten the sense of Paloma’s vulnerability)

Paloma’s death is a terrible shock to her.

The scene of birds falling out of the sky when Enrique is mourning Paloma, also heightens the grief and goes back to the vulnerability of the birds that I first felt in July of 2023.

At the end, Angelina’s community dances a fire dance on the beach, to welcome in the new season.

Angelina hears the drums, and starts to dance. This is the final image. Angelina dances and carries on Paloma’s tradition, and continues to live.

As I neared the end of creating this book, I realized that it is a lament, in the literary tradition, a lament for our beautiful planet.

Postscript:

I published this book two months after Trump was elected. We were met with a daily assault from the White House on everything we had that was good, including, but certainly not limited to, climate change. I and most of the people I knew were feeling overwhelmed and unsafe. It was not a good time to show this book to the world.

But, times will change, and Fire Dance, A Lament will still be here.

Written by Susanna Plotnick, September 12, 2025