🔗 Share this article

“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s similar to talking about a sovereign,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like prominent artists. Beginning as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she later became a diplomat for Ghana, then the country’s official delegate to the UN. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable story and impact inspire Seutin’s new production, the performance, set for its UK premiere.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her story of exile: after moving to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from her homeland for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist her spouse. The show is like a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with the exceptional South African singer the performer leading bringing her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, often presided over by a host. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the fine, she went to prison for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the things the choreographer learned when studying her story. “So many stories!” says she, when they met in Brussels after a show. Her parent is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before relocating to study and work in the UK, where she founded her dance group the ensemble. Her parent would sing her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a youngster, and move along in the living room.

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

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in hospital in the city. “I paused my career for a quarter to look after her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to reading about her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), she discovered that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in labor in 1985, and that due to her exile she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you focus on their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the making of the production (first staged in the city in the year). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, Seutin pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss today. Although it’s not explicit in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of personas connected to the icon to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Her dance composition incorporates various forms of dance she has learned over the years, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including urban dances like the form.

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group didn’t already know about the artist. (She passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should younger generations discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” says Seutin. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She expressed something meaningful and then sing a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to take the similar method in this work. “We see dancing and listen to melodies, an aspect of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. Yet she did it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is at London, 22-24 October