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“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” remarks the choreographer. Called the Empress of African Song, Makeba also associated in New York with jazz greats like prominent artists. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An outspoken anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a Black Panther. This rich story and impact motivate the choreographer’s new production, the performance, set for its UK premiere.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show combines dance, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, especially her experience of banishment: after moving to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from South Africa for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The show resembles a ceremonial tribute, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer Tutu Puoane leading reviving her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an under-the-radar gathering place for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the fine, Christina was incarcerated for six months, taking her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin learned when researching her story. “Numerous tales!” says she, when we meet in Brussels after a show. Her father is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she established her company the ensemble. Her parent would sing her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the home.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba performs at the venue in 1988.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a legal professional in the 1950s), Seutin discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that her child Bongi passed away in labor in 1985, and that because of her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her own mother’s funeral. “You see people and you focus on their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Development and Concepts

These reflections went into the making of the production (premiered in the city in the year). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was effective, but the idea for the work was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, Seutin pulls out elements of her life story like flashbacks, and references more generally to the idea of uprooting and loss today. Although it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters linked with Miriam Makeba to welcome this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in the show.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by rhythm, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates multiple styles of dance she has learned over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the group were unaware about the artist. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a cardiac event on stage in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover the legend? “In my view she would inspire young people to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” remarks the choreographer. “But she did it very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” She wanted to adopt the same approach in this production. “We see movement and listen to melodies, an element of entertainment, but mixed with strong messages and moments that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They retreat. But she did it in a way that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at the city, the dates