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“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” remarks the choreographer. Called the Empress of African Song, Makeba additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager sent to work to support her family in the city, she eventually served as an envoy for the nation, then the country’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a Black Panther. Her rich story and impact inspire the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its UK premiere.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines movement, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that is not a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her story of exile: after moving to the city in 1959, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, some festivity, some challenge – with the fabulous South African singer 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 unofficial venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she was incarcerated for six months, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey began – just one of the details the choreographer discovered when studying her story. “So many stories!” exclaims she, when we meet in the city after a performance. Seutin’s parent is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before relocating to study and work 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 dance to them in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … the artist performs at the venue in the year.

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to look after her and she was constantly requesting the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” Seutin recalls. “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 1990, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her own mother’s funeral. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Creation and Themes

All these thoughts went into the making of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was effective, but the idea for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, Seutin highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more generally to the idea of uprooting and loss nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas connected to the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

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

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the group were unaware about the artist. (She passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would inspire the youth to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to adopt the similar method in this work. “We see dancing and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but mixed with strong messages and moments that resonate. This is what I respect about her. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. Yet she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

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