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“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” states Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist additionally associated in New York with jazz greats like prominent artists. Beginning as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in Johannesburg, she later became a diplomat for the nation, then Guinea’s official delegate to the UN. An outspoken campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable life and legacy inspire the choreographer’s new production, the performance, set for its British debut.

A Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines movement, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a simple biography but utilizes her past, especially her story of exile: after moving to the city in 1959, Makeba was barred from her homeland for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was banned from the US after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, some festivity, some challenge – with a exceptional vocalist the performer leading bringing Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, often managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Miriam was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, Christina went to prison for six months, taking her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life began – just one of the details Seutin discovered when researching Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says Seutin, when we meet in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her company Vocab Dance. Her parent would sing her music, such as the tunes, when she was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

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

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly requesting the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” Seutin recalls. “There was ample time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” In addition to reading about her victorious homecoming to South Africa in 1990, after the release of the leader (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 youth, 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. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Development and Concepts

These reflections contributed to the creation of the production (first staged in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the work was to honor “death, life and mourning”. Within that, Seutin highlights threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. Although it’s not explicit in the show, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas linked with the icon to greet this newcomer.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the skilled dancers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Seutin’s dance composition incorporates various forms of movement she has absorbed over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … the creator.

She was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the artist. (She passed away in 2008 after having a heart attack on stage in Italy.) Why should younger generations discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire young people to advocate what they believe in, expressing honesty,” remarks the choreographer. “But she did it very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then perform a beautiful song.” She wanted to take the similar method in this production. “We see movement and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is at the city, 22-24 October