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“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” states Alesandra Seutin. Called the Empress of African Song, Makeba additionally spent time in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually served as an envoy for Ghana, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s latest work, the performance, set for its British debut.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, live music, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her experience of banishment: after moving to the city in the year, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the US after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer the performer at the centre bringing her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and lively conversation, often managed by a host. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the penalty, Christina went to prison for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin learned when researching her story. “So many stories!” exclaims she, when they met in the city after a performance. Seutin’s parent is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her company the ensemble. Her parent would sing her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and dance to them in the home.

Melodies of liberation … the artist sings at the venue in the year.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother 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 Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were singing together,” she recalls. “There was ample time to kill at the hospital so I began investigating.” As well as reading about her victorious homecoming to South Africa in 1990, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a legal professional in the era), she found that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in labor in the year, and that because of her exile she hadn’t been able to attend her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their success and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Concepts

These reflections went into the creation of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was effective, but the concept for the piece was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights threads of her life story like flashbacks, and references more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the show, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of personas linked with the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by beat, in synthesis with the players on the platform. Seutin’s choreography includes various forms of movement she has learned over the years, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the group didn’t already know about the artist. (She died in 2008 after having a heart attack on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire young people to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” says Seutin. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to adopt the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an aspect of entertainment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she achieved it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at the city, the dates