Daily Times

Wow! “Message in a Bottle” is baffling, delightful and meaningful. The mere thought of dancing to Sting’s music is troubling at first; one can imagine a hip-hop dance performance to Jay Z or even Taylor Swift’s music, but “how do you dance to Sting’s music?” It is a hurdle that you overcome the moment the show opens up with the famous track “Desert Rose” and see dancers dance harmoniously to “I dream of love as time runs through my mind” that gently pulls you into the performance and think deeply about the lyrics.

Kate Prince, the director and choreographer of Message in a Bottle, wanted to put together a dance theatre with a universal story of human resilience since 2015. She makes a fantastic case as to why she wanted to use Sting’s music as a vessel: “There’s such a vast range of musical styles, and lyrically he’s so poetic,” said Kate Prince, adding “he talks about the world, so it was a really easy process to try to find this story I wanted to tell. Everything’s just responding to what the music is. The shows I normally make, we write the music from scratch and that takes years, so to already be in a position where I’m just listening to all this music, and drawing inspiration from it – and it’s such great music, it really is, for dance, it’s just brilliant.”

A dance theatre with a message is an audacious task. Sometimes the audience wants a no brainer which get them into the groove and throw a few dance moves, but a performance about human displacement, Guantanamo-like prison cells, dying in sea storm is perhaps a bit much to stomach, so the question arises: “Does it work?” Yes, it does. It is fun, it gets you thinking, and you leave with a message of hope. The way in which Kate tied a little over two dozen tracks by Sting to narrate a story of displacement is absolutely wonderful-she deserves a round of applause for her genius.

A dance theatre with a message is an audacious task. Sometimes the audience wants a no brainer which gets them into the groove and throw a few dance moves, but a performance about human displacement, Guantanamo-like prison cells, dying in sea storm is perhaps a bit much to stomach, so the question arises, ‘Does it work?’

“I went to a very early workshop of Kate’s and I was kind of blown away by it,” said Sting in an interview. “The response for me was very emotional – and not just because I was honoured that they were using my music to express something – but there was something happening at a deeper level, of understanding, or beyond understanding, it was moving me in ways I couldn’t quite interpret.”

It is amazing that every two second a person is forcibly displaced due to a conflict or a persecution but we don’t talk about it in the mainstream media. “In 2019 statistics show that over seventy million people around the globe have been forced from their homes,” read the Message in a Bottle synopsis by Lolita Chakarbati.

It doesn’t happen very often that you feel honoured to have seen a performance. The world premiere of Message in a Bottle is a show that I can say it was an honour to review mainly because of the message it communicated on top of being exceedingly entertaining. And I wish I could do someone of those dance moves without breaking my spine.

The writer is an educationalist and broadcaster. He can be reached on fahad@caa.columbia.edu