Can You Prove You’re in Love?

What happens when a queer relationship becomes an administrative test? In Dansen met mijn ex / Bailando con mi ex, Neal Leemput and Gerson Jimenez Rivas revisit a love story shaped by Grindr, migration, rejected asylum applications and the unsettling demand to “prove” a relationship is real. The multilingual theatre piece comes to Beursschouwburg on 11 and 12 September as part of het TheaterFestival — and it speaks directly to the ways borders can enter our most intimate lives.

From a Grindr tap to a Kafkaesque test

The story begins in 2020 with a familiar queer-app scenario: Neal taps a handsome man on Grindr. The profile says he is looking for “friends and fun” — a phrase that comes with its own coded meanings in queer dating culture. The man is from Latin America, and can be at Neal’s place within ten minutes.

But what starts as a meeting becomes a relationship — and then, within a little over a year, a bureaucratic nightmare. After two rejected asylum applications, the couple must officially demonstrate that their bond is genuine in order to stay together.

That demand opens the central question of Dansen met mijn ex / Bailando con mi ex: how can love be measured, documented or accepted by an institution? What happens when a wrong answer during an official interview can change two people’s future?

The performance does not treat migration policy as a distant political issue. It brings it into the living room, into the messages, shared memories and delicate everyday negotiations that make up a relationship.

An ex on stage, a shared past

After his earlier work Dancing with My Mother, theatre-maker Neal Leemput returns to the stage with someone who has become his ex-partner. Alongside Gerson Jimenez Rivas, he looks back at their relationship and at everything that happened before it.

That choice gives the show its particular tension. This is not an abstract story about “a couple” facing paperwork. It is a performance built from a relationship that existed, changed and ended — while the traces of its administrative history remain.

The result promises a space for tenderness, humour and discomfort rather than a neat political lesson. Love does not become less real because it is difficult to translate into forms, evidence and official questions. Yet the system often demands exactly that translation from people whose right to remain is at stake.

Queer intimacy under border control

For queer people, dating apps and online encounters can be spaces of freedom, discovery and community — particularly when mainstream social settings do not feel safe or welcoming. But Dansen met mijn ex / Bailando con mi ex also shows that queer intimacy does not unfold outside wider systems of power.

Nationality, language, race, economic security and migration status can profoundly shape who gets to move freely, live openly with a partner or build a future without fear. The piece places those intersecting realities at its core, without separating personal emotion from political structures.

Its relevance goes beyond one relationship. Across Belgium and Europe, people navigating migration systems regularly face invasive procedures that ask them to make their private lives legible to authorities. For LGBTQIA+ people, this can carry an additional weight: relationships and identities have long been questioned, criminalised or treated as less credible.

By centring a queer couple’s lived experience, Leemput and Jimenez Rivas create space for a story too often reduced to a file, an interview or a rejection letter.

A multilingual living room

The show runs for 70 minutes and moves through Dutch, Spanish, French and English — described by the makers as “the sound bath of their living room”. Dutch and English surtitles are provided, allowing audiences to follow the performance across languages.

That multilingual form feels especially right for Brussels. The city is often praised for diversity, but lived multilingualism can also mean misunderstandings, uneven access and constant translation. Here, language becomes part of the relationship itself: a record of closeness, migration and the small ways people make a shared world together.

The production was created by Neal Leemput, Danny de Jong and Gerson Jimenez Rivas, and is performed by Leemput and Jimenez Rivas. Leemput previously worked as De Studio’s first Secretary of Queer Affairs, bringing a long-standing queer cultural perspective to the project.

Practical information

What? Dansen met mijn ex / Bailando con mi ex by Neal Leemput & De Studio
When? Friday 11 September 2026 at 8.30pm; Saturday 12 September 2026 at 4pm
Where? Beursschouwburg, Brussels, as part of het TheaterFestival
Duration: 70 minutes
Languages: English, Dutch, Spanish and French, with Dutch and English surtitles
Tickets: €22 standard; €11 for students. Paspartoe and Article 27 options are also listed by the festival
More info and tickets: het TheaterFestival and Kaaitheater

A deeply personal story with wider political stakes, Dansen met mijn ex / Bailando con mi ex invites audiences into the complicated, tender and very real territory where love meets the border.

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