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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in New York with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person dispatched to labor to support her family in the city, she later served as an envoy for the nation, then Guinea’s official delegate to the UN. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a Black Panther. Her remarkable story and impact motivate Seutin’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines movement, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after moving to the city in the year, Makeba was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was excluded from the United States after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer Tutu Puoane at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for locally made drinks and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the fine, Christina went to prison for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life started – just one of the things Seutin discovered when studying Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” exclaims she, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Her parent is from Belgium and she was raised there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a youngster, and dance to them in the home.

Melodies of liberation … the artist performs at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting the singer. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she remembers. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a legal professional in the era), she found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child the girl died in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her exile she hadn’t been able to be present at her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their success and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” says the choreographer.

Development and Themes

These reflections contributed to the creation of the show (first staged in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights threads of her life story like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the idea of uprooting and loss nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the show, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas connected to Miriam Makeba to welcome this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear possessed by beat, in synthesis with the players on stage. Seutin’s choreography includes multiple styles of movement she has absorbed over the years, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like the form.

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the artist. (She passed away in the year after having a heart attack on stage in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire young people to advocate what they believe in, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to take the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an aspect of enjoyment, but intertwined with strong messages and moments that resonate. This is what I admire about Miriam. Because if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• The performance is showing in London, the dates