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“If you talk about the legendary singer in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a royal figure,” remarks the choreographer. Called the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist additionally associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager sent to work to support her family in the city, she eventually became a diplomat for Ghana, then Guinea’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a Black Panther. Her remarkable life and legacy inspire Seutin’s latest work, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

The Blend of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show combines movement, instrumental performances, and oral storytelling in a stage work that is not a straightforward biodrama but draws on her past, especially her story of exile: after moving to the city in the year, she was barred from her homeland for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Subsequently, she was excluded from the United States after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The show resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with a fabulous vocalist the performer leading reviving her music to vibrant life.

Power and poise … the production.

In South Africa, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a proprietress who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she was incarcerated for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey began – just one of the things the choreographer discovered when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” says Seutin, 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 dance group the ensemble. Her parent would sing Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when Seutin was a youngster, and dance to them in the home.

Melodies of liberation … the artist sings at the venue in the year.

A ten years back, 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 requesting the singer. It delighted her when we were singing together,” Seutin remembers. “There was ample time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” In addition to reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in the year, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), she found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that her child the girl passed away in childbirth in the year, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her own mother’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their success and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says the choreographer.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts went into the creation of the show (premiered in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, her parent’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, Seutin pulls out threads of her life story like memories, and nods more generally to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of personas linked with the icon to welcome 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 dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in synthesis with the players 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 international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like krump.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

She was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast were unaware about the singer. (She died in 2008 after having a heart attack on stage in the country.) Why should younger generations discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” remarks Seutin. “But she did it very gracefully. She’d say something poignant and then perform a lovely melody.” She aimed to take the same approach in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that hit. That’s what I respect about her. Because if you are being overly loud, people won’t listen. They retreat. Yet she did it in a manner that you would accept it, and hear it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

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