🔗 Share this article

“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a queen,” states Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, Makeba additionally spent time in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable story and impact inspire the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen merges movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after relocating to New York in the year, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after wedding Black Panther activist her spouse. The performance resembles a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer at the centre bringing Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar gathering place for locally made drinks and lively conversation, often managed by a host. Makeba’s mother Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Unable to pay the fine, Christina was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life started – just one of the things Seutin discovered when researching her story. “Numerous tales!” exclaims Seutin, when they met in Brussels after a show. Her parent is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she established her dance group Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would sing her music, such as the tunes, when she was a youngster, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … Miriam Makeba sings at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A decade ago, her parent had the illness 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,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” As well as reading about her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she found that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that her child Bongi passed away in childbirth in the year, and that because of her banishment she could not attend her own mother’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was effective, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. In this context, she pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “And we gather as these other selves of personas connected to Miriam Makeba to welcome this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in the show.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in harmony with the players on the platform. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates multiple styles of dance she has learned over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a heart attack on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to stand for what they believe in, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to adopt the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe movement and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and instances that hit. This is what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

• The performance is at the city, the dates