Dionysus meets neoliberalism: Zumba fitness and the call to zorbitality

In the twenty-first century, asexuality has become synonymous with sexual orientation, being described as a ‘lack’ of sexual attraction. This definition is problematic, as it assumes that everybody is sexual and that sexuality is immutable. With the rise of a postfeminist culture, the lived experiences of asexual-identified women are in danger of being lost within static narratives of frigidity and singledom. In response, this article proposes an emergent concept for reconfiguring female (a)sexualities through collective ecstatic motion – Zorbitality – drawing on the global Latin dance fitness phenomenon, Zumba Fitness, as a central example. I firstly conceptualise Zorbitality, via Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of ‘flow’ and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘rhizome.’ Secondly, I examine the emergence of Zumba Fitness as a contemporary Dionysian rite, mediated by digital culture, capitalism and globalisation, through my insights from the ZIN Academy and Believe party (London, July 2015) and work as a Zumba Fitness instructor. Finally, I conceptualise Zumba as (i) an asexual space, (ii) a celebration of the autoerotic body and (iii) an invocation of West African collective movement rites. Zorbitality emerges as a resistant imaginary, where differences in sexuality cease to matter and where personal movement styles are celebrated within a set of shared rhythms