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“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually became a diplomat for the nation, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a activist. This remarkable story and impact motivate the choreographer’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges dance, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to the city in 1959, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was excluded from the US after wedding activist her spouse. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer leading reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch 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, bringing her infant with her, which is how her eventful life started – just one of the details the choreographer discovered when studying Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” exclaims Seutin, when they met in the city after a show. Her father is Belgian and she was raised there before relocating to learn and labor in the United Kingdom, where she established her company Vocab Dance. Her parent would sing her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … the artist performs at Wembley Stadium in 1988.

A decade ago, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were singing together,” she remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the release of the leader (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she discovered that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that Makeba’s daughter the girl died in labor in 1985, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their success and you overlook that they are facing challenges like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Themes

These reflections contributed to the creation of the production (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was effective, but the idea for the piece was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, she pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the show, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the musicians on the platform. Seutin’s choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including street styles like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

She was taken aback to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the group didn’t already know about the singer. (She died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should younger generations discover the legend? “I think she would inspire young people to advocate what they believe in, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to adopt the same approach in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and hear beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. This is what I admire about Miriam. Because if you are being overly loud, 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 graced by her ability.”

• The performance is at London, 22-24 October