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“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a sovereign,” states the choreographer. Called Mama Africa, Makeba additionally associated in New York with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually served as an envoy for the nation, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. This rich story and impact motivate the choreographer’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on her past, especially her story of exile: after moving to the city in the year, she was prohibited from her homeland for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist her spouse. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with a fabulous South African singer the performer at the centre bringing her music to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over 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 fine, Christina was incarcerated for six months, bringing her baby with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the things Seutin discovered when studying her story. “So many stories!” says Seutin, when they met in Brussels after a show. Her parent is from Belgium and she was raised there before moving to study and work in the UK, where she established her company the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when she was a youngster, and move along in the home.

Songs of freedom … Miriam Makeba performs at the venue in the year.

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 always requesting 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 Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin discovered that Makeba had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that because of her exile she could not attend her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you focus on their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in the year). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. Although it’s not overt in the show, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of characters linked with Miriam Makeba to welcome this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the skilled dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in synthesis with the musicians on the platform. Seutin’s choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ personal styles, including street styles like the form.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

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 died in the year after having a cardiac event on stage in Italy.) Why should younger generations learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to take the similar method in this production. “We see dancing and hear beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but mixed with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They retreat. Yet she achieved it in a way that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at London, the dates