🔗 Share this article

“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a sovereign,” states the choreographer. Known 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 served as an envoy for the nation, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was married to a activist. Her remarkable story and impact inspire the choreographer’s latest work, the performance, set for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines dance, live music, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to the city in 1959, she was barred from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the US after marrying Black Panther activist her spouse. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – some praise, part celebration, some challenge – with a fabulous vocalist Tutu Puoane at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a host. Her parent Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the penalty, she was incarcerated for half a year, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the things Seutin learned when researching Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says she, when we meet in the city after a performance. Her father is from Belgium and she was raised there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she established her company the ensemble. Her parent would perform Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when she was a youngster, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … the artist sings at the venue in 1988.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I paused my career for a quarter to look after her and she was constantly asking for the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in 1990, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child the girl passed away in childbirth in 1985, and that due to her exile she hadn’t been able to attend her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you look at their success and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” states the choreographer.

Creation and Themes

These reflections contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in 2023). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was effective, but the concept for the work was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she pulls out elements of her life story like memories, and references more generally to the theme of uprooting and loss nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the show, she had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “And we gather as these alter egos of characters linked with the icon to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the skilled performers appear possessed by beat, in synthesis with the players on the platform. Her choreography includes various forms of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … the creator.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (She died in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in Italy.) Why should younger generations discover Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate the youth to stand for what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “But she did it very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” She wanted to adopt the same approach in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and listen to beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I respect about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would accept it, and understand it, but still be graced by her ability.”

• The performance is showing in London, the dates