Dancing to a resistant imaginary: reconfiguring female (a)sexualities through Zorbitality

ABSTRACT In the twenty-first century, asexuality has become synonymous with sexual orientation, being described as a ‘lack’ of sexual attraction. At this juncture, a study of female (a) sexualities is long overdue. First, little has been written on the topic. Second, with the rise of a postfeminist culture, asexual-identified women are being framed within static narratives of frigidity or spiritual devotion. In response, this paper develops the concept of Zorbitality. Zorbitality is a resistant imaginary, which seeks to reconfigure female (a)sexualities through collective ecstatic motion. It harnesses the historical transformation and cultural hybridity of Afro-diasporic rhythms, to interrogate the Western thought systems that constrain women’s ecstatic movement. The paper draws on two methodologies: Deleuzian feminist cartographies and collective biography. These methodologies speak to a posthuman concern with reaching an enhanced sense of the collective, through the affective intensity of each moment. Two dance narratives frame the analysis: Stravinsky’s twentieth-century ballet, The Rite of Spring, where a sacrificial ‘virgin’ dances herself to death, and West African Yoruba dance, characterised by solo dance within a collective. These narratives interweave in the memory of my research respondent, Martha. This memory evokes the uncreolised African body, which enables Martha to ethically open to human and non-human others.