🔗 Share this article

“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as Mama Africa, the iconic artist additionally spent time in New York with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person sent to work to support her family in the city, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then the country’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable story and impact motivate Seutin’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

The Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines movement, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a simple biography but utilizes Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after moving to New York in the year, she was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the US after wedding Black Panther activist her spouse. The show resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with the fabulous vocalist Tutu Puoane at the centre reviving her music to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar gathering place for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a proprietress who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Incapable of covering the fine, she went to prison for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how her remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin learned when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” says Seutin, when we meet in Brussels after a show. Seutin’s father is from Belgium and she was raised there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her company Vocab Dance. Her South African mother would sing her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … the artist sings at the venue in the year.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I paused my career for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting Miriam Makeba. 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.” 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 discovered that Makeba had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter the girl died in childbirth in the year, and that because of her banishment she could not attend her parent’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you overlook that they are facing challenges like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Creation and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the making of the production (first staged in Brussels in the year). Thankfully, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, she highlights threads of her life story like flashbacks, and references more generally to the theme of uprooting and loss today. While it’s not overt in the show, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of personas linked with Miriam Makeba to greet this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s home-brew, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in synthesis with the players on the platform. Her choreography includes various forms of movement she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (Makeba died in the year after having a heart attack on the platform in the country.) Why should younger generations learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate young people to advocate what they are, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “However she did it very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to adopt the similar method in this work. “We see movement and listen to melodies, an aspect of entertainment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her ability.”

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