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“When you speak about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person sent to work to support her family in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for the nation, then the country’s official delegate to the UN. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a Black Panther. Her rich life and legacy inspire Seutin’s latest work, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, especially her story of exile: after relocating to New York in 1959, Makeba was barred from South Africa for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the United States after wedding activist her spouse. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with the fabulous South African singer the performer leading bringing her music to vibrant life.

Power and poise … the production.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, usually managed by a host. Her parent Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the fine, she went to prison for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey began – just one of the things Seutin discovered when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” says she, when they met in the city after a performance. Her parent is Belgian and she was raised there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would sing her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

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

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I paused my career for three months to take care of her and she was always 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.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the freedom 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 the girl passed away in childbirth in 1985, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you focus on their success and you forget that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” states 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 therapy was effective, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, Seutin highlights threads of her life story like flashbacks, and nods more broadly to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of characters connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in harmony with the musicians on the platform. Her dance composition incorporates multiple styles of dance she has learned over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including street styles like krump.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (She passed away in 2008 after having a heart attack on stage in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would inspire 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 adopt the same approach in this work. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. This is what I admire about her. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she achieved it in a way that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be graced by her ability.”

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