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“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a queen,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, Makeba also associated in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually became a diplomat for Ghana, then Guinea’s representative to the United Nations. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a Black Panther. Her rich story and impact motivate Seutin’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges dance, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a simple biography but utilizes Makeba’s history, particularly her experience of banishment: after moving to the city in 1959, she was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was banned from the United States after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The show resembles a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with a exceptional vocalist the performer at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, usually presided over by a host. Makeba’s mother Christina was a shebeen queen who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, Christina was incarcerated for half a year, taking her baby with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details Seutin learned when studying Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” exclaims she, when we meet in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s father is from Belgium and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the United Kingdom, 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 move along in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba sings at the venue in the year.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I stopped working for three months to look after her and she was always requesting the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “There was ample time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” As well as reading about her victorious homecoming to South Africa in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), Seutin found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi passed away in labor in the year, and that due to her exile she could not attend her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you focus on their achievements and you overlook that they are struggling like everyone,” says the choreographer.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the production (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the piece was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, Seutin pulls out elements of her life story like flashbacks, and nods more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of characters linked with the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in harmony with the players on the platform. Seutin’s choreography includes multiple styles of dance she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a heart attack on the platform in the country.) Why should younger generations learn about the legend? “In my view she would motivate the youth to advocate what they are, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to adopt the similar method in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but mixed with strong messages and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Because if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would accept it, and understand it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

• The performance is at the city, 22-24 October