Ballroom Dance and Other Technologies of Sexuality and Desire

Abstract

This chapter describes the world of sex and the erotic. It discusses movement and interrelationality by means of observing ballroom dance lessons, which is a required part of coming of age for many Czech youth. Following a daughter and her mother through the first steps of becoming a cultured ballroom dancer, the chapter looks at how sexuality, male dominance, and female sexual objectification are both encouraged and circumscribed on the dance floor. It considers the universality of sexual imagery and the prevalence of male violence across a range of domestic and public sites. The chapter also questions what sexuality means in terms of women's agency and whether or not, as Jan Patocka suggested, there is indeed an inherent liberatory potential to deeply intimate, erotic relations. It analyzes whether sex is a possible path to self-transcendence.