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“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a queen,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, Makeba also associated in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person 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 campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s latest work, the performance, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show combines dance, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after relocating to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial gathering place for locally made drinks and lively conversation, usually presided over by a host. Makeba’s mother Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, Christina went to prison for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer discovered when studying her story. “Numerous tales!” exclaims she, when we meet in the city after a performance. Her father is from Belgium and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the United Kingdom, where she founded her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would sing Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and move along in the home.

Melodies of liberation … the artist performs at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to look after her and she was always asking for Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were singing together,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in 1990, 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 Bongi passed away in childbirth in the year, and that due to her exile she could not attend her parent’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their achievements and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” says the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the making of the production (premiered in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, Seutin highlights elements of her life story like memories, and references more broadly to the idea of displacement and dispossession today. While it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “And we gather as these other selves of characters linked with Miriam Makeba to welcome this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s local drink, the skilled dancers appear possessed by beat, in synthesis with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s choreography includes multiple styles of dance she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (She died in 2008 after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would inspire the youth to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” remarks the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” She wanted to take the similar method in this work. “We see dancing and hear beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They retreat. But she achieved it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

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