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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a sovereign,” explains the choreographer. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she eventually became a diplomat for Ghana, then the country’s representative to the UN. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable story and impact inspire Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

The Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines movement, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but draws on Makeba’s history, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to New York in the year, she was prohibited from her homeland for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the US after wedding Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with the exceptional South African singer the performer 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 venue for locally made drinks and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the fine, she was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how her remarkable journey began – just one of the details the choreographer learned when studying 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 moving to study and work in the UK, where she established her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as the tunes, when she was a child, and move along in the home.

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

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in medical care in the city. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “There was ample time to kill at the facility so I started researching.” As well as learning of her victorious homecoming to the nation in 1990, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she found that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child the girl passed away in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she could not be present at her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their success and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Development and Themes

These reflections contributed to the creation of the show (first staged in the city in 2023). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was effective, but the concept for the work was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession today. Although it’s not overt in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of characters connected to the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s home-brew, the skilled dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in harmony with the players on the platform. Seutin’s choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has learned over the years, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the group were unaware about the singer. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a heart attack on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover the legend? “I think she would motivate young people to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” remarks Seutin. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to take the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and listen to melodies, an element of entertainment, but mixed with strong messages and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she did it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• The performance is at London, 22-24 October