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“Discussing about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a sovereign,” states Alesandra Seutin. Called the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also associated in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. 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 vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable story and impact motivate the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Blend of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to the city in 1959, she was barred from her homeland for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was banned from the US after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, part celebration, part provocation – with a exceptional vocalist the performer leading bringing her music to vibrant life.

Power and poise … the production.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother Christina was a proprietress who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she was incarcerated for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life started – just one of the things the choreographer discovered when researching her story. “So many stories!” says she, when they met in the city after a performance. Seutin’s parent is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before relocating to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she established her company Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a youngster, and move along in the home.

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

A decade ago, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I paused my career for a quarter to look after her and she was always asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I began investigating.” As well as reading about her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin found that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that her child the girl passed away in labor in the year, and that because of her exile she hadn’t been able to attend her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you focus on their success and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in the year). Thankfully, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. In this context, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the show, she had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of personas linked with the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in harmony with the players on the platform. Her dance composition incorporates various forms of movement she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ personal styles, including street styles 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. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks Seutin. “But she did it very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to take the similar method in this work. “We see movement and listen to beautiful songs, an aspect of entertainment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that hit. This is what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is at the city, the dates