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“If you talk about the legendary singer in the nation, it’s like speaking about a sovereign,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Called the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a teenager sent to work to support her family in the city, she eventually served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s new production, the performance, set for its British debut.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, particularly her story of exile: after moving to New York in the year, she was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist Tutu Puoane leading bringing her music to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial gathering place for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, often managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the penalty, Christina was incarcerated for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how her eventful life began – just one of the details Seutin learned when researching her story. “Numerous tales!” says she, when they met in the city after a performance. Her father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she founded her company Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the home.

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

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in medical care in the city. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter the girl died in labor in 1985, and that due to her exile she could not be present at her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts went into the making of the production (first staged in the city in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was effective, but the concept for the work was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights elements of her life story like memories, and nods more broadly to the theme of displacement and dispossession today. Although it’s not overt in the performance, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of characters linked with Miriam Makeba to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in the show.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s choreography incorporates multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the cast were unaware about the artist. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about the legend? “I think she would motivate young people to advocate what they are, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “But she did it very gracefully. She expressed something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” She aimed to take the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at London, 22-24 October