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“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s akin to referring about a queen,” states Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like prominent artists. Starting as a young person sent to work to support her family in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a Black Panther. This rich story and impact motivate the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its British debut.

A Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, live music, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to New York in the year, she was barred from her homeland for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after marrying activist her spouse. The show resembles a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with a fabulous vocalist Tutu Puoane leading bringing Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, she was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the things Seutin learned when studying her story. “So many stories!” says she, when we meet in Brussels after a show. Seutin’s parent is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she established her company Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a youngster, and move along in the living room.

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

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in medical care in the city. “I stopped working for three months to look after her and she was constantly asking for Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” In addition to reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin found that Makeba had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child the girl passed away in labor in the year, and that because of her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you look at their success and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” says the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts went into the creation of the production (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was effective, but the concept for the piece was to honor “death, life and mourning”. In this context, she pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession today. While it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters linked with the icon to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the venue’s local drink, the skilled performers appear taken over by beat, in synthesis with the players on the platform. Seutin’s dance composition includes various forms of movement she has learned over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … 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 passed away in 2008 after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should younger generations learn about the legend? “I think she would motivate the youth to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “However she did it very elegantly. She’d say something meaningful and then sing a beautiful song.” She wanted to take the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. This is what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• The performance is at London, the dates