🔗 Share this article

“Discussing about the legendary singer in the nation, it’s akin to referring about a queen,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, Makeba also spent time in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a Black Panther. Her remarkable life and legacy inspire the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but draws on her past, especially her story of exile: after relocating to the city in the year, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was banned from the US after wedding Black Panther activist her spouse. The performance is like a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, some challenge – with a exceptional vocalist the performer leading bringing Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and lively conversation, often presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, she was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer learned when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” exclaims Seutin, when we meet in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s parent is from Belgium and she was raised there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a youngster, and dance to them in the living room.

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

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was always asking for Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she recalls. “There was ample time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), Seutin found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi passed away in labor in the year, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her own mother’s memorial. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Development and Concepts

These reflections went into the making of the production (first staged in the city in the year). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “And we gather as these other selves of characters linked with the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in the show.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s choreography includes multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including street styles like krump.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

She was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast were unaware about the singer. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should younger generations discover the legend? “In my view she would inspire the youth to stand for what they believe in, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “However she did it very gracefully. She expressed something poignant and then sing 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 mixed with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. 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 ability.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in the city, 22-24 October