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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” explains the choreographer. Known as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also spent time in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she eventually served as an envoy for the nation, then the country’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. This rich life and legacy inspire Seutin’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

The Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show merges movement, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to New York in the year, Makeba was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with the exceptional South African singer the performer at the centre reviving her music to vibrant life.

Power and poise … the production.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, often managed by a host. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, Christina went to prison for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life began – just one of the things the choreographer learned when researching Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says Seutin, when we meet in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s father is from Belgium 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 sing Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and dance to them in the home.

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

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in the city. “I paused my career for three months to look after her and she was constantly asking for the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” Seutin remembers. “There was ample time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child Bongi died in childbirth in 1985, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her parent’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Creation and Themes

These reflections contributed to the creation of the production (premiered in the city in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of personas linked with Miriam Makeba to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the skilled performers appear possessed by beat, in synthesis with the musicians on the platform. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates various forms of dance she has absorbed over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the international cast’ personal styles, including street styles like krump.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She 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 Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate the youth to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “But she did it very elegantly. She expressed something meaningful and then sing a beautiful song.” She wanted to take the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe movement and hear melodies, an element of entertainment, 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 back away. Yet she achieved 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, the dates