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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as Mama Africa, the iconic artist additionally spent time in New York with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Beginning as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then Guinea’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

A Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges movement, live music, and spoken word in a stage work that is not a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to New York in the year, Makeba was barred from her homeland for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with the fabulous South African singer Tutu Puoane at the centre bringing Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Power and poise … the production.

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 proprietress who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, Christina went to prison for half a year, bringing her infant with her, which is how her eventful life began – just one of the things the choreographer learned when researching Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” says she, when they met in the city after a show. Seutin’s father is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before relocating to study and work in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … Miriam Makeba sings at the venue in 1988.

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in the city. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was always requesting Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she discovered that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi passed away in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her own mother’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states Seutin.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts went into the creation of the show (first staged in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters linked with the icon to welcome this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in the show.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the skilled dancers appear possessed by beat, in synthesis with the musicians on the platform. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates various forms of dance she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

She was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the singer. (She died in 2008 after having a heart attack on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate the youth to advocate what they believe in, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “But she did it very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a beautiful song.” She wanted to take the similar method in this production. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about her. Because if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They retreat. Yet she did it in a manner that you would accept it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

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