The story of Bolewa Sabour, a Franco-Congolese choreographer who supports women who have suffered rape and sexual assault through dance.
Dancing to restore dignity to women victims of violence. He is Bolewa Sabourin, a Franco-Congolese choreographer who has set himself a mission: to support those who have suffered rape and sexual assault through the use of dance, seen as a powerful tool to overcome obstacles and regain possession of one's body. She does it in France as in Congo, her motherland.
Born in Paris to a Congolese father, a dance teacher, and a French mother, just 34 years ago, his story is made up of chaos and little harmony, as Bolewa himself explains: his father sent him as soon as he was born to the Democratic Republic of Congo for let him grow up with his grandmother, but the country's political tensions brought him back to the French capital at the age of six.
“At that point I had to learn to live in a different context from the reality I knew, looking for ways to maintain its identity by incorporating new codes”.
And he did it in the best way. His commitment has led him to actively participate in social groups such as Stop le Contrôle au Faciès and Jeudi Noir, both of whom are involved in actions to address police abuse. He graduated in Political Science from the Sorbonne in Paris, but Bolewa Sabourin has always been convinced of only one thing: the only form of resilience that allows you to be yourself is dance.
And that is why for the past three years he has dedicated himself to women victims of sexual violence trying to offer them some kind of therapy through the dance and incorporating it as a means and tool for re-appropriating bodies.
From this idea was born Re-création, one of the projects promoted by the association of which he is co-founder, while the idea, had with his friend William Njaboum, of Loba ("Express yourself", in Lingala), to put dance at the service of people.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), rape is used as a weapon of war, to make people flee and loot the wealth of minerals, including Coltan, an essential mineral in the production of our cell phones, the site reads.
The reconstruction project created by LOBA made sure to use the very art of dance as instrument of mobilization against rape as a weapon of war and violence against women, as well as to accompany survivors through a dance path as therapy.
The project takes place both in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in France. In France, Re-Création sets up a protocol for the treatment of dance seen as an instrument of emancipation and expression that allows people who have been subjected to violence to externalize their traumas and free themselves. Here Bolewa works mainly with two associations: Ikambére, which helps women with HIV, and PluriElle Hospital, which supports women between 18 and 25 who have suffered trauma.
As for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), dance offers a woman who has suffered violence a way to fight male domination:
“The body has always been the instrument of patriarchal domination, par excellence, wherever one is in the world. It has always passed through the body. We made domination natural by talking about 'stronger sex', because men have muscle and testosterone, and 'weaker sex' when we talk about women ", explains Bolewa, who has seen closely a country where various mutilation practices and inhibition of social norms were also means of maintaining that same dominance.
“The more women have found ways to prove their humanity, the more we men have found physical ways to force them to remain under this dominion. Therefore, for us, the reappropriation of the body is an essential step in the reappropriation of the history of women ”.
Raping a woman means destroying her, helping her regain trust is a duty. Bravo Bolewa and those like you who fight to reaffirm the rights of every single individual.
Germana Carillo
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