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“Discussing about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a royal figure,” remarks the choreographer. Called the Empress of African Song, Makeba also spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like prominent artists. Starting as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she eventually became a diplomat for the nation, then Guinea’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a simple biography but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after relocating to the city in the year, Makeba was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was excluded from the US after marrying activist her spouse. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with the exceptional vocalist the performer at the centre reviving her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, often managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the fine, she went to prison for six months, taking her baby with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer learned when studying her story. “Numerous tales!” exclaims Seutin, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Her parent is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she established her company Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would sing Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and dance to them in the home.

Songs of freedom … the artist sings at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly asking for Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were singing together,” Seutin remembers. “There was ample time to kill at the hospital so I began investigating.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a legal professional in the era), she found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that because of her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her parent’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you overlook that they are facing challenges like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the making of the production (first staged in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. In this context, she pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of characters connected to the icon to welcome this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by rhythm, in synthesis with the musicians on stage. Her dance composition includes various forms of dance 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 taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the artist. (Makeba passed away in the year after having a heart attack on stage in the country.) Why should new audiences discover the legend? “I think she would motivate the youth to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” says Seutin. “But she did it very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” She aimed to adopt the same approach in this production. “We see dancing and hear melodies, an aspect of enjoyment, but mixed with strong messages and moments that hit. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They retreat. But she achieved it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in the city, the dates