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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist also associated in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s representative to the UN. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. Her rich life and legacy inspire Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a simple biography but draws on her past, especially her story of exile: after relocating to New York in the year, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer leading bringing Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, she was incarcerated for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey began – just one of the things the choreographer discovered when researching her story. “So many stories!” says Seutin, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Her parent is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor 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 move along in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … the artist performs at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I paused my career for a quarter to take care of her and she was always asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were singing together,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I began investigating.” In addition to learning of her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a legal professional in the 1950s), Seutin found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that her child the girl died in childbirth in the year, and that due to her exile she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you look at their success and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Creation and Concepts

These reflections went into the making of the production (premiered in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the work was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights elements of her life story like memories, and references more broadly to the idea of uprooting and loss nowadays. Although it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of characters connected to 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 home-brew, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by rhythm, in synthesis with the players on stage. Seutin’s choreography incorporates multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the years, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (Makeba passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate young people to stand for what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She expressed something meaningful and then sing a lovely melody.” She aimed to take the similar method in this production. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that hit. That’s what I admire about her. Because if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They retreat. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• The performance is at London, the dates