Sex in the Ballroom

Although, ever the English major, I wanted to analyze a literary work for my blog post and I definitely didn’t want to talk about Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, I realized that psychoanalyzing the 5-C ballroom dance team was simply too tempting to pass up. Although I was skeptical about Freud’s method of reducing the entire realm of the unconscious to sexual impulses, everything in ballroom dance seems to originate in sexual urges. From specific dance moves and particular styles of dance to the social dynamics of a team, the ballroom team is completely underwritten in sexual overtones.

In the same way that Freud believes that dreams are read not at face value but as a glimpse into the unconscious, a ballroom dance routine could be read according to their symbolic relations instead of according to their pictorial value. When you put a series of maneuvers together during a dance, individual steps, like the random sequence of events in dreams, are not important. Rather it is the juxtaposition of the steps into certain combinations that create the mood for the dance and interprets the song.

One infamous song interpretation happens in the choreography of the Viennese waltz for the advanced ballroom team. Although the waltz is one of the most innocuous styles of dance, this particular one is choreographed to the song “Touch Me” from Spring Awakening. This song is basically describing how the singer feels during sex. At a dramatic point in the music, the choreographer had the follows (or women) run to the leads (or men) and then jump up onto the leads waists and wrap their legs around the leads’ torsos. The obvious phallic imagery was not lost on the dancers, but often the audience is unconscious of the sexuality of the moves. The general social acceptance of dance portraying a certain level of sexuality works in conjunction with the view that ballroom dancing, as a traditional dance style, must be ingenuous.

For instance, the ballroom dance styles themselves are socially acceptable ways of portraying the ardors of sex. Rumba, in particular, is the dance of love in which the passions of intimacy and relationships are tempestuously reenacted on the dance floor. In this dance style, the distance between the partners varies to close embraces and turning away from the partner and performing for the audience. The pace of the movements varies, likewise, between elongated movements and rapid spins and footwork. My favorite rumba is danced by Karina Smirnoff, of Dancing with the Stars fame, and Slavik Kryklyvyy for an exhibition in 2005. Even the specific moves themselves are miniature depictions of sex acts. At one point, she wraps her leg around him and arches backward in an orgasm-like ecstasy.

Ballroom is notorious for promoting gender stereotypes, and this carries over into the sexual undertones of rumba. Men are consistently characterized within dance as epitomizing strength and providing support for the women, who are in turn seen as light, ethereal and graceful. As you can tell from Slavik’s movements, the man has poses of strength in which he stands wide legged, shoulders squared (usually with a masculine-like aggressive facial expression). As you can tell from the photo of Slavik and Hanna at the top of this article, the aggressive masculine pose symbolizes his sexual dominance over the supplicant feminine form. [Note the explicit sexuality of her raised leg and upturned heard.]

It’s easy to transfer the performance aspects of dance into off-the-floor romances. Karina is, again, an excellent example. Her dance partnerships with Mario Lopez in Dancing With the Stars led to two-year dating relationship (they are depicted dancing in the photo at the left). Although Mario and Karina are no longer together, Karina is still in a relationship with fellow dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy. The dynamics on the dance floor are also at work in the ballroom team on campus. Dating another dancer on team is commonly referred to as “teamcest.” This refers to the familial relationship of ballroom company members. When time commitment is coupled with the shared hobby of highly erotic dancing, members develop certain familiarities, which are, by their nature, given to becoming romantic entanglements. Soon, dating another team member is like dating a family member. However, like Frankenstein’s close knit family, ballroom people often exclusively date other dancers, whether or not they are on the ballroom team, thus emphasizing the incestuous nature of teamcest.

I could probably continue analyzing the team in this way without running out of materials. In this case, it is easy to see how sexual impulses control the social dynamics in the ballroom world. However, as when Freud encountered things that could not be explained by the pleasure principle, I believe some things cannot be retraced to the Oedipus complex or even to infantile sexual development at all.