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“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, Makeba additionally spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a teenager dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s representative to the United Nations. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a Black Panther. This rich story and impact inspire the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

The Blend of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but draws on her past, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from her homeland for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with a fabulous South African singer Tutu Puoane leading bringing Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for locally made drinks and lively conversation, often managed by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the penalty, Christina was incarcerated for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life began – just one of the things Seutin learned when studying her story. “Numerous tales!” says she, when they met in the city after a show. Seutin’s parent is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her company the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and move along in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba sings at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in hospital in the city. “I paused my career for a quarter to take care of her and she was always asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she remembers. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I began investigating.” In addition to reading about her victorious homecoming to the nation in 1990, after the release of the leader (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin discovered that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she could not be present at her parent’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are facing challenges like everyone,” says Seutin.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts went into the creation of the show (premiered in the city in the year). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the piece was to honor “death, life and mourning”. In this context, Seutin pulls out threads of her life story like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss today. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters connected to the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in the show.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the multi-talented performers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Her dance composition includes various forms of dance she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group didn’t already know about the singer. (She passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “But she did it very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” She aimed to take the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an element of entertainment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. This is what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a way that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is showing in the city, 22-24 October