Simba Nguimbi
Kuumba wasn’t crowded that Saturday afternoon. I had arrived early for Adrien Bawayi’s dance class, slipping into the rhythm of the district as I walked through Matongé’s streets. The air buzzed with life—shops spilling onto pavements, bright fabrics billowing like flags of identity. It’s a feeling I’ve grown familiar with living here in Brussels, Belgium, a city where histories overlap and sometimes clash. Yet beneath the vibrancy, an unease lingered, the kind that comes with histories too long untold.
Inside, Adrien was setting up the studio. His movements had the grace of someone who had spent decades letting their body tell stories words could not. I envied that ease. At 26, I was still learning how to exist in my skin. Coming out as non-binary had been both liberating and exhausting, a dance in itself—half joy, half defensive posture.
As the class began, Adrien’s voice filled the room, calling out movements, urging us to connect with rhythms older than the borders that defined this continent. My body moved, not perfectly, but earnestly. Adrien once told me that dance doesn’t demand perfection, just truth. That thought had stayed with me through awkward conversations with my parents, and their struggle to see me beyond their expectations.
During a break, I found myself chatting with Fabrice, a volunteer I’d met before. He had been guiding a group through Matongé, pointing out how Belgium’s colonial past lingered in monuments and mindsets. “Do you think people can really change?” I asked, the question as much about my own experience as his work.
He considered me for a moment. “Change is slow,” he said, “but it’s possible. Look at this place. People from all over, connecting through dance, language, history. That’s a kind of change.”
As we danced again, I felt the weight of history pressing against us—not just Belgium’s, but my own. Yet with each step, I also felt lighter, as if the floor beneath us held space for all our truths. We were just bodies in motion, reclaiming stories, rewriting them.