🔗 Share this article

“When you speak about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” remarks the choreographer. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist also spent time in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to support her family in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a Black Panther. This remarkable story and impact motivate the choreographer’s latest work, the performance, scheduled for its UK premiere.

A Blend of Movement, Sound, and Narration

Mimi’s Shebeen combines movement, live music, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that is not a simple biography but utilizes her past, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to the city in the year, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was banned from the US after marrying activist her spouse. The show resembles a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with the fabulous vocalist Tutu Puoane at the centre bringing Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial venue for locally made drinks and lively conversation, often presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother Christina was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the fine, she was incarcerated for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer learned when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” says Seutin, when we meet in the city after a show. Seutin’s parent is Belgian and she was raised there before moving to study and work in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a youngster, and move along in the living room.

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

A decade ago, her parent had the illness and was in hospital in London. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. She was so happy when we were singing together,” she recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of her victorious homecoming to South Africa 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 Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she could not be present at 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 the choreographer.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the production (first staged in the city in 2023). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the work was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. In this context, she pulls out threads of her life story like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of personas linked with Miriam Makeba to welcome this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in the show.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in synthesis with the players on stage. Her choreography includes multiple styles of dance she has learned over the years, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ personal styles, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … the creator.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (Makeba died in 2008 after having a heart attack on stage in the country.) Why should new audiences discover the legend? “In my view she would motivate young people to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” says the choreographer. “However she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to adopt the same approach in this production. “Audiences observe movement and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and moments that hit. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she achieved it in a way that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is at London, the dates