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“When you speak about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a queen,” states Alesandra Seutin. Known as the Empress of African Song, Makeba additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Beginning as a teenager dispatched to labor to support her family in the city, she later served as an envoy for the nation, then Guinea’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. Her rich life and legacy motivate the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its British debut.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen combines movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, particularly her experience of banishment: after moving to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance is like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer Tutu Puoane leading reviving Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually presided over 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 fine, she was incarcerated for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how her remarkable journey began – just one of the details Seutin discovered when studying her story. “So many stories!” says she, when they met in Brussels after a show. Her parent is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she established her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the home.

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

A decade ago, her parent had the illness 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 performing as one,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), Seutin found that Makeba had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi died in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her exile she could not attend her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” states the choreographer.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts went into the making of the production (first staged in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, Seutin pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more generally to the theme of uprooting and loss nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of personas connected to the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the venue’s local drink, the skilled dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in synthesis with the musicians on the platform. Her dance composition incorporates various forms of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including street styles like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the artist. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “However she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then perform a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to take the similar method in this production. “We see dancing and listen to melodies, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and moments that hit. That’s what I respect about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at London, 22-24 October