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“When you speak about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a queen,” states Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, Makeba also spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a teenager dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then the country’s official delegate to the United Nations. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a Black Panther. Her rich life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s new production, the performance, set for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to the city in 1959, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the United States after wedding activist her spouse. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with a exceptional vocalist the performer leading reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … the production.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, often presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, Christina went to prison for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey began – just one of the things Seutin learned when studying her story. “So many stories!” exclaims Seutin, when we meet in the city after a performance. Her parent is from Belgium and she was raised there before relocating to study and work 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 child, and dance to them in the home.

Songs of freedom … the artist sings at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I paused my career for three months to take care of her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” she remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to reading about her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a legal professional in the era), she discovered that Makeba had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi died in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her banishment she could not be present at her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states Seutin.

Development and Concepts

These reflections contributed to the creation of the show (first staged in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, Seutin pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more broadly to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “And we gather as these alter egos of characters connected to the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the players on stage. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “However she did it very gracefully. She expressed something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to take the same approach in this work. “We see movement and listen to melodies, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Because if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a way that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at London, the dates