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“If you talk about the legendary singer in the nation, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” states Alesandra Seutin. Known as Mama Africa, Makeba additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to support her family in Johannesburg, she eventually served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a activist. This remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on Makeba’s history, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to New York in the year, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was excluded from the US after wedding Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The show resembles a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with the fabulous vocalist the performer at the centre reviving her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, often managed by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she went to prison for six months, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer learned when researching her story. “So many stories!” says she, when we meet in the city after a performance. Her father is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to study and work in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when she was a child, and dance to them in the home.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba performs at the venue in 1988.

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I paused my career for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” In addition to reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a legal professional in the 1950s), she found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in labor in the year, and that because of her exile she could not be present at her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you look at their success and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Development and Concepts

These reflections went into the creation of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was effective, but the concept for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she pulls out elements of her life story like flashbacks, and references more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of characters connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the skilled dancers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on the platform. Seutin’s choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast were unaware about the singer. (She passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on stage in the country.) Why should younger generations learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” says Seutin. “However she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to adopt the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe movement and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with strong messages and moments that hit. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. But she achieved it in a way that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

• The performance is showing in London, 22-24 October