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

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. Firstly, very little has been written on the topic. Secondly, with the rise of a postfeminist culture, women are often represented as desiring their own objectification, whilst the narratives of asexual-identified women are reduced to 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 together speak to a posthuman concern with reaching an enhanced sense of the collective, through a focus on the affective intensity of each moment. Two dance narratives will frame the analysis: Stravinsky’s (1913) 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 will interweave in the memory of a woman called Martha, in which her solo dance within a collective evokes the uncreolised African body and enables her to experience an ethical opening to human and non-human others.