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“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a sovereign,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally spent time in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for the nation, then Guinea’s official delegate to the UN. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable story and impact inspire Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its UK premiere.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show combines movement, live music, 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 1959, Makeba was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after wedding Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with the fabulous vocalist Tutu Puoane leading bringing her music to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a host. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she was incarcerated for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how her remarkable journey started – just one of the details the choreographer discovered when researching her story. “Numerous tales!” exclaims she, when they met in the city after a performance. Seutin’s father is Belgian and she was raised there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a youngster, and move along in the home.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba sings at the venue in 1988.

A ten years back, her parent had the illness and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were singing together,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” In addition to reading about her victorious homecoming to South Africa in the year, after the release of the leader (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 youth, that her child Bongi died in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her exile she could not be present at her parent’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in the city in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. In this context, Seutin highlights elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the idea of uprooting and loss today. Although it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “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 show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates multiple styles of movement she has absorbed over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate the youth to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “But she did it very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then perform a lovely melody.” She aimed to adopt the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of entertainment, but intertwined 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 retreat. Yet she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in the city, 22-24 October