🔗 Share this article

“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a sovereign,” explains Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, Makeba also spent time in New York with renowned musicians like prominent artists. Beginning as a young person dispatched to labor to provide for her relatives in the city, she later became a diplomat for Ghana, then the country’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a activist. This rich life and legacy inspire Seutin’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its British debut.

The Blend of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show combines movement, live music, and spoken word in a stage work that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but utilizes her past, especially her story of exile: after moving to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from South Africa for 30 years due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was excluded from the United States after wedding activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer leading reviving Makeba’s songs to vibrant life.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial gathering place for locally made drinks and animated discussions, usually managed by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, she went to prison for six months, bringing her baby with her, which is how her remarkable journey began – just one of the things the choreographer learned when researching her story. “So many stories!” says she, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s parent is from Belgium and she was raised there before relocating to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would sing Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … Miriam Makeba sings at the venue in the year.

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting the singer. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to pass at the hospital so I began investigating.” In addition to learning of her victorious homecoming to the nation in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a legal professional in the 1950s), Seutin found that she had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in labor in the year, and that due to her banishment she could not attend her parent’s funeral. “You see people and you focus on their success and you forget that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Themes

These reflections went into the creation of the production (premiered in Brussels in the year). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the idea for the work was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, she pulls out elements of her life story like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss nowadays. While it’s not overt in the show, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of characters linked with the icon to welcome this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the performance, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s local drink, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Her dance composition incorporates multiple styles of movement she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ personal styles, including urban dances like the form.

A celebration of resilience … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the cast were unaware about the singer. (Makeba passed away in 2008 after having a cardiac event on stage in the country.) Why should younger generations learn about Mama Africa? “In my view she would inspire the youth to stand for what they believe in, expressing honesty,” remarks the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something poignant and then sing a lovely melody.” She wanted to take the same approach in this production. “We see dancing and listen to beautiful songs, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with strong messages and instances that hit. This is what I admire about Miriam. Because if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They retreat. But she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is showing in London, 22-24 October