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“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a sovereign,” explains the choreographer. Called the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually became a diplomat for the nation, then the country’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. This rich story and impact inspire Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges movement, live music, and spoken word in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, particularly her story of exile: after moving to the city in the year, Makeba was barred from South Africa for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with the fabulous vocalist the performer leading reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother Christina was a proprietress who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, Christina went to prison for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin learned when researching Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says Seutin, when they met in the city after a show. Seutin’s father is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

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

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in hospital in the city. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were singing together,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), Seutin discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her exile she could not be present at her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you focus on their success and you overlook that they are struggling like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts went into the making of the show (premiered in Brussels in the year). Thankfully, her parent’s treatment was effective, but the concept for the piece was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like memories, and references more generally to the theme of uprooting and loss today. Although 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 characters linked with Miriam Makeba to welcome this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the skilled dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in harmony with the musicians on the platform. Her choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has learned over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the international cast’ 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 cast were unaware about the singer. (She died in the year after having a heart attack on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “However she did it very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to adopt the same approach in this work. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of entertainment, but mixed with strong messages and instances that hit. This is what I admire about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

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