Martial Arts, Sexuality and Dance

When Patrick Swayze died I remember hearing this quote of his, that dancing with someone is the most intense connection you’ll ever have with a person. I believed that then and still do.

Part of becoming a young woman is finding your sexual center. This too is Tasha’s journey in Black Kungfu Chick. Often our first sexual experiences can be clumsy, awkward and strange even though we may be falling in love. It’s a tentative time of changes emotional, mental and biological. My true sexual awakening would actually come much later when I learned how to dance salsa and learned to love my body. So it was a surprise and yet at the same time something I already knew when I watched the actress in her first martial arts session hear that part of her study was understanding how her libido or lower dantian energies were connected to other parts of her body.

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I’ve been dancing for years in many different spaces, styles and at various ages but when you dance with someone you connect with, it is always fresh—youthful, invigorating and sensual. You feel alive and free and like you are blossoming anew. Why do you think old people love to dance? Oh to dance with a real dancer when our bodies are relaxed and raw and intimate as we move forward together! You become extremely present with the right partner and of course there’s that whole fluid motion of bodies moving together thing that is totally divine. With all that electric energy flowing you often feel that you are falling in love. Again and again and again.

So talking about martial arts as a dance and about two people falling in love in that dance is not a leap. I mean there are a mountain of movies that tell that story, from Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Yimou’s House of the Flying Daggers to the older Wing Chun with Michelle Yeoh and Donny Yen and The Crane Fighter with Judy Lee. That list goes on and on. It’s destiny damn it when two people are thrusting and moving, bodies are colliding and gliding in unison that something sexual is happening. Any dancer will tell you that’s the truth.

So talking about martial arts as a dance and about two people falling in love in that dance is not a leap. I mean there are a mountain of movies that tell that story, from Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Yimou’s House of the Flying Daggers to the older Wing Chun with Michelle Yeoh and Donny Yen and The Crane Fighter with Judy Lee. That list goes on and on. It’s destiny damn it when two people are thrusting and moving, bodies are colliding and gliding in unison that something sexual is happening. Any dancer will tell you that’s the truth.

When I began taking my first tai chi classes they recognized immediately that I was a dancer because of how I moved. What was interesting about tai chi however is that it is not typically a partner activity because it’s not typically used for combat. So learning tai chi was a new awakening for me as I discovered how to find my center without a partner which is an interesting experience if you’re accustomed to partner dancing. It’s about finding your balance on your own… which is at the end of the day the most important element to any dance. It’s only when you both have balance, that you can find a way to move forward together.

I’m excited to see where Tasha’s lessons in martial arts take her in her career and home life, but also in her love life. This idea of balance is so central to our lives and it is certainly central to Tasha’s story. Keep on the look out for that guy that she may end up fighting more than a few times… he just might become a love interest!

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