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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a sovereign,” explains the choreographer. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist also spent time in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later became a diplomat for Ghana, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, especially her story of exile: after relocating to New York in the year, she was prohibited from South Africa for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the United States after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, some festivity, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer Tutu Puoane leading reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial gathering place for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, often presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the fine, she was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life began – just one of the details the choreographer learned when researching her story. “So many stories!” exclaims she, when they met in the city after a show. Seutin’s father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she established her dance group Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a youngster, and dance to them in the home.

Songs of freedom … Miriam Makeba sings at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was always requesting the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” In addition to learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a legal professional in the era), she discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child the girl died in childbirth in the year, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you look at their success and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” states the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, her parent’s therapy was effective, but the idea for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more broadly to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. Although it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters connected to the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the players on the platform. Seutin’s choreography includes various forms of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including street styles like the form.

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (She died in the year after having a heart attack on stage in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover the legend? “I think she would motivate young people to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “However she did it very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” She aimed to adopt the similar method in this work. “We see dancing and hear melodies, an aspect of entertainment, but mixed with powerful ideas and moments that hit. This is what I admire about her. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. But she achieved it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in the city, 22-24 October